The Browning of America

The BBQ Pit
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Sometimes it’s the smallest, stupidest, most thoughtless (or thoughtlessest?) things that get under the skin, like a tick, and irritate.

I’ve been stewing pointlessly since yesterday morning. As my mom drove me to work, we listened, as usual, to the local news station, which features Paul Harvey’s “News” and Comment. The program used to entertain me as a child, but now I realize he passes off urban legends, scare-lore, and personal opinions as “news.” I put up with it because his morning report is usually short and I like the guys who come on after. But yesterday morning he really said something that got to me.

He said, “The browning of America continues. In Chicago, whites are now the minority.” And I thought, “What the hell does that mean??” Ooh, there are lots of brown people! Mommy, I’m scared! They’re going to take over the county and treat us poor whites as shabbily as we treated them in the past! Help!!

I shrugged it off when he did the story on Oop-Arts (out-of-place artifacts) being proof of Noah’s flood, and the one what a super nice guy John Ashcroft is because he shovelled an elderly neighbor’s front walk, but this really bugged the hell out of me. Yeah, there are lots of brown people in America. A lot of whom had ancestors here before the whites, even. I can imagine, if they had radio back then, Native American commentators bemoaning the “whiting” of America. Is Paul Harvey afraid whites, once they’re no longer the majority, will be sent on a “trail of tears”?

I did a little research on the phrase “browning of America” and found that there was a book written by a fellow named Rodriguez about this issue. His point seemed to be more along the lines of “racial issues aren’t black and white, they include brown.” I understand that, I get his point. But I get the feeling that Paul Harvey’s “news” reflects more on the fears these guys have on the “browning of America.” (This page is a review of a book that was lambasted for being racist. Warning, these guys think the book was right on target, maybe even wasn’t racist enough.)

P.H. probably didn’t think that much about what he was saying, didn’t think about how people would interpret it. I don’t think the guy is scum, I think he’s just an older, opinionated guy from another era; hell, I think my mom agreed with him. Chewing him out would probably do as much good as chewing out grandpa during Thanksgiving dinner. But doesn’t he have a copy-writer or an editor or something? I wish one of them would have thought about people’s feelings. Like Esprix said recently, PC should mean “Plain Courtesty.” Does P.H. really believe he has no “brown” listeners that might take offense at that remark? Or did he think they would agree, “Gee, Jose, he’s right, we’re ruining this country for the white people who own it, let’s go back to Mehico before we make things worse.” Maybe he doesn’t have any “brown” listeners at all! I’m probably ranting about nothing! But it still pisses me off :mad:

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Not defending Paul Harvey…I don’t listen to him either but yesterday on NPR I heard a report…

The report stated that the “minority” population was increasing. I never can hear it all well (My radio sucks.) but something about how as the predominately white “baby boomers” grow older and older the population is becoming less traditionally “white”. They talked about how the culture of America might change over the next generation because it will be more heavily populated with people of Hispanic, African, and Asian ancestry than European. Something to that effect.

Does NPR have I site, I’ve never checked but you might be able to get a copy of the report there.

I’ll look it up myself when I get a chance. Gotta go now.

Needs2know

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In the year 1900, Americans were frightened that the huge waves of Italians, Jews, Poles, and other non-Anglo Europeans would soon destroy the fabric of American society. So what’s new?
While realizing that “Asian” and “Hispanic” are somewhat artificial groupings of many diverse groups, many Asians and Hispanics are assimilating, intermarrying, and otherwise becoming Americanized, and will undoubtedly become just as absorbed into the general population as the Jews, Italians, and Poles did in the last century. It won’t happen overnight, but will nevertheless occur. Of course assimilation is slower in absorbing the Black population, but supposedly the recent census shocked some experts by revealing that a large part of the Black population sees themselves as “multiracial” and not exclusively Black.
Racial change is a constant throughout human history

Cecil Adams wrote an interesting column on this subject.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_098.html

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Hee-hee, Gr8Kat, you should call his show and explain to him that “races” don’t exist.

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The Bose[sup]TM[/sup] Acoustic Wave[sup]TM[/sup] sound system is the best thing to happen to the sense of hearing since quadro-fucking-phonic sound. It must be true, cuz Paul would never try and pass off an endorsement as actual news.

The motherfucker should have the word “Special Advertising Section” printed in really tiny letters on his forehead, like they do with the fake “articles” in the newspaper.

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When Paul says “Page 2,” get ready for the ad. My former carpool partner never realized that. She would sit there and “ooh, how interesting” over every plug and “story” just the same. Another hint she never picked up on: News stories don’t have 1-800 numbers.

I don’t think I’ve heard him do a story on the human genome project yet… gee, I wonder why? Could it be because it proves that: 1) there are no “race” genes, and 2) humans evolved from animals? No, Paul is a respected journalist, he’d never let personal bias prevent him from sharing the news!

His program should be called Paul Harvey’s Comments, drop the “News.” I’m waiting for it to devolve into the SNL parodies of Larry King’s News and Views, mixing the mind-bogglingly obvious with the mind-bendingly bizarre. Or should I say “devolve further”?

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I have read some stuff by Richard Rodriguez(the author mentioned in the OP) and a lot of what I read was about how there doesn’t seem to be too much tolerance or acceptance for “brown races”(ie hispanic, asian, etc) in the US. A lot of his writing is in the form of personal accounts of growing up as a Mexican-American student in the US and being forced into assimilation and not really fitting in with either his family or peers at school. So I would assume that his book “The Browning of America” is probably of a similar perspective, probably with a lot of it written about concerns of people who aren’t traditionally considered ‘white’ or ‘black’ but fall somewhere in the middle. It looks like the radio host was probably using the term to simply mean anyone other than the traditional upstanding white citizen.

That review you linked to can’t really try to hide anything as it is part of the ‘National Alliance’ site which is a very large white power organization. Still its scary how such intolerance can be presented as if they are justing stating the facts, and then how so many people probably actually with these perspectives.