Saves You Time & Money - Easy & Convenient To Use - Protects Your Rights - Immediate Download
The Melting Pot is Exploding
Tensions between Ethnic Groups
Rising in US
by Monica Davis
The US
is home to rising numbers of different ethnic groups, many of whom bring
cross-cultural tensions, religious and social biases with them. Tribal
rivalries, social restrictions, religious tensions, sexual taboos, gender
restrictions and other conflicts float across the oceans along with their
owners, generating more of the same within American immigrant communities.
The "melting pot" has frozen for many groups who
are fighting hard to retain their ethnic identities. With the influx of
immigrants, comes competition for resources, recognition, power and status. Hence , the conflict between tribes, ethnic groups and new
immigrants in the US
continues to create friction and tension.
In Los Angeles,
a recent battle to name a business district "Little Saigon" generated
a massive recall election which threatened to depose a popular
Vietnamese-American city councilwoman. Many in the community wanted to call it
"Little Saigon," a name heavy with meaning for the generation that
lived through that city's fall. Nguyen considered roposals
from businesses and residents, then struck what she
considered a reasonable balance: "Saigon Business District." (AP, 3-5-09)
Councilwoman Nguyen survived the recall attempt, gaining 55
percent of the vote, which included support from the Latino community and heavy
support from unions and business. The Nguyen recall election is just one
example of ethnic tension and "Old World"
cultural conflict in the nation.
The New York Times is reporting that tensions are rising in Los
Angeles between the Korean and Bangladeshi community,
again, over naming a business district. The Times says that "In an overwhelmjingly Korean-American section of Los
Angeles known as Koreatown,
an effort is under way to name part of it Little Bangladesh. Korean civic
leaders are firmly opposed." (New York Times, 4-7-09).
One sociologist, pandering to the "color line"
says "This cross-ethnic tension is somewhat new.... Historically, it's
been whites against nonwhites as new immigrants move into established white
neighborhoods." (Ibid)
This flies in the face of American history, unless you don't
consider Germans, Italians, Swedes and Irish "white." America's
favorite sport has been lynching "foreigners" and blacks for more
than a century. Even more schizophrenic is our denial of this history of
creating "strange fruit" of human tree ornaments, the by-product of
lynching and American terrorism. Hence, for the deniers who claim that black
folk loved slavery, for those who claim the "discrimination" against
Irish immigrants was non-existent, and for those who are bone certain the
Holocaust was a figment of Hollywood--crack
a history book.
To find the genesis of today's ethnic, racial and
class-driven bigotry, one has only to examine the legacy of ongoing racial,
tribal and class violence which crosses borders and oceans, and goes back
centuries. Unfortunately, we scratch our heads as if this type of conflict is
new to the nation, in some orgy of a mass psychosis of selective amnesia.
It's as if intra-ethnic warfare, bigotry and lynching is new in this country. So new, that we are confused about
its very existence. So new, that we fail to understand how much these various
incarnations of bigotry obscure healing, reconciliation and understanding of
the human condition.
During the British Civil Wars, millions of Irish and Scots
were evicted from their land, some divested of their
titles and sent to the "New World" as first
slaves, then indentured servants. This process purposedly
created a vacuum of land ownership in Ireland,
which was soon filled by Protestants who were loyal to the British Crown. The
Potato Famine generated another forced migration:
In the decade between 1845 and 1855, 1.8 million Irish
people, mostly poor illiterate Gaelic-speaking Catholic farmers and laborers
left Ireland
for Eastern Canada and the United
States. Most of these immigrants were forced
to leave by "The Famine", a period of unbelievable hardship between
1845 and 1849 caused by a five year long potato blight that destroyed the main
subsistence crop of the poor farmers. At least one million people in Ireland
died of starvation, malnutrition, typhus, dysentery and cholera. (American
Immigration Law Center,
exhibit/ex_irishim.htm The English-ancestored
whites who comprised the majority of "native-born" Americans feared
the influx of new immigrants would bring disease, drive down wages and property
values. Given the perceived threat from the desperation of those Irish
immigrants, the "Americans" banded together in a massive wave of
anti-immigrant, anti-Irish and, anti-Catholic nativism,
some of which manifested itself in violence, riots and lynching.
"Americans" responded to the perceived "dumping" of Irish
immigrants with violence, boycots and government
policies. The British were trying to get rid of an unwanted population and the
"Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" didn't want them either.
Landlord and local government-assisted immigration plans often consisted of
transporting starving and diseased immigrants on overcrowded ships without
settlement plans, in effect simply dumping groups of refugees in Canada
and the United States.
Many families scraped together enough money to send one member abroad; should
this person survive, he or she would then dispatch money or passage tickets to
those left behind. (Ibid)
When it comes to immigration, this country is not as
welcoming as tradition would have it. Many swarthy "non-white
looking" immigrants bore the brunt of violence, intimidation and murder.
While the nation celebrates Christopher Columbus as the "discoverer of America",
Italians didn't fare to well as immigrants, when it came to rolling out the
melting pot's welcome mat.
In the U.S.,
during the 1800s and early 20th Century, both Jews and Italian immigrants were
subject to extreme prejudice, racism, and, in many cases, violence. During this
time, both groups were seen as non-Anglo and non-white. In fact, Italian
Americans were the second most likely ethnic group to be lynched.
(http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/background-discrimination-against-immigrants)
Anti-Latino violence, land lynching, land theft and
dispossession has a long history in the Southwest, and with the ongoing wave of
illigal immigration from Mexico, South and Central
America, don't expect things to change anytime soon. With fears of terrorism
ongoing since September, 11, 2001,
we have seen an upswing in the violence against Arab ethnic groups in the US,
and around the world.
Unfortunately for the US
in terms of ethnic conflict, we now have immigrant communities that are large
enough to bring intra-ethnic biases and conflicts from the Old World
to the forefront of the US
'melting pot,' while pandering to colorism and skin
color bigotry as well.
Joni Hersch In "Profiling the
New Immigrant Worker: The Effects of Skin Color and Height," (Journal of
Labor Economics 2008), [presents] strong evidence of a wage penalty to darker
skin color among new legal immigrants to the United
States. Immigrants with the lightest skin
color earn on average 17 percent higher wages than comparable immigrants with the
darkest skin color, taking into account Hispanic ethnicity, race, country of
birth, education, English language proficiency, family background, and
occupation in the source country.
Another study notes that skin color has more to do with
wages than productivity, among post-1965 immigrants. Hence, [t]he analysis
finds that the labor market penalty to darker skin color cannot be attributed
to differences in productivity and is evidence of labor market discrimination
that arises within the U.S.
labor market. The largest groups of post-1965 immigrants - those from Asia
and Latin America - are penalized in the U.S.
labor market for their darker skin color. (Ronald E. Hall,
Ed., Skin Color, Immigrant Wages and Discrimination.
What we see, then, is immigrant-to-immigrant discrimination
based on height, skin color, ethnicity, tribalism, and religious background.
This has created a double-edged sword, where immigrants are discriminating
against one another based on size/stature, skin color, religious persuasion,
not to mention tribal identity, national origin, etc.
The pressures of being an immigrant minority generate a
fertile field for phychosis and other disorders,
according to researchers. "The incidence of psychotic disorders was
elevated most significantly among immigrants living in neighborhoods where
their own ethnic group comprised a small proportion of the population."
(Jim Veling, M.D., et. al., "Ethnic Density of
Neighborhoods and Incidence of Psychotic Disorders Among
Immigrants", American Journal of Psychiatry. 12-17-07)
Reviewers of Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America
by authors Ruben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes believe today's immigrants are creating a dual path
of assimilation and non-assimilation. Ethnicities demonstrates that, while some
of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clear upward
path, moving into society's mainstream in record time, others are headed toward
a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility. (Ibid) In days past,
immigrants were forced, through the weight of sheer numbers of the
"dominant culture" to abandon the old ways and assimilate. They got
rid of traces of their native countries, learned English, and abandoned native
dress and culture.
Not so, today. Not only are many immigrant communities
holding on to their language, culture and religion, they are also coming in to
conflict with other immigrant and communities who are trying to do the same.
The case of two Ecuadorian brothers who live in a multi-ethnic immigrant and black
commumnity is representative of rising tensions
within ethnic communities across the nation. The brothers were reportedly
attacked by a group of black youth shouting anti-gay insults, in a community
that is home to thousands of immigrants from countries around the world.
Bushwick is a multinational, very
poor and proletarian community, with a large Ecuadorian population, along with
many from the Dominican Republic,
the English speaking Caribbean, Poland
and dozens of other countries living or working there. It borders on the large,
predominantly Black community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. There are many small
factories and sweatshops there.(http://revcom.us/a/151/Jose_S-en.html)
The challenge for American citizens and governmental
agencies is to protect and uphold human rights, in the face of increasing
diversification of the nations population. On the one
hand, we want to ensure human rights, but at the same time, we can not afford
to provide a fertile breeding ground for ethnic conflict. At some point the Old
World nationalists within our border will have to learn to play
nice in the sand box. Or else.
About the Author
Monica Davis is an Indiana-based author, columnist, radio
personality and public speaker. She has published 5 books and hundreds of
articles on public policy, alternative energy, politics, agriculture
and food security. Her author site is: LuLu.com
Go Articles.com
Return to: Millennium: The New World Order
Millennium:
The New World Order ||
Entertainment and Information || Business
Guide || Web Site Development
The Silver
Report || Cloning: Facts and Fallacies || Web Sites of
Interest || World
Religious News || Different Opinions & Religious / Philosophical Issues
© The article above is copyrighted by it's
author. Permission:
CreativeCommons.org
