Multi-Cultural America and Backlash

There is a great tide of cultural mixing happening in America.  It is creating a backlash.

The posters below and ones like it have begun appearing in Southern Oregon.  

It is the backlash and response to a great tide that is pushing toward global trade, immigration, the movement of people and the inevitable racial and ethnic mixing.

First, the big move of history, the tide of trade, movement of people, and lumpy mixing. 

Trade happens because things are cheaper in one place than another.  Supply chains are international.  Americans are accustomed to eating melons in February and it is cheap to grow them in Central America and ship them here.  Apple phones are manufactured in pieces everywhere.  Americans drive Toyotas.  It consider this wave to be as unstoppable and as relentless as gravity.  People want stuff cheaper and faster.

People move.   Movement creates problems, but the opposite is also true.  People who don't move to where the jobs are create pockets of poverty and social disfunction.   I observe help wanted signs everywhere in metropolitan Boston, in the Bay Area, and here in Southern Oregon. But there is unemployment in the high teens in Appalachia. People there cannot or do not want to move.  That creates a problem of its own.

But the world is full of ambitious people and people in areas of distress and they want out.  

Current era of high immigration.  Current policy allows legal immigration of just over 1,000,000 a year.    Currently in America about 43 million people are foreign born, about 13.4% of our country.  Compared to the past 150 years this is a high number, almost as much as the era of Ellis Island European immigration in the early 20th Century.   It is up from some 7% in a period of low percentage of foreign born, the 1950's.  There is no "right" amount and it is a matter of politics and the push and pull of what domestic political forces want. Trump discovered something that had been ignored within the GOP electorate.  Pushback.

Currently immigrants come primarily from Latin America, China, India, and the Philippines.   Relatively few come from Europe. 

I will report my own bias here.   I like immigration.  I am married to an immigrant.  My observation is that immigrants work hard and smart.  My sense is that immigration is an intrinsic part of the American character and that immigrants do not dilute Americanism.  They help create Americanism because immigration is itself part of our national character.

This blog attempts to report, not persuade, a stance that better allows me to observe things and recognize when what I personally want isn't happening. There is a tide of immigration and race mixing and global trade, and there is a resistance to it, simultaneously.   New people in America are causing the familiar anxiety that America has experienced in earlier times of high immigration. 

This weekend I observed two events that reflect conscious community efforts to validate and encourage civic and community harmony in the mixing and matching of different cultures, a fundraiser for La Clinica de Valle, a health clinic providing low cost primary medical and dental care to low income people, with roots in service to the Hispanic community, and the Medford Multicultural Fair, a gathering that takes place every September with the overt intention of celebrating ethnic and religious diversity and toleration in Southern Oregon.

Both were feel-good events for people open to diversity.  The crowds were multi racial and the theme was community spirit and sharing and acceptance.

Country flags flew side by side.   Children were coached on how to throw a lasso by a Mexican cowboy.  Dancers danced.  Nonprofit organizations that served immigrants showed what they did.   The police had a booth.  It was a celebration of harmony.

 

Outside of these events diversity is controversial.  It is political and somewhat partisan.  Democrats and Republicans were both offered the chance to have a booth at the Multicultural Fair.   Democrats had one; Republicans did not.

Republicans traditionally have been welcoming of immigrants, a source of labor for their business constituency, but this has switched under a Trump-led party.   Americanism under Trump is defined in opposition to ethnic change.  Trump announced a point of view in his campaign opening speech and he has stuck to it:  

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." 

Democrats are trying to figure out if they should be a party of essentially open borders.  

In a comment posted yesterday attorney Thad Guyer warned that if Democrats failed to recognize the backlash--or if political orthodoxy simply required that they ignore what they were seeing--then they would hand the upcoming and future elections to Donald Trump or his successors in the mood of backlash.  Democrats may commit political suicide.

       "And as if on cue, the Dreamers, a group of one million illegal immigrants, are trying to dictate their terms not just to Trump but to Democrats. According to the New York Times, these non-voters are threatening Pelosi and Schumer that they're “going to do whatever it takes to push both parties to what we are demanding.” See, "On Dreamers’ Deal, Democrats Face a Surprising Foe: The Dreamers", NYT October 2, 2017,     https://t.co/K5SaZ7dmft. 

Their activist spokespeople "reject any compromise that would tighten border security". As NYT commentator Frank Bruni sums it up in the title to a separate piece, "Democrats, Please Get Ready to Lose", in 2018 followed by "demoralization that...dooms the party in 2020". NYT, October 2, 2017,    https://t.co/SmRKtIHfOT. 

From 1968 to 1992, we had 24 years of GOP rule, except Carter's one term, and a right wing Supreme Court. It was caused in part by raging Democrats who hated Reagan and his supporters. This reign of conservatism did not end until centrist Bill Clinton told us to "get a grip". When it comes to Puerto Rico, Dreamers, the NFL, and other rage issues, Bill Clinton's prescription should be applied now. In the meantime, Trump will keep winning." 

The great tidal flow is toward global integration of trade, communication, finance, and people.  But tidal flows create ebb tides.

Democrats will be the party of inclusion, but their challenge is to create sufficient policy and messages to demonstrate to native born Americans that these new people are a benefit and not a threat.  They have not yet created those policies, so the backlash that elected Trump is still in place.