America’s ‘Unamerican’ Ethnic Neurosis (El Diario Exterior, Spain)
Why is it that people in the United States, the land where ‘all men are created equal,’ the land where ‘constitutional patriotism’ was born, have been pulling their hair out over an issue that appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers? For Spain’s Diario Exterior, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner examines one of the most vexing issues in the U.S. today, and why America’s ‘ethnic neurosis’ is destined to dissipate if people simply wait.
For the Diario Exterior, Carlos Alberto Montaner starts off this way:
The New York Times front page has announced that in the previous year, more than half the children born in the United States (50.4%) were non-White. Of that percentage, 26 percent were Hispanic (mostly Mexican), 15 percent were Black and 4 percent were Asian.
Why was it on the front page? Pure ethnic neurosis. Fear of the other. The same thing happened a few years ago when Samuel Huntington caused such a stir with the publication of his The Hispanic Challenge. This type of information causes a certain anxiety among “Whites.” They think they are losing control over and the direction of America. They fear becoming a minority.
The first bit of nonsense is classification. Hispanics are defined by the language they speak, or by what language they are supposed to speak, regardless of skin color. A Chilean of Basque origin or a Cachiquel Guatemalan are Hispanics, even if the language of the latter isn’t Spanish. Blacks, evidently, are classified by race. Asians, by geography, be they Chinese or Indian.
I have no idea, for example, if an Israeli-American of Sephardic origin is Asian, White or Hispanic. Nor do I know if that brilliant engineer called Rafael Reif, a Venezuelan son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who was recently named President of MIT, is Hispanic, White, or if by chance the census allows it, simply Maracucho. [Maracucho is the Zulian dialect in northwest Venezuela].
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Ethnic neurosis is part of the human makeup. Its not a good part, which is why we enshrined in our laws a powerful reminder that although you may not like people that look different from you, you don’t get to legally oppress them. So yea, white people will freak out about minorities chipping away at their demographic dominance, that is no surprise. But it will only go so far. That’s why we made a law.
Catholics, Irish, and Irish Catholics have faced the ethnic neurosis described and we ended up with an Irish Catholic president.
Whether we can fight those who would defeat meritocracy with ethnocetric laws remains to be seen. 200 years is a very short time for any particular nation; we had a shaky start then improved and will have to remain vigilant less we fail again.
WK, wonderful article. I wish more people, including those here on TMV read it and reflect.
If one thinks that America and Americans have “ethnic neurosis” and that ethnic, race and class distinction are complex, mixed-up and big issues in the U.S., I would invite one to look into the Latin American race, ethnic and class neurosis, complexity and confusion, where we have, in addition to blancos and negros: mestizos, mulatos, indios, cholos, indigenos, morenos, pardos, criollos, etc., etc.
I am sure that Dr. E. can tell us a lot more about this.
Oh my, Dorian, dont get me started. I was shocked here in the US, in the north AND the south, and ALSO the first time i traveled to central and south america in the 1960s and different nations had actually published books telling all about the ‘drop of blood’ differences with long LONG lists of labeling people. Add reversos, laDinos, herencias, francos, asian mix blood, africanos-hueras, hueras, and more, much more, including ‘the good indian’ which is an insult to los indios. It’s as though there is some base instinct to not only divide people ‘by looks and bloodlines’ but also then to hierarchicalize it all.
Brutal for those who believe it; brutal for those who are not in the top tier economically and politically power-wise. Which would be most of the people on the face of the earth.