In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Samuel Huntington argues that
“The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”
Now I haven’t read his Clash of Civilizations, but well, this is sounding like tinfoil hat material than me; most evidence I’ve seen from other sources suggests than Hispanic immigrant families speak English as their primary language within a couple of generations, as has historically been the case with other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants to the U.S. Among other arguments, he indicates that the already significant rate of intermarriage of Latina women is likely to decrease rather than increase over time, on the argument that in the future, as the Latino proportion of the U.S. population increases, they won’t have to marry non-Latinos. Seems like he’s cherry-picking his facts to me, not to mention making some major and unwarranted leaps of logic. Your thoughts?
I don’t see how the dreams are different. Nice vehicle, nice place to live, and a good family. Language and culture yes. But dialect and culture is different throughout the US. Thank God because I don’t like a some of the other US cultures’ attitudes and Yankees sound funny .
Its a bunch of horseshit IMO. My dad,who’s account this is, is actually FROM Mexico, though my mom is of english decent. My mothers father was from Wales. I was born in Tuscon Az, so I’m first generation US citizen on my fathers side, second on my mothers. I speak flawless english, with a southwest accent not a mexican accent, and to be honest don’t speak much spanish at all, as it was never really emphasized in our house. English was.
Sure, we’ve held on to some of our culture, but we’ve almost completely integrated into US society. I have a huge extended family (most of who live in Az or NM, some in California, some still living in Mexico of course by they don’t count for this) and in almost all the cases they too have integrated into US society. Traditions are just that, traditions, and frankly most of them revolve around religion as most of my family are very religious. Something else that isn’t emphasized in my family, but thats another story.
My dad is a perfect example…he’s from Mexico but came to the US when he was 8 ON HIS OWN. Sure, he speaks with a bit of an accent, but he has totally integrated into US society, and raised his children, my sister, brother and I, to be english speaking Americans. We are proud to be Americans, and I for one thank my lucky stars I was born here. I’ve visited my uncles and aunts and other family members in Mexico and I would never want to live there.
I don’t see how holding on to your traditions and some of your culture is a problem. My Jewish friends hold on to their traditions and even language as many of them speak yiddish still, and after all and no one thinks that is going to split the country into two camps. Blacks have their own traditions, orientals their own traditions and language also, yet we are all Americans. And as the Eva Luna said, within a few generations at most (sometimes within a single generation) most people tend to integrate in quite nicely, though keeping possibly some of their language and culture. And this shouldn’t be a problem.
Sorry if this post wasn’t very coherent. I never write in GD (I like CS as its more my level) as some of you people are scary and I’m not very good at this stuff. I’m also only 16 y.o. so my perspective on things isn’t what some of yours is. But when I saw this thread I just wanted to put in my 2 cents.
Exactly the same things were said about the Italians. Exactly the same things were said about the Chinese. After awhile you do have to wonder when Chicken Little is going to shut up.
Huntington’s essay is sheer racism any way you slice it; he doesn’t even bother to disguise it. According to him, Hispanics are different in terms of their “Values” from the “white, British, Protestant” immigrants who made up this country. This is absolute crap on two fronts:
Of course their values aren’t different. What a load.
The United States in 2003 is not really constructed of “white, British, Protestant” people anyway, and the notion that its laws and values are uniquely “white, British, Protestant” is nonsense. Huntington is one of those (very few) strange Americans who seems to believe democracy and freedom are uniquely American things, as if they exist nowhere else in the world.
Huntington seems to be implying that Hispanics are somehow incapable of understanding the Declaration of Independence, but what really betrays his stupidity is this:
That is absolutely, unequivocally false. I don’t know if the Fouding Fathers really believed this or even gave a shit, but this has NOT been the pattern historically, and anyone who says it is is an idiot. Immigrants have always, always, always gathered primarily in the geographic regions where they entered, and were especially prevalent in urban ghettoes. The Italians, the Irish, the Chinese, the Poles, the Germans; absolutely without exception every major influx of immigrants concentrated in EXACTLY the same way Hispanics are concentrating today. The only minority ethnic groups I can think of that did not do this were blacks and North American Indians, who of course were brought to the USA/already were here in wholly difference circumstances. Now, if you can say with a straight face that blacks and Indians today are better off than Italians or Irish, you go right ahead. Yeah, I didn’t think so.
What a load. I’m hiring people right now for a business venture, and targeting hispanics since they still do have the American dream and will work hard for a decent wage. My family on my father’s side is Mexican from a long ways back. It’s filled with entrepreneurs and no one speaks Spanish anymore, except as a second language. Maybe since we don’t have dark skin and black hair (because of years of intermarriage with other immigrant groups) I don’t fit into Huntington’s paradigm. Sounds fairly racist to me.
So far the OP seems to be getting about the reception I thought it would get here.
However, what creeped me out when I read the article is that Huntington is a relatively mainstream and respected historian, and some people are going to take what he says seriously, especially a) in an election year during a recession; and b) when Bush has proposed an “earned adjustment” provision which has not been spelled out in any concrete way, but which is already being slammed by immigration restrictionists as an “amnesty” which will encourage more illegal immigration and ruin the “American way of life,” whatever that even means.
The more people who pick this article apart, and in the more detail, the better. I’m seriously thinking about a letter to the editor of Foreign Policy; I’m all for hearing divergent viewpoints, but this one crosses the line.
C’mon, give me some ammo, guys, especially you historian types! Read the whole article, and dissect it! I’ll handle the immigration side of things, but more thoughts on any angle of this whatsoever are welcome.
I’ll repeat things I’ve said in a dozen other posts…
Other than as a bureaucratic category, there is no single “Hispanic” ethnic group. The variations between Cuban, Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, or Argentine patterns of immigration are as great as those between say Ukrainians and Koreans. Also Hispanics come in nearly every color and have all sorts of individual ethnic backgrounds. Some Hispanics readily assimilate into “white” society, others might become “African-American” if they are Afro-Caribbean, others will hold on to an identity which is not easy to categorize into the American way of framing “Race”.
Other than language and a broad sense of being part of some official category, there really isn’t much of a common theme. Cuban-Americans are perhaps the most Republican ethnic group in America, Puerto Ricans are among the most Democratic.
Also, a large minority of Hispanics are indeed Protestant. By contrast, many so-called Anglos are Catholics. What are we to make of that?
On a side note, I once did some language tutoring here in El Paso, on the Mexican border. While plenty of people here do speak only Spanish - nearly all were either born in Mexico or are elderly and grew up in a different time. The truth is most American born Hispanics speak colloquial “kitchen Spanish”, and are only fluent if they study Spanish in school or college. Many Hispanics who are third generation and beyond do not speak Spanish at all, beyond a few words and phrases - which is true of blacks and “Anglos” who live here as well.
Huntington is neither mainstream nor a respected historian. He’s a demagogue masquerading as a political scientist, and the basic principle underlying all his writings is “Don’t piss off Western states, because they’re like us, and don’t worry about the others, because they’re going to hate us anyway.”
He takes a ridiculously broad-brush approach to international relations and pretty much lumps nations together based on what their people look like, what language they speak, and which god they worship. The actual history of individual nations is of little use to him.
I don’t think that Samuel Huntington has gone bonkers. I believe that this current work differs only in the blatancy of its racism. That is, his older work was merely more subtle or more insidious, if you’d prefer.
The theory that Huntington is most famous for is that of the Clash of Civilizations - that there are 8 or so “civilizations” in the world that are perpetually in conflict. In Huntington’s model, civilizations are cultural entities that are so separate from other cultural entities that their values inherently conflict. Even if this idea of a united cultural entity meant anything at all, this definition means that Huntington is saying that civilisations (cultural entities that conflict with each other) will tend to be in conflict. As a historical model, that’s like saying that a grey horse will always be some shade between black and white.
The Clash of Civilizations looks good at a quick glance - “So that’s why those Muslims are attacking us! They hate our values!”. Recently, it has been a convenient way for some, especially American neo-cons, to write off terrorism as being caused by an inherent conflict between the West and Islam, and therefore avoid in-depth discussion of the effect of America’s foreign policy (eg support for Israel, support for unpopular regimes).
For any real historian, the Clash of Civilisations is useless. To justify a glib statement by a politician to excuse something that he/she wanted to do anyway, it’s very handy. This is the background that this Hispanic scare is coming from, and this is the way in which it will be used.
Well, the guy is a professor at Harvard and maanged to get his article into Foerign Affairs, both rather mainstream institutions. So to me, for purposes of this thread he’s mainstream, no matter how wacked-out you or I think his opinions are.
He was also president of the American Political Science Association. His books (particularly the Clash) are also fairly commonly used in international relations and comparative politics classes at both the graduate and undergrad level.
Thing is, Huntington was once both relevant and mainstream… during the Cold War. Most of the people who shaped policy in those times saw the Berlin Wall come down, watched people’s revolutions overthrowing People’s Revolutions throughout Eastern Europe, and said, “Well, this ought to be interesting.”
Some of them decided that the end of Communism was a Bad Thing. To them, if the Russians were our friends, America didn’t have anybody to fight. If there was nobody to fight, the people would no longer accept military spending on the massive scale that exists in the United States- they’d expect balanced budgets and healthcare and all sorts of pinko ideas would take hold.
So, Huntington stopped writing about the war that had ended, and started writing about the war(s) that was about to begin. All dimly imagined realities, but convincing enough that Republican brass (particularly the neo-cons; they swallow this stuff wholesale) has bought into it heavily, which is why Huntington is popular again.
He isn’t mainstream, though. Anyone who suggests that the NATO mandate ought to be rewritten to state that the organization’s primary goal is to stop the spread of Islam is, to put it mildly, a little extreme.
Predominatly Irish ancestry here. I’ve read the “The Irish are a threat to our Anglo-Protestant culture” racist tripe while investigating the history of my ancestors in the USA. It’s just a repeat of what’s gone before.
I never got this. Being inter-racially hispanic myself, this clearly displays a complete lack of understanding for how hispanic culture works (not to mention the fact that practices like lumping Cubans and Puerto Ricans into one group isn’t a terribly bright idea). In my family and other hispanic families I have known, people tend to be damn hard workers, and to appreciate their American freedoms more than most Americans.
The ONLY argument I’ll give much merit there is the language barrier. It is true, that many hispanics retain their ties to their cultures deeply, to the extent of practicing their language as frequently as they use English. On the flip side, I don’t know one xth-generation person who doesn’t speak perfectly fine English (usually better than most WASPs speak it). I also have never heard of one who hated America, which is just ridiculous. They may retain ties to their original heritage for some times, but as mentioned, what Irish-Americans don’t retain a bit of love for Ireland?
Hispanic-American marriages aren’t even a curiosity in the southwest. Pretty bloody soon, almost everyone in California will be part hispanic. I mean, it is kinda funny - the Catholic Church is afraid of the Latin American branch of it taking over, and the Protestants are afraid of the Catholics. At one time, it was the Catholics expanding to Latin America, and the Catholics afraid of the Protestants. Go figure.
If they are really so terribly afraid, these hate-mongers should be looking at doing what they can to make the Latin American nations in their backyard more stable and less corrupt… little things like- well, that is off topic, and considering the folk terrified of NAFTA… I guess some people are perfectly OK with us being gardeners and maids, though.
Debunking chunks from the OP’s article, as per Eva’s request.
I’m flashing on that t-shirt/coffee mug from the 1970s that said, “Be Patient–God’s Not Finished With Me Yet”. America isn’t finished yet. Any halfway sensible person would realize that the process of “creating America” may be said to be still under way. America wasn’t “created”, poof!, like that, in the 17th and 18th century, and then has been preserved intact ever since, like a museum exhibit, like something at Colonial Williamsburg. No, it’s been evolving steadily, and will continue to evolve. That’s what cultures do. And anyone who styles himself a “historian” ought to know that.
Sure. It’s an essential component of U.S. identity. No argument there. But what part of it is not applicable to non-white, non-Protestant people? It’s applicable to Americans, period.
Kind of contradictory. He’s saying that ethnicity disappeared, but that Americans endorse ethnicity?
Yes. But he doesn’t seem to realize, or appreciate, that contributions from Hispanic culture are also, even as we speak, modifying, and enriching today’s American culture.
[scrolling through article]
And all of a sudden, wham!, we’re into the standard anti-immigration party line, familiar to me from any of a number of anti-immigration websites I’ve browsed over the years, thanks to various GD threads. At least he had the courtesy to put it into his own words, he didn’t just blatantly Copy and Paste it from somebody’s Geocities web page…
Blah, blah, blah…The whole article from here on is just standard “They’re a-comin! And they’re a-gonna take over!” anti-immigration racist hatemongering, right down to the “They’re gonna make us all learn to speak their language!” and the repeated references to “their” high birth rate.
And given his overwhelming and blatant specifically anti-Mexican bias (which is also pretty standard for this kind of thing–it’s always the Evil Mexican Wetbacks who are a-gonna take over, never the Evil Guatamalans or the Evil Salvadorans or the Evil Dominicans or the Evil Puerto Ricans), I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned “Aztlan will rise and overwhelm us!” :rolleyes:
Eva, you know, there’s not a lot here that you can seriously debunk, especially in print. It’s all just smoke and mirrors, empty rhetoric, playing on people’s secret fears. Statements like this…
…are extremely vague on purpose, and are hard to pin down.
Interesting, and pretty standard, technique of cherry-picking the quote you want to reinforce your own argument. Find a guy who said something that you agree with, take his quote (almost certainly) out of context, and ignore the fact that actually he’s pretty much on the opposite side, the side of the level-headed people who can be sensible about the inarguably rising numbers of Mexican-Americans.
Huntington’s whole point is that the Hispanics are not assimilating, that they’re going to form some kind of ethnic bloc and “do things their own way” and control American culture. However, his own statistics contradict this:
They sound pretty assimilated to me.
Later…[composing this in WordPad as I read through the article] Oh, for heaven’s sake, he IS going to mention “Aztlan”, on Page 6, although apparently not in so many words. [insert large economy-sized rolleyes emoticon]
And again, in his haste to prove his “they’re taking over!” point, he shoots himself in the foot.
Yep, those Hispanics sure did build a booming economy in Miami. And–this is a bad thing?? Is the money only good if WASPs earn it? Their tax dollars went to fix roads and pay for state police in places like Jacksonville and Tallahassee, ya know.
And typically, parts of this are just stupid:
" :rolleyes: "
More standard anti-immigration party line appears on Page 7: “The Mexican government is actually encouraging the evil wetbacks to invade us.”
This is tiresome. Also, that Zedillo quote IS posted on every anti-immigration website you can find on Google. So you may consider it proven, if there was still any doubt in your mind, that Samuel P. Huntington is squarely on the side of the racists.
“Lazy Mexicans” (“they don’t really want to work”) appear, predictably enough. On page 8.
[sigh]
And there are the same tables of statistics at the end, starting on Page 10, purporting to prove how fertile, poor, and uneducated those Evil Mexicans are. Why, they can’t even manage to buy their own homes! :rolleyes: Of course, halfway sensible people know there are good reasons for these numbers, and that you can use statistics to prove anything you want to.
And the use of outdated statistics to turn up the emotional heat is a classic technique:
Yes, but by 2002, “Jose” had dropped to #3, being ousted by “Daniel” and “Anthony”.
Which was back in 1993. Maybe back in 1993 he wasn’t such an overt racist. So the fact that they published his article back then doesn’t really prove anything vis-a-vis his credibility or credentials today.
DDG, more later, after I caffeinate myself and get to work, but he got it into Foreign Affairs both in 1993 and this month. And as others have mentioned, the current article is, if anything, more extreme. The guy seems to need to find enemies. If he’s feeling nostalgic for the Cold War and wanted to stick with the Russians, there’s still plenty of stuff he could pick on Russia for; why does he feel this driving need to pick on the Mexicans? Oh yeah, they’re generally browner than Russians.
Probably nobody would print a letter to the editor from little old me; Foreign Affairs tends to print letters only from tenured professors at the very least, which I’m certainly not. And the thought did cross my mind that they printed the article purely to discredit Huntington; it’s so far beyond anything they normally print that I was shocked. Yep, his agenda is pretty transparent, but let’s face it; a certain sector of society actually believes that stuff.
(Opening caveat: I’ve not read the article linked in the OP).
One possible difference between Hispanics and other past immigrant groups is the percentage of the population that they form. I’m not sure if there was ever a non-English speaking group that formed such a large (and growing) percentage of the population. The practical impact of this is that American society has had to accommodate itself to the Spanish language in ways that it likely has not had to do for other languages. (An example is the recorded phone messages that tend to give the option of English or Spanish). This, in turn, has lessened the degree that Spanish people need to assimilate to the larger society.
It is also possible that as society has moved to confront the evils of racism, there has been a lessening of an emphasis on assimilation, and a move to accommodate those of other cultures, and indeed to celebrate those cultures as examples of diversity. This has positive aspects, of course, but it also likely contributes to the lessening of the pressure on immigrants to assimilate.
For these reasons, the cites (and anecdotes) that some posters have posted on language assimilation are not conclusive. It is very possible that for earlier generations of Spanish immigrants, who immigrated at a time when the Spanish presence was much smaller, and societal attitudes different, assimilation and integration was a much higher priority than it is today.
And of course, language assimilation is the key to integration. I have no idea what “Hispanic values” might be, or whether they are the same as or different from those of other Americans etc. etc. But what I do know is that different cultures do exist in the world, and when people are confronted by those of another culture, all sorts of tension can sometimes exist, not to mention xenophobia. And if there’s one factor that allows for the development of different cultures among people in close proximity it is the speaking of different languages.
Since the Hispanic proportion of the population is continuing to grow, this problem, to the extent that it exists, will only get worse for the foreseeable future.
I don’t think the sky is falling in just yet, but it is a legitimate concern, that does not deserve to be drowned out by shouts of racism.
IzzyR, I highly recommend that you read the entire article. It goes far past, say, bemoaning excess expenditures on less-than-effective bilingual education programs; it basically says that Hispanic culture (whatever that even means; as others have already mentioned, there is a whole spectrum of cultures which might be labeled “Hispanic”) is incompatible with assimilation into American society without swallowing it whole.
So you do believe it is a problem? Can you please explain why it is a problem? Can you define what is the “problem” and its nature? And can you please explain why you believe the issue should not be drowned out by shouts of racism?
However, IzzyR, Huntington damages his own position by incorporating into his article elements of various “sky-is-falling” scenarios that seem lifted right out of “nativist” writings. Provocation makes it harder to address the underlying facts seriously and impartially. It’s one thing to recognize straightforward facts, such as that “Hispanics” are one-eight of the population and growing and have required more ostensible “accommodation” than other waves, and another to reach his conclusions and make predictiosn that are so dire. Heck, to begin with, “Hispanic” is an arbitrary classification that need not correlate to being a component of that “danger”: it includes millions of people who ARE fully assimilated into the American mainstream and live according to “American values” but just happen to have latino “roots”.
Plus he does seem a bit too focused on Mexicans (Leading to a suspicion that he may be experiencing “white guilt”, thinking they are just waiting for payback for 1848). And the parallel implication that catholic:protestant maps to un-american:american leaves a foul taste in the mouth.
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