Should I Stay Or Should I Go? — Let's Clash, Again.

Samuel P. Huntington, of Clash of Civilizations fame, is expanding his franchise. Not content at having created the most successful self-fulfilling prophesy this side of Jes˙s, he is now taking aim at Hispanic Americans. The article, due in next month's issue of Foreign Policy, was leaked yesterday, caused an instant uproar in all the expected circles, and is reported on by The Chronicle of Higher Education today; meanwhile, FP has decided to publish the article, The Hispanic Challenge.

This time round, Huntington openly casts in his lot with America's "white nativists". The Chronicle's piece serves as a very useful Cliffs Notes, though the original article is well worth a close and critical appraisal. Whereas before it was enough to plead a Christian heritage to be on his side of the fence, now it is a failure to assimilate into the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural mode that puts you beyond the pale.

What's staggering, once again, is the size of Huntington's blinkers. In much of the article he meticulously describes the process of Hispanicization in parts of the US, as if this should be enough to have us foam at the mouth in outrage. So there's more and more Hispanics in America. So they speak Spanish. So more parts of the country might turn into New York? Excellent, the more cultures the better, let me go sign up for Spanish classes. Oh, sorry, wrong answer?

At times in the article, he stops the stream of statistics long enough to make statements that stand out by their conspicuous lack of numerical support. This is when his wishful thinking takes over. Some samples:

History shows that serious potential for conflict exists when people in one country begin referring to territory in a neighboring country in proprietary terms and to assert special rights and claims to that territory. (Of Mexican Americans!).

Would the United States be the country that it has been and that it largely remains today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is clearly no. It would not be the United States; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil. (The there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I argument for America's success.)

As their numbers increase, Mexican Americans feel increasingly comfortable with their own culture and often contemptuous of American culture. They demand recognition of their culture and the historic Mexican identity of the U.S. Southwest. They call attention to and celebrate their Hispanic and Mexican past, as in the 1998 ceremonies and festivities in Madrid, New Mexico, attended by the vice president of Spain, honoring the establishment 400 years earlier of the first European settlement in the Southwest, almost a decade before Jamestown. (And this boosts Huntington's nativist argument how?)

But it is Huntington himself who provides us with the most convincing criticism of his argumentum ad metum. Apparently, the US is in danger of turning into Miami. Miami, described thus by Huntington, without an iota of irony:

The Cuban takeover had major consequences for Miami. The elite and entrepreneurial class fleeing the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in the 1960s started dramatic economic development in South Florida. Unable to send money home, they invested in Miami. Personal income growth in Miami averaged 11.5 percent a year in the 1970s and 7.7 percent a year in the 1980s. Payrolls in Miami-Dade County tripled between 1970 and 1995. The Cuban economic drive made Miami an international economic dynamo, with expanding international trade and investment. The Cubans promoted international tourism, which, by the 1990s, exceeded domestic tourism and made Miami a leading center of the cruise ship industry. Major U.S. corporations in manufacturing, communications, and consumer products moved their Latin American headquarters to Miami from other U.S. and Latin American cities. A vigorous Spanish artistic and entertainment community emerged. Today, the Cubans can legitimately claim that, in the words of Prof. Damian Fern·ndez of Florida International University, ìWe built modern Miami,î and made its economy larger than those of many Latin American countries.

God help us! He then asks us, with a straight face, "Is Miami the future for Los Angeles and the southwest United States?" Are we supposed to answer, "Please God No"? I bring this up only because Huntington concludes with an exploration of the "irreconcilable differences" between nativist and Hispanic cultural values. As usual, when he wants to make a disparaging point, he quotes somebody else quoting somebody else, possibly out of context: "Author Robert Kaplan quotes Alex Villa, a third-generation Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona, as saying that he knows almost no one in the Mexican community of South Tucson who believes in 'education and hard work' as the way to material prosperity and is thus willing to 'buy into America.'" Miami must be a miracle. Or this is lazy scholarship.

To state the obvious, the problem is not with the Hispanic perspective but with Huntington's perspective of Hispanics. When Huntington writes, "Americans should not let that change [Hispanicization] happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one," it is clear that he should have appended, "for white people of my persuasion." How can anyone with his apparent intelligence get upset about these demographic tides? It's like howling at a full moon.

To close, all this makes for a wholly new, Post-Huntingtonian reading of that Clash standard:

This indecision's bugging me
Esta indecision me molesta
If you don't want me, set me free
Si no me quieres, librame
Exactly who'm I'm supposed to be
Digame quien tengo ser
Don't you know which clothes even fit me?
Sabes que ropas me queda?
Come on and let me know
Me tienes que decir
Should I cool it or should I blow?
Me debo ir o quedarme?

Should I stay or should I go now?
"Me entra frio por los ojos" (y es verdad)
If I go there will be trouble
Si me voy va a haber peligro
And if I stay it will be double
Si me quedo va a ser doble
So you gotta let me know
Me tienes que decir
Should I stay or should I go?
"Me entra frio por los ojos"