[From Book Review]
“We believe our diversity, our differences, when joined together by a common set of ideals, makes us stronger, makes us more creative, makes us different,” Barack Obama pronounced at a citizenship ceremony last Fourth of July. Until half a century ago most serious historians would have called such an opinion ignorant or naïve. Ethnic diversity implies cultural diversity—if it did not, ethnic diversity would soon disappear. Cultural diversity means division, division means weakness, and weakness means, eventually, unfreedom. Such, at least, is the traditional view, and history appears to vindicate it. “Diversity” has been an attribute of subject populations: medieval elites communicated in Latin, laborers in various vernaculars. Diversity has been the form of belonging that typifies empires, just as nationality has been the form that typifies republics. The British Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Habsburg Empire—these were diverse. England, Italy, and Austria, until recently, were not. The motto E pluribus unum is a sign that the founders saw diversity as a challenge to be mastered, not a resource to be tapped.
[. . .]
About whether, for instance, as more of its citizens come from non-European backgrounds, the United States will change its idea of its cultural heritage. Or whether, considering the occasional tawdriness of whites’ behavior toward minorities in centuries past—displacing Indians, enslaving Africans, deporting Chinese—there is cause to worry about race relations once the shoe is on the other foot.
[. . .]
Hispanic,” as defined by the Census Bureau, as well as by common sense, is not a race. It is rather a designation of immigrant provenance that has been applied in ways ever more bizarre as the years have passed. It classifies people by national language—not the language of the immigrant—so that a youngster from the Dominican Republic gets lumped together with an Indian from the Bolivian highlands (even if that Indian does not speak Spanish),
[.. .]
Ethnic lobbies, too, mix foreigners and Americans, non-citizens and citizens, under the same “Hispanic” category, in a way that renders meaningless many of the statistics that rank their progress.
[. . .]
Ethnic lobbies, too, mix foreigners and Americans, non-citizens and citizens, under the same “Hispanic” category, in a way that renders meaningless many of the statistics that rank their progress.
[. . .]
Should whites cease to be the majority, they will then become, by definition, just another subgroup. They show signs of following the interest-group logic that, since the 1960s and especially in the last decade, has “racialized” the politics of all other subgroups. “[T]he social, economic and demographic makeup of the white population is becoming ever more distinct,” Frey writes, also noting their increasing tendency to vote Republican.
[. . .]
“Diversity” is leading us down an ominous and unfamiliar stretch of road.
http://www.claremont.org/article/the-browning-of-america/#.VQnRnY7F95J
The Browning of America
By: Christopher Caldwell
Book Review:
A review of Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America, by William H. Frey. - See more at: http://www.claremont.org/article/the-browning-of-america/#.VQo3qt0--yO
Posted: March 9, 2015
This article appeared in: Volume XV, Number 1
[. . .]
About whether, for instance, as more of its citizens come from non-European backgrounds, the United States will change its idea of its cultural heritage. Or whether, considering the occasional tawdriness of whites’ behavior toward minorities in centuries past—displacing Indians, enslaving Africans, deporting Chinese—there is cause to worry about race relations once the shoe is on the other foot.
[. . .]
Hispanic,” as defined by the Census Bureau, as well as by common sense, is not a race. It is rather a designation of immigrant provenance that has been applied in ways ever more bizarre as the years have passed. It classifies people by national language—not the language of the immigrant—so that a youngster from the Dominican Republic gets lumped together with an Indian from the Bolivian highlands (even if that Indian does not speak Spanish),
[.. .]
Ethnic lobbies, too, mix foreigners and Americans, non-citizens and citizens, under the same “Hispanic” category, in a way that renders meaningless many of the statistics that rank their progress.
[. . .]
Ethnic lobbies, too, mix foreigners and Americans, non-citizens and citizens, under the same “Hispanic” category, in a way that renders meaningless many of the statistics that rank their progress.
[. . .]
Should whites cease to be the majority, they will then become, by definition, just another subgroup. They show signs of following the interest-group logic that, since the 1960s and especially in the last decade, has “racialized” the politics of all other subgroups. “[T]he social, economic and demographic makeup of the white population is becoming ever more distinct,” Frey writes, also noting their increasing tendency to vote Republican.
[. . .]
“Diversity” is leading us down an ominous and unfamiliar stretch of road.
http://www.claremont.org/article/the-browning-of-america/#.VQnRnY7F95J
The Browning of America
By: Christopher Caldwell
Book Review:
A review of Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America, by William H. Frey. - See more at: http://www.claremont.org/article/the-browning-of-america/#.VQo3qt0--yO
Posted: March 9, 2015
This article appeared in: Volume XV, Number 1
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