American Politics & Pop Culture

Is this film too “Eurocentric� suggesting that the only important changes in race relations should
or could come from white people?
Pat Buchanan wrote in a recent book. “Robert Putnam one of the world’s most influential political scientist’s recent research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone from their next door neighbor to the mayor. The core message…was that, ‘in the presence of diversity, we hunker down,’ he said. ‘We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.’ Prof. Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’� “Is diversity a strength? In the ideology of modernity, yes. But history teaches otherwise. For how can racial diversity be a strength when racial diversity was behind the bloodiest war in U.S. history and has been the most polarizing issue among us ever since? All Americans believe slavery was evil and the denial of equal justice under the law was wrong. But because they were wrong, does that make what we are doing-inviting the whole world to come to America-right or wise?� He cites another columnist named “Leo�: “At UCLA, racially separate graduations have become the norm. ‘The core reason,’ he writes, ‘is the obvious one.’ ‘On campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for non-whites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups. Leo concludes on a note of despair, ‘As in so many areas of national life, the preposterous is now normal.� Finally, Buchanan cites an article by Cal Thomas in which he reported an interesting fact: Between June 2005 and June 2006 200,000 British citizens (the equivalent of a million Americans) left their country for good, as more than a half million legal immigrants and unknown thousands of illegals entered… Thomas wrote; ‘life in Britain has become unbearable for them.’ There is the lawlessness and the constant threat of Muslim terror, but also the loss of sense of Britishness, exacerbated by the growing refusal of public schools to teach the history and culture or the nation to the next generation. What it means to be British has been watered down in a plague of political correctness that has swept the country faster than hoof and mouth disease. Officials says they do not wish to ‘offend’ others.�
Given these facts it kind of makes one rethink the questions posed for this weeks blog. I almost wonder if the only race relations that ever come about consistently that are what we might call “progressive� are championed mostly by whites only and of course some blacks in America (as somewhat represented by the principal of the high school). I have never seen or heard of any non-western country that really believes in multi-culturalism in the sense of equality and that is willing to really integrate and balance their society racially by use of techniques like affirmative action, etc. But then again, I wonder if it is really worth it from a white perspective. I almost wonder if it’s not because of our belief in fairy tales and make believe. My Chinese teacher told me once years ago that there is a stereotype in Asia that white people are naive. I wonder if that is not somewhat justified given the facts listed above. What I liked about the film is like these citations in Pat Buchanan’s book, they take place in L.A. The loss of community that Robert Putnam talks about is demonstrated in the film. There is a diatribe which talks about the issue in some detail about how the community has been “taken over� by Hispanics, Asians, and blacks and the loss of community and trust that comes along with it. The whole story is about how a white family is the victim of racial violence and how they initially cope with it rather negatively, but in the end “rise above it all,� only to become the victims of more racial violence. I think this is a remarkable reflection of the Asian stereotype about whites being naive and giving up their identity politics and believing in a fairy tale like every culture in the world is equal and becoming a victim as a result of letting their guard down. This is a terribly common phenomenon in society. I have yet to see people of any color consistently live up to PC multiculturalism in the western world at least when compared to whites efforts to be self hating and self castigating.