Cries of "Reverse Discrimination" and Anti-immigration Fervor Are the New Racism

Looks like the nation is certainly going to hell now that Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed. Right-wingnuts like Pat Buchanan were even more over the top than usual in their condemnation of Sotomayor as a Latina racist. Their foaming at the mouth gave it away. According to Buchanan and a whole lot of other Neanderthals, Sotomayor can be accused of "hating white men" because of some unfortunate hyperbole in which she admittedly was advocating for a broader understanding of just what wisdom entails and because she upheld -- i.e. didn't interfere in -- a legitimate political determination in the Ricci case. (Isn't that what conservative advocates of judicial restraint keep demanding?)

The incident and the reaction from the right need some context. What's going on here -- and has been since cavemen divided into haves and have-nots -- is that "haves" -- corporate and social elites -- get to define their worldview as the norm; the supposedly objective mainstream against what all else is judged. Thus being white, European-American and male -- and hetero -- is the neutral position; the natural order of things making anything smacking of identity politics confrontational and menacing as if white-Euro-male wasn't an identity.

These attacks are right out of the playbook of establishment cons and the white working class dolts who listen to them who, for reasons of legal or political coercion or simply social stigma, can no longer spew actual racial bigotry so they've invented this nonsense called "reverse discrimination." (Remember Buchanan was one of Nixon's main Southern Strategy operatives. Looks like he's still a sleazeball.)

Oh, those poor put upon white guys. By george Pookie you just have to feel their pain. Of the 110 Supreme Court justices a mere 106 have been white men. Forty-two of the 43 presidents, and currently only 350 congressmen, 77 senators and 463 Fortune 500 CEOs are white men. Gosh darn, I'm so proud of them bearing up under their burden of position and influence.

Similarly, the white mid-level and blue collar workers who for centuries were able to write the rules dictating which children, cousins, neighbors, parishioners, alumni, service club cronies, softball teammates -- all similarly white -- got the union jobs, promotions, subcontracts, mortgages, college scholarships at the expense of minorities now want to insist on a level playing field after all the best turf has been claimed.

Cons are simply incapable of grasping the notion, since it challenges their whole raison d'être of "absolutism," that it is sometimes in society's multi-tiered interests to choose a competent person who will help with the leveling over someone who may be slightly more competent but will continue the historic pattern of discrimination.

Until the playing field actually is level -- after several decades have passed in which blacks and Puerto Ricans and females and Muslims get to dictate which of their goombahs get the plum rewards -- and white and black, or Anglo and Chicano or whether you pee standing up or sitting down is finally no longer relevant, I don't want to hear another white guy bitch about reverse discrimination.

This is the same nativist, racist, chauvinistic invective cons spout about Puerto Rican Day parades, Black History Month and Women's Studies. "What about White Pride Day!" they whine. Why do people think we celebrate St. Pat's and Columbus Days? Because the original German-English inhabitants were such big fans! What the hell were the American Catholic Church and big city Democratic machines and police forces in the 1800s but the National Association for the Advancement of Micks. Or the Italian Mafia and Polish labor unions in the 1900s but the embodiment of the need and longing for some semblance of familiarity and support by people feeling overwhelmed by the strange demands of the majority culture?

Look, every minority throughout American history has struggled with identity, dignity and acceptance. And sure some of their rhetoric and even their actions have been over the top. When you feel your "kind" is being discriminated against, ignored or suppressed you seek each other out for comfort, reinforcement and rectification and sometimes say and do some crazy things.

Or how often have you heard some nitwit insist, "My family were immigrants. I'm all for immigration but they need to learn English and become American" -- as if their ancestors showed up on Ellis Island, immediately spoke unaccented English, never lived in an ethnic ghetto and became little Anglo Saxons over night. What crap!!!

This pervasive idea that in the past immigrants came to our country and totally and immediately "adapted," as should the current immigrants, is utter nonsense. It has taken every wave of immigrants a generation or two to integrate into the mainstream culture.

Fact: By the second generation of immigrants, nearly 100 percent speak English and only 50 percent still speak their native language at home. By the third generation, 95 percent speak only English. This holds for immigrants from the 1800s as well as for Hispanics, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs and Asians today! So what if they want to sing the National Anthem in their native language at their ceremonies? Instead of the bozos condemning them, doesn't the fact that they want to sing it at all mean they are trying to be more American? That may be the best they can do right now to show their loyalty to their new country.

Buchanan's rant in his book The Death of the West decries the damage non-western, i.e. non-white, non-Christian, non-Western European immigration is having on America. "They won't care about Bunker Hill," he bemoans. Even the Germans who came here after the initial English settlers spent years "adapting." Some still haven't. Are the Amish a danger to the "American Way of Life?" Buchanan conveniently forgets that when his Irish forefathers came to America in the 1840s, Mayflower English and fourth generation Germans Protestants were saying the same thing about the scurrilous Catholic rabble. (It took 139 years before a Roman Catholic was nominated for president and 220 years for someone whose name ended in a vowel to make it -- and then he wasn't even Italian.)

So it makes no sense to me when I hear pundits like Buchanan, George Will and Bill Kristol bloviate about the demise of western civilization and American "culture" like they're standing atop history and screaming "Stop!"

But then what can you expect from a guy like Will who insists, "Most improvements make matters worse because most new ideas are regrettable."

What they forget is that immigration has never been a one-way street. The U.S. is not the same country it was when it was founded precisely because of the waves of immigration. The culture also "adapted" to the immigrants and became better for it. Just what is happening again.

In another 20 years we'll look back on this racist, nativist madness with the same shameful sense we have when we see old pictures of signs that read "No Irish need apply" or "Colored Only" drinking fountains. Meanwhile we'll be using more salsas in our cooking, taking Gandhi seriously and marrying those exquisite Iranian women.