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The White Anxiety Crisis
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Report; Posted on: 2010-03-27 18:05:19 [ Printer friendly / Instant flyer ]
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Even condescending liberal rags like Time magazine are beginning to admit the unthinkable: white nationalism is coming.
Two competing narratives dominate our debate about the ongoing ethnic
and demographic transformation of America. The first holds that
non-European immigrants — O.K., let's be honest, Mexicans — will rip
apart the nation's social fabric. The second has it that the diversity
of younger generations of Americans will inevitably lead to a more
integrated, post racial era.
But both of these narratives are off the mark. With some minor
differences, today's immigrants are assimilating into U.S. society in
ways not terribly unlike those of millions before them. At the same
time, it's likely that decades from now, Americans will still invest a
lot of meaning in group distinctions.
The most profound changes in American race relations, however, will
revolve around the other side of the equation: native-born white
Americans. As much as Americans pride themselves on the notion that
their national identity is premised on a set of ideals rather than a
single race, ethnicity or religion, we all know that for most of our
history, white supremacy was the law of the land. In every
naturalization act from 1790 to 1952, Congress included language stating
that the aspiring citizen should be a "white person." And not
surprisingly, despite the extraordinary progress of the past 50 years,
the sense of white proprietorship — "this is our country and our
culture" — still has not been completely eradicated. Even though we now
have an African-American President, we still tend to treat minorities as
parts and whites as representatives of the whole. This, along with the
luxury of rarely feeling obliged to think self-consciously about one's
racial background, has been one of the perks of belonging to the
demographic majority.
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News Source: time magazine
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