An American Fusion

The Structure of Immigrant Revolutions

ronald fernandez — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:05:00 GMT

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn first published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Among other things Kuhn explained that once scientists accepted a particular paradigm for their discipline, that paradigm produced an "immense restriction of the scientist's vision and a considerable obstacle to paradigm change." Since they already knew how their part of the scientific world functioned, investigators keyed on the narrow research that proved the validity of the paradigm; and, using an esoteric vocabulary that acted like a moat, they protected the paradigm from any ideas or facts that threatened its dominance.

Kuhn focused on sciences like physics or biology. My concern is American culture and the dominance of an immigration metaphor that immensely restricts our ability to culturally and economically profit -yes make bucks!- from the addition of many millions of new immigrants.

Kuhn argued that, despite being scientists who theoretically revered the truth, protecting a paradigm often demanded a fast flight from reality. This is especially obvious with the notion of a melting pot. The metaphor assumes that every immigrant ingredient received a warm welcome ; as long as they melted away, no one cared about their ethnic or "racial" origins.

This myth persists despite evidence that utterly contradicts it. Beginning with the Chinese in 1882, "first to arrive" Americans excluded almost everyone on earth from the melting pot. In the 1924 Ethnic Origins legislation nations like China, Japan and Korea received no immigration slots. Africa also found itself excluded- and, except for a token few, Southern Europe also found itself on America's least wanted list.

As documents at the Johnson Presidential Library show, between 1924 and 1965 roughly 65% of all legal immigrants came from England, Germany or Ireland. The historical truth is that only select groups got into the boringly bland recipes prepared by primarily "English only" chefs.

Another challenge to the melting pot paradigm came from Mexicans, or, more accurately, Chicanos. By definition the word is anti-American; and by 2010 hundreds of U.S. universities boasted twenty or thirty year old Chicano Studies Programs. All offer many courses that bitterly criticize traditional versions of U.S. history; and all challenge the notion that people melted into the pot.

Chicanos (and more recently Asian Studies Programs) broke it! They made anti-Americanism an institutionalized part of American culture; and so too other groups that eagerly challenge supposedly sacrosanct beliefs and practices. Talk to many (India) Indians about U.S. "racial" categorizations and they respond with incredulity. Americans are not simply prejudiced; they are prisoners of a mindset fit for ignoramuses and we will live in America but never dissolve into a culture that includes a set of such false and poisonous beliefs.

In explaining how conceptual revolutions occur, Kuhn offered no panacea. At some point the facts so exploded the prevailing paradigm that analysts surrendered. They dropped the old model and sought a replacement. Kuhn stresses that a replacement is absolutely essential. "Something like a paradigm is a prerequisite to perception itself.." Lack a paradigm or a metaphor "and there can only be, in William James's phrase, a 'blooming buzzin' confusion."

My own choice for a new metaphor is America as a magnificent Banquet of Cultures. However, in this post, I only want to spotlight the benefits that accrue to American culture if we stop asking immigrants to squeeze into the mythical melting pot and instead capitalize on the fruits of an equal interaction between old and new immigrants. From this perspective, Americanism means (as Randolph Bourne noted) that we embrace a paradox; we forget the melting pot because it is an historical illusion; and, in search of a new model, we decide that our cultural tradition now lies in the future, in the beliefs and practices that we jointly create, reconfigure or send to a well deserved cemetery.

Start with the International Studies Programs at countless U.S. universities. Especially in a global economy, we eagerly push students away from America because our accurate assumption is that students broaden their mind and character when they expose themselves to cultural difference. Thus, on three student trips to Cuba our African American participants said it was the first time they had ever walked the streets without thinking about skin color. The Cubans didn't care and our students began to ask a crucial question: If the Cubans succeeded, why couldn't Americans create a set of beliefs that refused to divide the world into white, black and nonwhite people?

We don't have to go to Cuba, or to any other nation. The world is already here. We moved from 4.5% of the population foreign born in 1970 to roughly 12.5% in 2010. Equally important, the newcomers hail from an extraordinary diversity of world cultures. They range from the Hmong to an enormous concentration of Arab cultures in Detroit.

My argument is that if we deliberately expose ourselves to people who think differently than we, we strengthen mind and character without spending a dime for travel. We open a conversation with Pakistani-Americans and discover their reaction to being labeled nonwhite. Or we try to understand why Jamaicans self identify in terms of culture rather than color. Perhaps their history could teach us a great deal about how to make skin color a peripheral consideration in everyday life? The specific questions and issues are less important than the goal: A different cultural future, rooted in the creativity that always occurs (think fusion cuisine) when two or more cultures interact for significant periods.

The new brand of Americanism boasts a different disposition toward cultural difference. It welcomes change because it believes that we have as much to learn from others as they have to learn from us.

Move from culture to science, engineering and making bucks. We forget that many immigrants are very well educated. For "native" Americans the number of people with a college degree or greater is 27.8%; for immigrants the figure is an almost identical 27.1%. Migration Information Source also notes that in 2010 immigrants represent nearly 27 percent of physicians, more than 34 percent of computer software engineers, and over 42 percent of medical scientists. They already contribute to cultural and economic change but suppose that, as a national policy, we did everything possible to lure immigrants in areas that America desperately needs. For example, with 47% of Harvard grads going into finance (in 2007) the alleged best and the brightest create Credit Default Swaps and Collaterized Debt Obligations. China is focused on the green energies of the future and we will not remain competitive unless we change the career aspirations of young Americans and welcome the immigrant newcomers capable of challenging or exploding anachronistic scientific or engineering paradigms.

We could also rethink our attitude toward student visas. After 9/11 we closed the doors to many students who offered no threat to America. They went to other nations and help provide a cadre of very talented and ambitious men and women. Invite them back because, when they thrive here, they provide the business creativity - think computer software - that ripples across America and the globe.

Coincidentally, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times makes this point in a March 7th, 2010 op-ed piece. Writing about two Indian-American immigrants -Vinod Khosla and K.R. Sridhar- he notes that "one has produced a fuel cell that can turn natural gas or natural grass into electricity; the other has a technology that might make coal the cleanest, cheapest energy source by turning its carbon-dioxide emissions into bricks to build your next house". Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Sridhar received a scholarship to study in America, worked for NASA and is now a "serial innovator", the right man at the right time.

My conclusion: scrap the melting pot metaphor because it is false; and replace it with an immigrant paradigm that offers spectacular chances for cultural, scientific, and economic creativity.

The bucks will follow.

Support Our Troops/Challenge Our Leaders

ronald fernandez — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:10:00 GMT

In 1934 A.A. Milne published Peace With Honour, a book that contains a challenge to world leaders. Milne agrees to fight in the next war if the forty or fifty most powerful world leaders will lead the charge. Milne wants no pious statements about losing sleep over the dead, no mea culpa for disastrous decisions. If you want the masses to fight, Presidents and Prime Ministers need to literally lead the way or never condemn another soldier to slaughter, or, just as dreadful, a life as a vegetable without limbs.

Imagine, for example, Clinton, Cheney or Bush on the streets of Fallujah, looking for a place to take a dump. Try to take one in a field and snipers quickly picked you off. So, as Dexter Filkins explains in The Forever War, with the water cut off in the city, soldiers used the Grand Mosque's storage room for the Korans. With privacy assured, soldiers dumped into cardboard boxes and hauled out the shit when the "toilets" overflowed. Or, soldiers knowingly created even more new enemies when, seeking a safe place, they broke into people's homes, defecated on their floors, and "left piles and piles of the stuff by the time we got going again".

Talk about "taking shit.". Clinton, Cheney and Bush didn't want to fight as young men yet as "mature" adults they send our troops into impossible situations We support those men and women if we grasp their plight and brand its meaning on the forehead of any leader so blissfully callous that he yells, as Bush did, "bring them on".

Start, for example, in World War II, with the publication of the four volume, The American Soldier.

Sociologists and psychologists wanted to know why soldiers fought. They assumed, especially against an enemy as evil as Hitler, an idealism that included mom, apple pie and the four freedoms. Finding little idealism, analysts were struck with a conundrum. A rank and file that eschewed patriotism and the flag nevertheless volunteered for more and more fighting. Put a wounded soldier in the hospital and he wanted to leave asap, eager to return to the battlefield. It made no sense until the research showed that soldiers manifested a fierce loyalty and commitment to the twenty or so GI's with whom they shared a horrible realization: As Yossarian put it in Catch 22, the enemy wants to kill me and the only people who really understand what it means to be a human bulls eye are the "dogfaces" that protect me as I protect them.

In 2007 this half century insight reached my classroom in Connecticut. In a course on terrorism, a young soldier explained that he had just committed to another eighteen months in Iraq. He thought Bush was an "idiot" and the war a "farce". When I asked why he volunteered to fight a farce he told the class about his "buddies". They were still in Iraq and he was unable to live with himself if he failed to share their danger until they all came home together or they all came home to the silent homecoming that showed no caskets because the Bush Administration did not want to undermine the war effort.

In 2010 that effort is harder than ever because wars like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan place our foot soldiers -each and every day- in peculiarly horrible positions. By definition these wars include numerous combatants who never wear a uniform. Our soldiers fight phantoms and use, or are ordered to use, strategy and tactics that place American soldiers in ghastly combat and moral situations.

Admonished to never deliberately assault civilians, our soldiers simultaneously receive orders to carry out (in Vietnam) search and destroy missions or, in Iraq, mass roundups of mostly innocent civilians. As described by Thomas Ricks in Fiasco, when Iraqi resistance to the occupation substantially increased, soldiers received orders to arrest almost anyone they could find.

With virtually no Americans speaking Arabic, and with virtually no Americans understanding local customs, our soldiers broke into and through people's homes. Under orders to do so, our soldiers brutalized the population, created a mountain of new enemies and understandably became inured to a kill or be killed mentality because U.S. strategy allowed them to trust no one, least of all the people who supposedly welcomed our invasion.

Remember too that Iraq included and includes more than 150,000 private contractors, many of them assigned as security details for U.S. officials. Leave the Green Zone to inspect a new school, and a caravan of protection barreled officials through the streets. Anybody who got in the way was treated like a bowling ball knocking down pins. Ricks explains that each detail created many new enemies; multiply that by hundreds of details a day and our soldiers faced enemies created by Americans who were not under the control of the officers who commanded our actual troops.

And what happened to all the arrested yet innocent civilians? Under orders, soldiers placed them in prisons like Abu Ghraib. Forget, if possible, the torturous pictures publicized on the Web and remember the wives, brothers and sisters who came to the prisons to find loved ones. Frustrated when they met a literal brick wall, families angrily waited months for news, as the prisons created more and more enemies, none wearing a uniform, yet each placing American men and women in an ever more untenable position.

Who could you trust? Who was a "real" civilian? Should I restrain myself and my comrades or should we shoot first and worry about the consequences later? And, how do we pacify and assure the Iraqi people when we can't get near them, or talk to them in a language we both understand if we do get near them?

Support our troops? Of course! By all means and with any resources at our disposal. But, first and foremost, recognize the horrible predicament of troops who cannot be blamed for the utter futility and brutality of President Johnson or President Bush's war policies.

Milne made a good point in Peace With Honor; but however desirable, it's quite unlikely that a Clinton, Cheney or Bush will actually lead any charges. All the more important therefore to support our troops by widely publicizing the realities of combat in wars like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Forget the enemy. A better target is this: Should any American President ever again commit our troops without first receiving extensive and graphic briefings about the realities of combat in wars where the enemy rarely wears a uniform? Can anyone honestly talking about supporting our troops unless he or she first understands, at the level of taking a dump, what it means to be a soldier in 2010?

Davos, Greece, Torture and Evolution

ronald fernandez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:09:00 GMT

In Many Globalizations Peter Berger spotlights a Davos culture whose "basic engine is international business". Member of this culture include the anointed few who attend Davos' annual retreat and the "millions who would like to be invited." From South Africa to Edinburgh, from Mumbai to New York there exists "a global network of ambitious young people in business and the professions - a yuppie international- whose members speak fluent English and dress and act alike, at work and at play...and hope that one day they might reach the elite summits."

Get to that peak and you raise the flag of profit, a globally shared thirst for the buck that The New York Times discusses in a (February 24th, 2010) article entitled "Banks Bet Greece Defaults On Debt They Helped Hide".

Led by Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Chase, the big betters created "an index that enables market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations will go bust." Young or old, members of the Davos culture log into "iTraxx Sov X Western Europe" and track the price for insurance, for credit default swaps. Yuppies can be sitting in Vienna, Singapore or Sydney and experience the same rush received by those who hoped for the subprime mortgage crisis: "It's like buying fire insurance on your neighbor's house - you create an incentive to burn down the house."

These traders give new meaning to the phrase 'misery loves company'. They eagerly profit from the sudden poverty of others, they see even greater possibilities in the coming collapse of Spain or Portugal and, if the best betters make a billion or so, the globally greedy get invited to Davos to share - in fluent English- stories and vintage wines with other victors of the European collapse.

The Davos culture celebrates the triumph of the means over the ends. Since money is best defined (by Simmel) as "interchangeability personified", the ultimate means becomes the ultimate end of human life. For the Davos devotees it's hooray for the dollar , or, if another currency promises more exchange rate loot, hooray for the franc, the mark or the Renminbi.

Meanwhile, as the Davos culture gains more and more global traction, the U.S. Justice Department, with little public outcry, fails to prosecute the Bush administration attorneys whose torture memos severely weakened the only set of global values that offer a real alternative to the money changers.

Listen to the Bush lawyers definition of torture. It exists only when the interrogators cause "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a bodily function." By this definition no torture occurred when the U.S. rendered prisoners to Morocco, even though the Moroccans repeatedly made prisoners sit on broken bottles of glass. (see Stephen Gray's Ghost Plane) Or, if an interrogator imitated British behavior against IRA prisoners, you could take a lit cigarette, press it into flesh, wait for a sea of scars to appear and know that no torture occurred. Finally, even though Americans openly called it torture when our troops water boarded Filipinos in the early twentieth century, water boarding is never torture when the Bush administration uses it against "illegal enemy combatants" or other terrorists.

The Bush administration mercilessly mocked any accepted dictionary definition of the word torture. Even more importantly, they forgot history and the case, for example, of Japan's General Yamashita in 1946. The United States found Yamashita guilty of "crimes against humanity" even though Yamashita expressly prohibited the behavior cited by the court; and even though, during the Philippine invasion, Yamashita lost any chance to communicate with his troops and thus enforce what he had already expressly prohibited.

Yamashita was executed because he allegedly failed to celebrate and protect rights that transcended the religious, cultural, political, tribal and economic differences that normally divide nations and their populations. Along with the Nuremburg trials, Yamashita's case laid the groundwork for moral codes like Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. That article is a negative triumphantly grounded in a positive. It prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" because all human beings possess a series of natural, of inalienable rights. Violate those rights and you spit on the common humanity proudly championed by the United Nations when it published, in 1948, its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our problem is that, in 2010, the evolutionary road points to a perverse disjunction. The most powerful money changers have achieved a global consensus that allows them to profit and even help create global misery. Simultaneously, when the United States and other nations fail to hold President Bush and his administration to the same standards used at Nuremburg (not to mention General Yamashita), they severely weaken the only set of global values that could help us answer questions like these.

Should any group of global traders have the power to threaten global economic stability? If, using an American code, everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what are the rights of people who, through no fault of their own, could or will be wiped out by the yuppie international? And, finally, should we treat those who bet on misery as global pariahs? Do they deserve a brand of ignominy normally reserved for the globe's worst offenders?

We can't ask and answer questions like these without a global benchmark. Again, the prohibitions against torture are rooted in a set of positives. The first line of the Universal Declaration of Human rights affirms that "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." It's a magnificent statement that means nothing unless we use the grotesque behavior of the Bush Administration to reaffirm the values that allegedly link, in an unalterable manner, the world's seven billion inhabitants.

Right now, in a new Greek tragedy, we are witnessing the triumph of money over all other global values. It's an evolution that has Darwin spinning in his grave because, instead of the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the singularly selfish. Money rules, while all the Gods on earth do nothing to cherish and protect the natural rights that could belong to any person, anywhere.

White People Need to Disappear - Now!

ronald fernandez — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:27:00 GMT

In reading this post please ask the following questions: Is he recounting ancient history? Or, in 2010, are we still living through and with ancient history?

The book is Temperament and Race, published in 1926 by two psychologists, S.D. Porteus and Marjorie Babcock. Working in Hawaii, the authors studied five races -the Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipino- because "we cannot any more help being creatures of our race than we can help being creatures of our time and the imprint of race and time goes far deeper into our individual natures than we think." The authors also stress that "the subject is so overloaded with assumptions that we must cut through a heap of prejudices before we come to solid ground". The authors therefore promise to carry us to a safe and objective location, one free of bias and unfounded assumptions.

(Some analysts suggest a political motive for the book. Hawaii plantations experienced significant labor unrest in the twenties and one way to control the races was to psych them out. From this perspective Porteus and Babcock offer a scientific imprimatur for forcefully dealing with, for example, the Filipinos, "a fine example of a race in an adolescent stage of development.")

How does one judge the races? As part of their data, Porteus and Babcock used every test of the time, the Binet tests, racial efficiency indexes, social rating scales and a variety of tools used by the U.S. Army. In addition, they opted -with absolutely no sense of bias - to let white people judge the rest of the races. In Temperament and Race whites are conspicuously absent from Hawaii's list of races because, like racial umpires, whites provide the scientific touchstone that assures accuracy. Who, after all, would question that whites are the normative role model by which all other races are judged?

One answer to that question is another psychologist. In fact, critics produced so much heat that Porteus responded with an angry "protest" to the American Journal of Psychology in 1929. Yes, in adding to the test data, the authors did use 25 judges, all of whom were white. But, if critics actually read the book, Porteus stressed his unimpeachable criteria: "Ratings were obtained from 25 people of long experience in the islands, observers whose work brought them into intimate contact with the various racial groups. Sixteen of the judges were plantation managers, while the remainder were head workers of social settlements, plantation doctors and several educationists."

Plantation managers! Sixteen of them! When I read Porteus' protest I thought I was on drugs. Did this fellow actually think that plantation chiefs, despite their admittedly long experience with adolescent racial groups, could somehow provide objective and fair assessments?

Answer: You bet he did. Porteus is so oblivious to his own set of unfounded assumptions that his protest is guileless. Didn't his colleagues realize that "judgments were absolutely independently given, because we took it for granted that we should be credited with ordinary scientific honesty."

I believe Porteus. And that's what makes his statements so appalling. It never dawned on him to not use white people as the absent arbiter of all things racial; and it never dawned him to not assume that plantation managers provided objective assessments of Hawaii's racial others. Porteus was an archetype, so perfectly prejudiced that he never questioned his and white people's inherent supremacy.

Fast forward to 2010. Is Temperament and Race simply an easy caricature of the age of empire? Are its grotesque judgments so absurd that it offers no insight into our own time?

Here is my argument: The book is quite relevant because we are arguably as guileless as Porteus. We laugh at the use of plantation managers as objective judges. We know that no scholar in his or her right mind would refer to adolescent races. We are past that nonsense; indeed, because we have come so far, we ignore the continuing significance of America's tripartite division of the world into whites, blacks and nonwhites.

Just like Porteus whites remain the silent arbiter of racial normality. How else explain that "people of color" include blacks and nonwhites but not white people? Somehow white is a color but not a color when we talk about contemporary racial categorizations. As in 1926, in 2010 white remains the designer original, the role model against which Americans, with all the assurance of Porteus, still classify ever person on earth.

Does it matter? I think it is absolutely critical because we have somehow managed to forget a telling insight of Albert Murray, in his 1970 The Omniamericans. Murray stressed that the word nonwhite was one of the most powerful in the English language. Why? Because it contained "all the assumptions of white supremacy and segregation." Other people are "colored"; whites remain the global standard and one reason segregation remains a de facto rule in the United States is that whites learn to distance themselves from all colored people. Again, it is easy to find caricatures, everything from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Pat Buchanans worried about the "the Immigration tsunami that will make whites a minority in US."

The key point is that even the "best" whites never question that they are not people of color. The tripartite division of humanity remains as solid as ever, with consequences that extend beyond whites to the assumptions of blacks. How else explain the continuing and pernicious significance of slave traders and slave owners? They taught us about the "one drop rule" and that rule somehow convinced the President of the United States that, despite his mother's heritage, he is a black man. One drop of black blood and you instantly become what whites can never be: Colored.

Or, how about Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana? Newspapers -not to mention the Republican Party- broadcast America's success in electing the first "nonwhite" Governor in the United States. The absurdity of calling a fellow who is darker than President Obama nonwhite never reaches the level of consciousness. As if Porteus and Babcock in 1926, we are utterly guileless about the poisonous consequences of white supremacy and defining ourselves by what so ridicuously divides us.

Only a cultural revolution can overcome this level of cultural blindness. Since white is the linchpin that ties the colors together, we need to make white people disappear. We need to stop using color -EVER- as a way to describe one another. And we need to discuss, as a nation, the continuing significance of Temperament and Race, not as ancient history, but as a horrible reminder of a powerful yet unstated racial arrogance that is alive and well, in each and every one of the fifty states.

( I used Jonathan Y. Okamura's, From Running Amok to Eating Dogs: A Century of Misrepresenting Filipino Americans in Hawaii to write this blog entry. See Ethnic and Racial Studies, August, 2009).

The Dukes of Hazard and Immigration

ronald fernandez — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:03:00 GMT

Covington, Georgia says it's "the Hollywood of the South", happy cradle of the Dukes of Hazard TV series and its provocative prop, the General Lee, an orange 1969 Dodge Charger with a confederate flag boldly painted on the car's roof.

Covington also holds another distinction. As county seat of Newton County, Georgia Covington and its adjacent towns boast, between 2000-2008, the largest percent growth of immigrants in the United States. Starting from an admittedly small base, the Dukes of Newton County saw a 335% increase in their mostly Latino immigrant population over eight short years. Other Georgia counties witnessed similar dramatic increases. Forsyth County, Georgia: 280%. Walton County Georgia,: 235%. And Douglas County, Georgia: 210%.

We can assume that immigrants don't salute the Confederate flag. We might also assume that many supporters of General Lee don't embrace the immigrant newcomers. The one certainty is that Covington (2005 population = 13,856) already has four Mexican restaurants, and if you check out El Charro, you find this review from Chrissy. "We ate there 1 hour after we got married. We consider El Charro to be the best restaurant in Covington. Totally kicks the competition with Stalvey's". Since Stalvey's is a "red meat" Mecca for hamburgers, fries and battered onion rings, Covington's Mexican restaurants are a signpost pointing to a dangerous detour.

The road to the right says that immigrants -especially the illegal immigrants- need to be sent packing, preferably strapped to the roof of the General Lee. The road to the right says that, besides Chrissy and her spouse, many citizens of Dixie are happily welcoming and hiring the immigrants. In fact, it's a trend that's sweeping the South. Here are the five states with the largest percentage growth of children with immigrant parents between 2000 and 2008: Tennessee (107%), Delaware (105%), North Carolina (96%), Arkansas (89%) and Georgia (89%). (For the statistics see, Migration Information Source, US in Focus, October, 2009)

Children mean institutionalized bilingual education programs (see the program at Covington's East Side High), the revenues needed to support them and, depending on the situation, the controversies that surround the demand of some Americans demand for "English only" in the nation's fastest growing (in percentage growth) immigrant community.

Many variables account for this ever increasing shift in especially Latino immigrant destinations. Original magnet states (California, Texas, Arizona) become crowded. So, as with Puerto Ricans in New York in the 1950's, people search for more viable economic alternatives.

With the Border Patrol closing off many traditionally open doors, many illegals start in Arizona, and, instead of taking a left, they take a right, attracted by outfits like Tyson Chicken, a business with a turnover rate that sometimes approaches 100% of the labor force. Tyson and other meat and poultry producers always needs a plentiful pool of replacements and with their aggressive "marketing" in Mexico, the word gets out.

Remember, too, the draw of places like "Sweet Onion City", the boast of Vidalia, Georgia. An immigrant could start out doing the "stoop and squat" labor required to put those onions on the nation's super market shelves. And then, following a pattern that is almost a century old, move off the farm and into the cities. As Senator Claude Aiken (Republican, Vermont) told his colleagues in 1952, "I have a suspicion that there may be more aliens illegally employed in the cities of the United States than there are on the farms."

Aiken's accurate admonition underlines one of the nation's principal problems in creating immigrant laws that promise some chance of reconciliation between employers, immigrants and the Americans who, most decidedly, do not want them in this country. As Pat Buchanan blasts it out, "America is becoming Mexamerica." The danger is so severe that "the Immigration tsunami will make whites a minority in US."

Buchanan's problem is that, for all his furious fanning of the flames of white eclipse, South of the Border has a new meaning in states like Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas. In 2010 a chicken in every pot means many immigrants on an assembly line wielding sharp knives, all the while repeating the example of their predecessors.

Whether in Covington, Georgia or New Haven, Connecticut, immigrants find work, they establish communities, over time they move out of the dirtiest jobs and that means more immigrants to fill the spots vacated by those who travel from, for example, Covington to nearby Atlanta, to work in construction, the hotel industry, landscaping, or other low level service occupations.

This is far more than a vicious cycle. It is an institutionalized part of American life. Once Congress used the odious "Ethnic Origins" law to close the doors to Europe in 1924, employers found new "serfs" in Mexico and, in recent years, Central and Latin America. Fully 20% of all El Salvadorans now live in the United States. The labor demand, plus the need for work, will not disappear and the perpetual desire from some in Congress for temporary guest workers (this is fueled by, among others- agricultural and horticultural lobbies) will do nothing to change the overall situation. Paraphrasing Philip Martin, the most permanent thing in America is a temporary worker. Guest workers illegally extend their stays, employers eagerly hire them, and, as with moving out of the dirtiest jobs, employers then need more "temporary" labor to fill the slots vacated by permanent temps.

Is there any hope for change? Looking at history a realist would say no. We are not rats on a tread mill but a society fractured by thoroughly incompatible goals. There is no way on earth to satisfy Pat Buchanan and the hotel industry. It's that simple and both sides will continue to talk by one another until, at long last, someone in Washington finds the courage to root the immigrant debate in reality.

Face it: Immigration to Dukes of Hazard country is a zero sum game. Employers will cheer while their literal next door neighbors bemoan the Mexican (which used to be in 1882 the Chinese) menace. Or, we will waste more billions closing our borders, even though the demand for legal and illegal immigrant labor is a century long constant, and even though roughly forty percent of illegals arrive legally.

Our debates and policies are rooted in fleeing the institutionalized realities of U.S. life . Our politicians and TV talking heads pander to whoever has a buck or a vote. And hard working, family oriented, Christian Latino/a immigrants remain the flak catchers for a problem they never created.

In a cynical mood, I think we will continue to dig a deeper hole, assuring only one thing: Pat Buchanan throwing stones at a Dodge Charger with a Latino flag on the roof.

Some Senior Citizen Patriots Need a Spanking

ronald fernandez — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:58:00 GMT

Let me start with anuncontestable fact: I will be 66 years old in June of 2010. I have been onSocial Security and Medicare for almost a year. I have also been very ill andthus had the chance to experience Medicare first-hand.

My accusation: I am appalled and amazedby senior citizens who have the audacity to complain about socialism whenFederal and state governments provide them with a substantial amount of FREE assistance for as long as they live.

A recent Federal budget contains these expenditures: 21% for defense,21% for social security, and 21% for Medicare (which includes the ChildrenHealth Insurance Program). The states must match the Federal monies forMedicare. We will return to defense at the end of this piece but no matter howyou square the numbers senior citizens receive roughly 40% of all Federalfunding. Their poverty rate is 9.4%;that of children 18 and younger is 19%. In competing in a global economy wewill all pay for this great poverty disparity for as long as we live.

One argument is that I paid for socialsecurity; I therefore deserve every cent I get, even the cost of livingadjustments that must also be paid by my children and grandchildren. This isutter nonsense and a sense of entitlement supposedly shared by "welfarequeens". For example, I am typical and I computed my own payments tosocial security over a forty year career at a university. Within approximately6-7 years I will have received from social security every nickel I put in.

Using actuarial tables, if aperson gets to 65 he or she can assume a life span of 80-82. The "average" recipient thus getsanywhere from 8 to 10 years of additional benefits even though those benefits have nothing to do withany payments made by the senior citizen. We can all argue about the amountof money received -the average social security payment is$1041 for 35 millionretired workers- but to argue that this is not living off Federal largess is toembrace hypocrisy. However minimal compared to some European countries, the Fedis underwriting senior citizens and they should have the decency to stop bitingthe hand that literally feeds them.

Move to Medicare and Medicaid and the benefits increase. Medicare Part Acovers many health costs; but for very close to $80 a month seniors receiveMedicare Part B. This greatly increases a wide variety of outpatient and inpatientcosts. To give a personal example, Medicare has spent more than $100,000 on myhealth care since June of 2009.. I have received magnificent care at a superbfacility and by my computations ($80 x 12 months = $960) it will take me a hundred years to pay Medicare back. Tome this looks like a great deal from Federal and State governments. Instead ofcomplaining I should be saying THANK YOU but senior patriots (look at the TeaParty web pages) again complain about the costs of care and socialism.

I can easily understand that for folks receiving the average payment-$1041 a month- $80 a month is a "chunk of change". So I wouldhappily increase benefits to Medicare recipients, especially the women whodominate the cohorts as men die off. I would pay for this by taking socialsecurity taxes from richer Americans (it now stops after receiving income ofroughly $100,000 a year) and I would pay a substantial Value Added Tax if I wasassured that poor and poorer Americans would receive an exemption or at leastsome VAT monies returned.

We can argue about how to improve and increase Medicare benefits butsomebody has to pay the piper and if we follow my suggestions we embrace morerather than less Federal and State assistance. Any senior taking thisadditional assistance would hopefully have the common decency to recognize itssource and, once again, stop bitching about the hand that cures and assiststhem in and out of the hospital.

A caveat. I have the great privilege of additional insurance that Ipurchase from the university. This insurance kicks in after my bounty ofassistance from Medicare Part B. When I go to the pharmacy for even a veryexpensive prescription I pay $3 or sometimes $6 for the pills. I haverepeatedly seen other seniors pay $100 or $200 for a prescription because theydo not have the privileges I enjoy. And I would pay greater taxes to reduce thedisparity between my benefits and those offered to other seniors. But anyonewho believes that channeling power to local governments is going to help fundsenior care is blind, selfish or some combination of the two. My suggestion:Have seniors ask their town if they will provide, as in my case, $100,000 inhospital care over four months and see what answer they get!

Now let's get back to defense. Some senior patriots are waving the flagagainst Obama sponsored socialism throughout the nation. They neglect thatdefense is $21% of the Federal budget and that defense related jobs account forroughly 8% of all U.S. employment. There is the old joke about putting anotherdefense contractor in Georgia and the state will sink. My state of Connecticutis also heavily reliant on Federal defense expenditures and so too states likeCalifornia, Texas or Washington.

However, for folks who scream about tyranny and centralization of powerin Washington, what some senior patriots ignore is amply demonstrated in GaryWills' just published Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the NationalSecurity State. Wills proves that, beginning with the atomic bomb under the Franklin Rooseveltadministration, one President after another has used "security" as abanner for secret and unprecedented assumptions of executive power. With SaddamHussein nowhere in sight, a policy paper submitted to President Truman in 1947 requiredfull support for the preparation and use of atomic and biological warfare against the Soviets and their allies. The Presidentassumed these powers under highly questionable constitutional authority and overthe next fifty years national security provided full cover for spying on Americans,loyalty tests, and assassinations -murder- of many foreign leaders.

Senior Patriots:If you want to underline abuses of Federal power stop waving the flag long enoughto recognize that the defense you demand allows civilians in Washington to assumeand exercise power never envisioned by the constitution you champion.

Remember too that Social security and Medicare are already formsof socialism. Say thank you for the help. And ask for more by paying taxes to helpthose in need. But stop throwing buffalo chips long enough to recognize that by far the greatest threat to constitutional authority comes from the "military industrial complex" and the civilianswho, under the guise of protecting us, wield power formerly accorded only to Kings claiming to be divinely inspired and authorized.

Sociology as Immediate Power to the People

ronald fernandez — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:15:00 GMT

One theme of this blog is that sociological theory offer significant insights into contemporary, everyday life. This is especially true of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's, The Social Construction of Reality. Since its publication in 1966, the book has stimulated discussions of the social construction of deviance, of race and ethnicity, of sexuality and even of the value produced at auctions.

One missing topic is power to the people. Sociologists sometimes seem reluctant to draw the logical conclusion from the assertion that social reality is and always has been a human construction. In essence, if people make social reality, they can remake it whenever they wish. This is power to the people at the most basic level. We need no legislature, no politicians and no new laws because when it comes to the "common sense meanings" that make social life possible, anyone can vote no whenever they please. Theoretically, we are in charge, all the time, anywhere on earth.

In explaining the discipline's reluctance to draw such an obvious conclusion, think of a book like Omni and Winant's, Racial Formation in the United States. The authors caution us "to avoid the utopian framework which sees race as an illusion we can somehow "get beyond"; and to also avoid the "essentialist formulations which see race as something objective and fixed." Instead, "we should think of race as element of social structure rather than an irregularity in it." It's not an illusion but "a dimension of human representation" that we can't get beyond; from this perspective prejudice is as regular as bad weather in a New England winter.

In response, Berger and Luckmann remind us of reification, a tragic reaction where "the real relationship between man and his world is reversed in consciousness." The contradiction for those who treat social reality as an implacable object is they forget that "even while apprehending the world in reified terms, man continues to produce it." Thus, Omni and Winant talk of race as a human representation; it is created and recreated yet simultaneously accepted as a regular or normal part of social structure.

Reification turns people into bystanders. As Berger and Luckmann emphasize, it is an awful paradox but " man is capable of producing a reality that denies him." As if one of Durkheim's social facts, the received wisdom acts in a coercive fashion, imprisoning the minds of even first class sociologists.

Whether in relation to race and ethnicity or sexism embracing reification is not only false consciousness, it makes sociology a passive discipline. We accept and explain but we do nothing to make Sociology the active force in empowering people to change their lives as they change their societies. It was after all Durkheim who called us to action when he noted, at the end of The Division of Labor in Society, "that our first duty at the present time is to fashion a morality for ourselves." And, in Professional Ethics and Civil Morals Durkheim wrote that "societies can have their pride, not in being the greatest or the wealthiest, but in being the most just, the best organized and in possessing the best moral constitution."

So, in 2010, what is the point of talking about social problems if we are not going to use Sociology's crucial insights as a means of moving our students to challenge and change the poisonously reified parts of conventional wisdom?

Here is a suggestion. If all social reality is a human construction, let's use that insight to challenge the most sacred cows, even god. I'm thinking of Bart Ehrman's, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. Ehrman stresses that scholars not only lack the Greek originals of the New Testament, they also lack "the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals." In transcribing the copies over the centuries scribes added and subtracted many lines; most of the changes are inconsequential but in the sixteenth century the social construction of reality involved an outright fraud.

When publishing his Greek version of the New Testament in 1515, Erasmus left out the idea of the Trinity, of God the father, son and holy ghost as one. He could not find the Trinity in the Greek copies of the copies of the copies he consulted so he stuck with the facts. That created outrage among Catholic theologians who insisted that the Trinity was authentic, even if nowhere to be found in the "original" Greek manuscripts. Under considerable pressure to change his mind, Erasmus agreed to do so "if his opponents could produce a Greek manuscript in which the verse (about the Trinity) could be found." What happened is that his opponents suddenly discovered a Greek manuscript. Someone translated the Latin into Greek and "manuscript provided to Erasmus was, in other words, a sixteenth century production, made to order."

In this instance we can precisely trace the social construction of reality. We know that the notion of the Trinity is shaky at best so, as a science, do we discuss the facts of social construction, ignore reality, or, even worse, argue that the Trinity is now a regular part of the social structure? Another alternative would be to stress the difference between faith and facts. In reconstructing social reality people can make a leap of faith that places more trust in a made to order New Testament than in the irrefutable facts raised by Erasmus. In stressing the irrelevance of truth, Sociology would be at the center of a major controversy but, as Mills reminded us in The Sociological Imagination, the discipline's greatest obligation is to confront the issues that "are at the height of the times." Religion qualifies and so too does "race", ethnicity, prejudice and the "common sense" classification of defining seven billion people by using one of three skin colors: White, black or nonwhite.

Americans use this three color scheme rooted in a series of assumptions -especially about "races"- that have all the validity of Erasmus' made to deceive New Testament.. If we are truly scientists, don't we have an obligation to forcefully present evidence from books like Scott Malcomson's, One Drop of Blood? Malcomson traces the move, made by fifteenth century slave traders, to socially construct a group of people labeled "blacks". Over time this color is a catch-all that erases differences in religion, social class, tribe or ethnicity. Like President Obama's father, a visitor from Kenya turns into a black man as his son ignores the "white" side of his heritage and becomes the first black President in U.S. history.

Where sociology has a special, unique and potentially revolutionary role is to explain the nature of cultural power, how it is internalized and how reification can be overcome if we are willing to understand that we can "get beyond" any troublesome social construction if we follow Berger and Luckmann's insights to their logical conclusion. Since people and only people make social reality, they can change it whenever they wish. The question is whether we shall follow Erasmus and manufacture a "new truth"; or will give our students a sense of personal liberation by exposing the power of false group influences in what passes for conventional wisdom

Ironic: The Odious 1924 Immigration Act and Its Delightful 2010 Consequences

ronald fernandez — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:25:00 GMT

Their websites indicate that Tea Party Patriots contrast their backgrounds with those of immigrants. TP Patriots are "home grown" Americans whose number one political principal is this: "America is good".(see the 9/12 Declaration)

That's an interesting contention, especially if we recall that our nation opened its doors to the world's immigrants in 1965 only because America was bad, very, very bad.

More specifically, it was the ideological grandparents of today's home grown patriots who bear ultimate responsibility for forever transforming the ethnic composition of the American people.

Start in1900, when some angry and anxious Americans sponsored a movement to "Americanize the Immigrant". They even went so far as to "swat the hyphen", i.e., anyone who identified as Polish or Irish or Italian-American. You were 100% red, white and blue or you were nothing.

By 1924 so called nativists controlled a Congress where Representative Elton Watkins (R., Oregon) openly expressed this belief: "A half caste is a failure in most cases...the half caste Indian is a failure; the half caste black man is very likely to be a failure; but the half caste oriental is worse. He seems in the majority of cases to inherit the vices of both races and the virtues of neither. It makes as a rule, a bad product".

In response, nativists used the 1924 Immigration Law to deny the right of "Orientals" to ever immigrate to the United States. After 1924, the quota for Chinese, Japanese and other "Asians" was zero. Hate and fear ruled the day, as Congress excluded an entire continent.

That still left the "locusts", the Italians, Polish, Portuguese, Greeks and Spanish "creeping up in New York, one block at a time". In response, Congress decided to spray "raid" on the ethnic insects. In computing the number of immigration slots in any year after 1924, Congress used 1890 as a benchmark. Theoretically, everyone would be treated equally because any nation would receive a quota of 2% of its 1890 population.

Since the vast majority of the voracious locusts arrived after 1890, Congress claimed objectivity as it used prejudice to slam the immigration doors in the face of almost everyone on earth. To nurture America's "native" core, from 1924 to 1965 roughly 60% of all immigration slots went to three nations: England, Germany and Ireland. The rest of Europe fought over the crumbs; as late as 1964, Italy received 5666 immigration slots, Greece 308, Spain 250, and Portugal 438.

John Kennedy inherited an immigration policy rooted in open and poisonous prejudice. Part of his political constituency -especially Italians and Greeks- demanded change while, in forums like the United Nations, "Orientals" accused Americans of hypocrisy. If everyone was created equal, why did Americans treat Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indians with so much contempt? Did Congress still believe, as it argued in 1869, that Chinese people were so low on the racial totem pole that they were "incapable of assimilation"?

Based on an analysis of documents in the Kennedy and Johnson libraries, a reader can make this assertion: Idealism motivated both Presidents to change the nation's immigration laws. They wanted to bring the ideals of the Declaration of Independence in line with the realities of American life. The trick was how to accomplish that goal. What specific rules would make everyone equal?

Here is rule number one: First come, first served. No one could argue with that, especially those who bore the burden of forty years of open hatred. Waiting lines from countries like Italy and Greece extended back some ten or fifteen years. Potential immigrants saw a wide open door but Kennedy officials saw a problem: With only first come first served, the vast majority of post 1965 slots would go to Europe's Southern core. The rest of the world would still be locked out and America would still be bitterly criticized in any international forum that included officials from, say Asia or Africa.

Here is principal number two, still in effect in 2010. To compensate for the hate and waiting list consequences of forty years of prejudice from early Twentieth century nativists, Congress set a limit on the number of immigrants who, in any one year, could come from any one nation. Whether Italian or (India) Indian, each nation got the same number of overall slots and none could ever again argue that America's immigration policies were rooted in prejudice against most of the world.

Documents at the Johnson library indicate that neither the President nor Congress expected the world to accept America's invitation. Johnson told Congress that most immigrants would still come from Europe, only to discover that he was totally wrong. After 1965, England and Ireland rarely filled their country quotas while the previously hated parts of the world flocked to America's shores.

Here are some of the 2010 consequences of America's 1965 attempt to right forty-one years of wrong.

· The foreign born population represented 4.7% of America's people in 1970. Today the figure is roughly 12.5% and rising.

· The overwhelming majority of these new immigrants come from nations and continents negatively targeted by the 1924 legislation. They are "nonwhite" in a society that still uses white as the positive role model.

· One nation -Mexico- accounts for more than 25% of all LEGAL immigration; following Mexico are China, Philippines, India, Vietnam and El Salvador.

· Even if "home grown" Americans close the immigration door tomorrow the ethnic composition of the American people has been forever changed. Remember, too, that immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents receive preferences for the immigration of their kin. Thus, in any one year roughly fifty percent of legal immigrants arrive over and above Congress' mandated limit. Unless we are going to stop families from uniting -a cornerstone of immigration policy since 1890- the "nonwhite" parts of the world will still arrive on America's shores for the indefinite future.

One final point. When Congress passed the 1924 legislation, it now needed to find new people to do America's dirty, dangerous and demanding labor. With Italians, Greeks and Spanish folks no longer available, Congress closed it eyes to the use of Filipinos (until independence in 1946) and Mexicans. They soon "monopolized" stoop and squat" labor, as farmers and other employers rarely worried about a worker's legal status. In fact, if you check the thousands of telegrams sent to Senator Lyndon Johnson in the 1950's, you find one constituent after another demanding that the Senator "keep them coming". With no Europeans to do America's dirty work, Mexicans then became the "only" game in town.

TP Patriots need to remember their ideological grandparents. Early twentieth century nativists are ultimately responsible for the 2010 ethnic composition of the American people.

I am delighted by the changes. But, for those home grown patriots who want to point the finger of blame, here is my suggestion. Look in the mirror. Look for your America is good roots in the odious legislation that Congress passed in 1924.