February 15, 2019
White to Brown
At the core of the divide and polarization roiling America is the upsurge in changing demographics, which is slowly reopening old wounds. A country predominantly white is transitioning into being brown. The browning of America has seen a visible spillover of racial pressures bubbling underneath. Make America Great Again (MAGA) is one prominent manifestation of the foregoing, as well as a pushback against the irreversible demographic surge.
It affects not only the fringe. This disquiet is embedded also in the so-called respectable mainstream. On point are the recent utterances of Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC Nightly News. During a discussion, Tom Brokaw had this to say, quoting him verbatim: “I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies … Hispanics should work harder at assimilation … They ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all of their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities.” The larger question here is who is feeling uncomfortable: a migrant minority or the white majority? The term ‘assimilation’ itself is a code for denigrading and denying the culture of the other.
30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was celebrated in America, there is now talk of building the Mexican Wall – a talk that resonates broadly. It is a combination of anxiety, ignorance, and xenophobia.
In 1900, whites were 88 percent of the US population. Blacks were less than 12 percent, largely confined to the South. A major liberalization of US immigration law in 1965 saw a surge in Hispanic and Asian immigration. Whites fell to under 64 percent in 2010. 25 years from now, it is projected that whites shall no longer be the majority. Already, Hispanics comprise at least 16 percent, and Asians 5 percent, of the population. Blacks remain at about 12 percent.
20 years into the 21st century, the ugliness of the past has resurfaced.
Resentment and fear of Chinese laborers in the 19th century led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In the late 1800’s, Sikhs began to immigrate to Canada, and some migrated down to the United States to work in lumber mills. A riot of white laborers on September 4, 1907, in Bellington, Washington, against Sikhs there resulted in all fleeing the town. US laws dating from 1917 and 1924 barred immigration from the “Asiatic Barred Zone,” a wide swath that included the Indo-Pak subcontinent.
The 1930’s saw a far more vicious manifestation of racial supremacy and exclusivity, which Germany has now self-corrected by ushering in 1 million embattled and needy refugees, that has imperiled the politics of its Chancellor, Angela Merkel. But she did shine the light of humane inclusiveness. Hate is borderless.
Lincoln, most responsible for keeping America one and united, talked in his first inaugural address in 1861 of appealing to “the better angels of our nature.”
A visit to the shrine of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer Sharif informs the pilgrim on the enduring transcendental appeal of the Muslim sage, in that it was flocked by Hindu and Sikh devotees.
Inclusion works; exclusion doesn’t.
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