Samuel P. Huntington has published a lengthy essay in the current issue of Foreign Policy titled The Hispanic Challenge. A friend forwarded the link to me with the comment “I say we should seal the borders tight like a …” This friend is an intelligent, well-meaning guy but (sorry dude) sometimes I think that he is very representative of the modern self-centered American.
Huntington is chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and I’ve often seen him described as, essentially, one of the top academic thinkers on history and government. He’s perhaps best known for authoring the 1993 essay/book The Clash of Civilizations?, a look at modern history that stood in stark contrast to the contemporaneous The End of History by Francis Fukuyama.
In The Hispanic Challenge, Huntington goes to extreme length to show that Mexican immigrants are not assimilating into the American melting pot in the way that almost all nationalities have previously done. Perhaps because the group is so numerous and has tended to settle in their own neighborhoods, these new Americans haven’t felt the urgency to adopt American attitudes or even the general use of English in order to fit in. Huntington cites Canada and Belgium as stable democracies split between two major cultural/language groups but then dismisses them as trying to hard to achieve their stability and equality.
While all that he’s written may be factually correct, overall this piece comes off as nasty and racist to me. If we are not free to retain what elements of our origins we choose, we are less free. Personally I would prefer that all residents of the Estados Unidos speak understandable English, that’s just because my life would be easier.
My answer to my friend’s comment was even simpler: “I cannot begin to imagine how America could change this immigration pattern unless and until Mexico and the other Latin countries can provide jobs and quality of life as are available here.” And that is the bottom line from a practical level.
BillSaysThis 