Gregory Rodriguez: The Enemies We Create
[Gregory Rodriguez is an Irvine Senior Fellow and Director of the California Fellows Program at New America Foundation.]
Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, suggested recently to a group of tea partyers that the U.S. was being taken over by Muslims. Seriously....
In the past, our politics and rhetoric demonized Catholics and the Irish, the "yellow" hordes, "dirty" Italians and "stupid" Poles. Why does such a successful nation of immigrants engage periodically in mass spasms of intolerance?
One school of thought has it that, despite America's melting-pot mythos, a deep-seated strain of racism and disdain for strangers simply runs through the American character.
Another holds that our ambivalence toward the "other" is tied to economic cycles and flares up in times of great social uncertainty. By that explanation, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant fervor are right on time, a perfect match for the Great Recession.
But there's yet another, bigger, less well explored explanation: The U.S. suffers serious bouts of xenophobia precisely because it is a nation of immigrants.
This argument sees American unity built on a somewhat fragile foundation. Instead of the shared ethnicity, religion and mores that bind together many nation states, we have only the political ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On top of that, our profoundly heterogeneous society, which creates many good things (explosive creativity, for one), also sparks a perpetual identity crisis, perpetual unease....
Read entire article at LA Times
Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, suggested recently to a group of tea partyers that the U.S. was being taken over by Muslims. Seriously....
In the past, our politics and rhetoric demonized Catholics and the Irish, the "yellow" hordes, "dirty" Italians and "stupid" Poles. Why does such a successful nation of immigrants engage periodically in mass spasms of intolerance?
One school of thought has it that, despite America's melting-pot mythos, a deep-seated strain of racism and disdain for strangers simply runs through the American character.
Another holds that our ambivalence toward the "other" is tied to economic cycles and flares up in times of great social uncertainty. By that explanation, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant fervor are right on time, a perfect match for the Great Recession.
But there's yet another, bigger, less well explored explanation: The U.S. suffers serious bouts of xenophobia precisely because it is a nation of immigrants.
This argument sees American unity built on a somewhat fragile foundation. Instead of the shared ethnicity, religion and mores that bind together many nation states, we have only the political ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On top of that, our profoundly heterogeneous society, which creates many good things (explosive creativity, for one), also sparks a perpetual identity crisis, perpetual unease....