It’s Righteous Indignation, Not Hate
Many Americans object when immigration changes their neighborhoods and communities beyond recognition. When they do, they can count on swift criticism from immigration enthusiasts, who are quick to label their reaction as “fear” and “hate.” The proper response, say these moralists, is to “celebrate” the new diversity of peoples, nearly all of whom are “hard-working” folk who just want “the American dream.” Wanting a common culture, they piously intone, is “bigotry.”
Is it really? To be sure, many Americans in the newly “diverse” areas show anger, though just as many, quite often, are more sad than mad. But is anger in such cases inappropriate, or even immoral? The answer most certainly is no — at least if common sense has any say-so on the matter.
Like it or not, people generally prefer the familiar. Human beings, by their nature, desire a sense of belonging, and belonging requires common values. This is not irrational prejudice, but rational practicality. Though diversity may be enjoyable for a vacation, the work-a-day world works best when common ties keep social friction to a minimum.
Agreed upon standards and values, derived from Western culture, have been the source of American success and freedom. Communities of Americans, working in harmony, have achieved impressive civic and material goals without needing government as a rule-maker and a referee for their activities.
Sadly, this harmony is fading as community after community falls victim to the kind of diversity which destroys common purpose. Even when immigrants are hard-working, this does not mean that they that they share all American values and sentiments. To illustrate, the August 1998 issue of National Geographic ran a generally pro-immigration article about New York’s Chinatown. It noted the work ethic of recent Chinese immigrants. The author commented, however, that all he met “[used] the same word for [American] white people. It means ‘barbarian.’”
If the numbers of newcomers in a community are sufficiently large, a clash of cultures — and confusion — will follow. Many natives, feeling like foreigners in their own country will experience a deep sense of alienation, a psychological condition characterized by anger and sadness. Such anger is entirely appropriate, and is justified further by the undemocratic manner through which “diversity” comes about.
Politicians often show no appreciation of their constituents’ feelings toward immigration, or if they do they lie about the consequences. A classic example was Sen. Ted Kennedy’s promise in 1965 that the immigration act of that year would not cause “our cities with a million immigrants annually,” or change the country’s make-up.
Why then do diversity advocates want to inflict cultural pandemonium on their fellow citizens? Aside from monetary and political gain, two other explanations are ignorance and treachery. Many elitists favor diversity because they seldom see it in full-blown form. Almost as ironclad as a law of physics is the principle that support for diversity increases in direct proportion to the distance from it.
To economic elites, diversity is the pleasant experience of eating out at some tony ethnic restaurant. Afterwards, commonly, they return home to up-scale homogenous neighborhoods where no one plays loud foreign music all night long or butchers goats in the back yard. Cultural enrichments like these are left to the American masses, along with such amenities as schools where their children are shortchanged because of bilingualism and other immigration-induced fads.
On the treachery side are neo-Marxists in foundations and universities who welcome an alienated and balkanized society. Their network is well-documented in William Hawkins’ book, Importing Revolution.
Flying the banner of “political correctness,” they see themselves as the lords of enlightenment who should properly rule society. When society falls apart, they stand ready to offer their services as mediators and “managers of diversity.”
It is ironic that these types are the first to cry “racism” when challenged. In point of fact, racial antagonism benefits their agenda perfectly, which is why they promote mass immigration and the inevitable misunderstandings it brings.
Most ironic too is how the pro-immigration side constantly harps on the issue of “compassion.” This, they tell us, is what Americans owe all comers. Yet no such empathy is ever available for the heart-felt anguish of patriotic citizens, native and foreign-born, who mourn the incremental loss of their county and way of life. The anger they feel is not hate, but righteous indignation which they have the right — and indeed the duty — to express. Backers of mass-immigration may posture all they like about the “American dream.” For patriotic citizens, their dream is the American nightmare.
This article appears on the AIC website and is used by permission of the author.