Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity [Anglais] [Broché]

As a Hispanic American, I was a bit conflicted with Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We?," but I ultimately enjoyed it. His premise is that we are now seeing a wave of immigration like none before. First in its sheer numbers, but more importantly in the fact that America has never before had so many immigrants from one non-English language and culture come at the same time.

By 2050, Hispanics are projected to be the majority of the population. Huntington never says that this is a bad thing per se, but he makes a great case that immigrants today are not assimilating into American culture like they have in the past. Today they keep their language, their culture, and often their foreign citizenship as well. This is only a problem if you believe that white Anglo-Saxon protestant culture, which immigration is ostensibly eroding, is superior and at the core of American greatness. Huntington certainly seems to believe this; only time will tell if he is right.

While I agree with him on so many points (bilingual education in public schools, for example, which is really education in Spanish), I'm not sure I share his general concern. We are experiencing a major demographic shift, and affirmative action does distort the American dream, but I'm not sure that future generations of Hispanic Americans will not assimilate into a (modified) American culture.

I am an American first and foremost. This is the case probably because I was born and raised here. But Spanish was nevertheless my first language, and my folks didn't become citizens until this year. If I ever have children, they will certainly be even more American than me. Despite Huntington's copious statistics, I don't see how a future generation of immigrants' children, born and raised in the U.S., will not pick up the English language and have at least the same love for this country that your average white suburban disaffected teen has.

While packed with quotes jarringly split with attribution, and so many detailed facts that would have better been presented in footnotes, "Who Are We?" is nevertheless an important book. Huntington's credentials are enough reason to read it, but if you are interested in the future of this country you should read it, too.

Back in 1993, Huntington's seminal article in Foreign Affairs "The Clash of Civilizations" was prescient about the violent clash between Islam and the West. It better explained the causes of 9/11 than most books written after 9/11!

Now, Huntington's focus has turned inward to the changing identity of American society. He considers that the demographic explosion of Mexicans within the U.S. is causing a Clash of Civilizations within our borders. This is not going to be a destructive clash as the one with Islam. Nevertheless, Huntington suggests it may alter the identity of the U.S.

Huntington states that the U.S. identity is the result of an Anglo-Protestant culture characterized by the English language, the rule of law, work ethic, education, and upward mobility. This entails that each generation has aspired to achieve a higher standard of living. Immigrants from all over the World have adopted this Anglo-Saxon creed as their own road to success. Generations of Europeans, and Asians adopted the English language as a mean to thrive within American society.

However, according to Huntington, Mexicans are different. Mexican immigration differs from past immigration due to a combination of factors, including: proximity, scale, regional concentration, and historical presence.

Mexico is a large country contiguous to the U.S. with a huge population of 100 million. Mexicans infiltrate the porous U.S. border in unprecedented numbers. Thus, Mexicans dominate the influx of emigrants to the U.S. They also tend to settle in Border States. By 2050 Hispanics are projected to represent 25% of the U.S. population. Today they already account for over 32% of the population in California and Texas. Many Mexicans view their infiltration within the U.S. as their regaining territorial claims they had lost to the U.S. in the mid 1800s.

Huntington states there are serious implications to the Mexicanization of parts of the U.S. Hispanics, including Mexicans, unlike other immigrants, do not buy into the Anglo-Protestant creed of our founding settlers. Asians moved to the U.S. and faced formidable linguistic barriers, as their mother tongue was so different from a Western language. But, they did not think this was a problem. However, Hispanics thinks it is. They promote a bilingual country. Over time, they will demand bilingual education, and bilingual political access and power.

Huntington's arguments are challenging because they are well founded. Huntington mentions that Mexicans do not believe in the Anglo-Protestant creed on several counts. Contrary to other minorities, Mexicans do not buy into education as a road to success. He has studied the educational profile of Mexicans. He noticed that Mexicans' education levels across generations are actually declining. The fourth generation descendents of Mexican immigrants (the great grand children of the first immigrants) are less well educated than the third generation. Only 9.6% of Mexicans earn a college degree. This is about half the rate of African Americans, commonly considered the most underprivileged minority group in the U.S. As a result of their declining academic achievement, the fourth generation also experiences lower income and a dramatically lower level of homeownership (only 40.3% vs. 55.1% for their parents' generation; and 64.1% for the U.S. average).

Huntington quotes members of the Latino business community who recognize the difference between the cultures. These businessmen indicate that several cultural features keep their respective community behind, including: mistrust of people outside the family, lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition; little use for education; and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven.

If you want to further study this topic, I recommend David Heer's "Immigration in America's Future"; Richard Alba's "Remaking the American Mainstream"; and Barry Edmonston's "Immigration and Ethnicity."

WHO ARE WE explores the difficult, perhaps insoluble problem of American national identity: what is it? how is it changing? will we recognize where it is going?

Obviously, this issue is heavily politicized, but Huntington is not writing an extremists polemic nor a "red meat for the Red States" conservative screed, even though his basic premise is a capital-C Conservative one.

The question here is whether the American national identity should be tied to things like language, national origin, religion (or at least broadly shared ethical systems, such as the Judeo-Christian system), and so forth. This is, obviously, a tricky question. American national identity has undergone changes, even in the past few decades.

I mean: the most popular single food item in Britain today is Chicken Tikka Masala. This is the same as Huntington's discovery that salsa has eclipsed ketchup as America's favorite sauce. These changes reflect both assimilation and the existance of sub-cultures. The question is whether there is a tipping-point beyond which America will have wandered too far from those things we admire or value most about it today.

I don't agree with all of Huntington's positions or premises, but I liked reading this book because it gave me the opportunity to think about and play with my own assumptions. I wasn't invited to hurl it aside as confrontational to my own feelings, even though I arrived at a different destination than the author.

My own family history is constructive here, containing as it does both immigrants and some famous bigots. One great-grandfather was famous for marching without his hood for a certain group (gee, have I given it away?!?). My grandfather hated the Irish and Italians (but he married a "Roosian", a Russian-German girl from literally across the tracks: go figure.). This fear of foreigners changing our essential American culture has been with us a long time. I don't know if the changes Huntington is concerned about will be the proverbial straw on the camel's back, but I think there is evidence that it can work out for the best too (hybrid vigor and all that). Compare to the somewhat xenophobic French approach for mileage, which is (perhaps wrongly too) in the news at the moment for mileage and one might come to the conclusion that change isn't always necessarily for the bad.