Driving
Ethnicity into the Ground
Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 12, 2016
“For ethnos shall rise against
ethnos,” the King James scholars should have written. Not “nation against nation.” Nations as we have known them since the 1700s
were not yet fully formed, certainly not widespread, when the King James
scholars completed their Bible translation in 1611. But “kingdoms,” and “dukedoms,” ever so
small, certainly were; therefore “kingdom against kingdom” is more precise and
true.
National
boundaries as we know them today are fairly newfangled. Historically, they have been political
conveniences, drawn by the victors of wars and not always honored by the
losers. Ethnicity, though, like gender
(yes, gender), is one of life’s realities.
You cannot change it.
Ethnos
against ethnos is exactly what best describes so many of the world’s conflicts
and wars today. When President Clinton
began to speak of sending troops to the Balkans to advance stability and
restrain the ethnic cleansing occurring there, my Italian born sister-in-law
who grew up in nearby Trieste, remarked in her broken English, “He no help
matters there. They be fighting no
matter what.”
Think
about it. For what do most peoples of
the world feel the most loyalty, a geographical area with a certain name or the
ethnic or language group to which they belong? (Consider the increasing
presence of Mexican flags throughout the country.) We know what we should do, no matter where we
live. We should love our neighbor no
matter who he or she is, but the truth is many people don’t love their
neighbor. Hence our present conflicted
world.
Language
is at once the most unifying and dis-unifying cultural distinction that
exists. We herald so-called
multiculturalism, denying that across the globe it has been the disruption of
cultural groups and the forcing of other cultures on them that has caused
conflict after conflict. We thought that
well-drawn Yugoslavia was stable with its various ethnic groups and indeed it
was under the heel of Communist dictator Marshall Tito. But when Communism fell, we saw that it was
Tito’s brute force, not brotherly love, that held the concocted “nation”
together. Absent that brute force,
ethnic loyalties emerged, leading to the disunity over which Mr. Clinton
attempted to preside.
Closer
to home, we often forget the “Quebec problem,” the French-speaking Canadian
province with its Separatist Party which more than once has brought Quebec to
the brink of secession. Yes, it is
French that makes a Frenchman a Frenchman, not to mention French food, French
dress, and other customs. Shakespeare
argued it was English that makes an Englishman an Englishman. So it goes.
Name one corner of the world where multiculturalism (though pressed in
many cases by good people with good intentions) has worked. Seems that borders, language, and culture
matter after all.
Other things beside language differences
prompt and promote disunity. In American
political discourse we’re calling it identity politics. News reporters and analysts project a
candidate’s potential success by how well he or she will do with blacks,
whites, Hispanics, women, age groups, soccer moms, and I’m sure, dog
owners. The media is forever dividing
people, even as office seekers try to unite them.
The glorious truth is that America
has come closer than any other nation in bringing people of different cultures
together. The reasons are obvious:
freedom and an ethic that says “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Several times every week of my life I see
people of different races and nationalities being kind and cordial to each
other: at church, at the gas pump, in line at the grocery store, and
elsewhere. At home in front of the
television I see the opposite. I’m
tempted to call a television reporter and ask him or her to follow me around
for just two days.
But television doesn’t want to show
that. Television wants and delivers
conflict. Recently when Donald Trump
said he could not get a fair trial from a judge with a Mexican heritage, he was
only echoing what Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor said at her confirmation
hearing: that her cultural heritage would indeed influence her decision
making. How could it not in some
measure?
Mr. Trump brought attention to our
inherent racism and for it was called a racist.
Racism and ethnic politics have been the province of the Democratic
Party, not Republicans. Bill Clinton’s
hero and mentor, Senator William Fulbright, was not a Republican but a
Democratic segregationist. Abraham
Lincoln was not a Democrat, but a slave-emancipating Republican.
And are class references any less
indecorous than ethnic ones? Recall
President Obama’s cautioning us about those who “cling to guns and religion.”
If we’re going to forgive Justice
Sotomayor and President Obama for driving ethnicity into the ground, we’ve got
to forgive Mr. Trump.
Roger Hines
6/8/16
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