March 20, 2004
Harvard Professor
Huntington is looking under the wrong bed
for the boogieman.
By Patrick Osio,
Jr./HispanicVista.com
How unfortunate it
is to have Samuel P. Huntington, a now
defrocked but formerly renowned Harvard
professor, betray his lofty academic
credentials to espouse his personal
biases using facts contrary to evidence,
suppositions used by white supremacists
and fictionalizing historical accounts.
As the Miami Herald put it, “Racist
in America must be having a field day. At
long last they have found a
world-renowned intellectual to
rationalize their resentment against
America’s rapidly growing Hispanic
community.”
Huntington created
attention in 1993 authoring an essay, The
Clash of Civilizations, wherein following
the demise of Communism, he identified
Islam as the potential force for future
conflict based on cultural differences.
He followed the essay in 1996 with a book
with the same name but of limited
interest. Five years later, after
September 11, 2001, it was revived and
became a best seller.
As a prelude to his
newest book (scheduled release: May
2004), Huntington wrote another essay
published in the March/April issue of Foreign
Policy introducing the book’s
subject. Titled “Who Are We? The
Challenges to America's National
Identity,” Huntington now
identifies the enemy, not of the world,
but of the US as Mexican immigrants and
their subsequent US born generations.
His asserts Mexicans
and other Latinos:
Reject the
Anglo-Protestant values that built the
American dream
Have not
assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture,
forming instead their own political and
linguistic enclaves.
Mexicans and
other Latinos refuse to surrender Spanish
language as have historically other
immigrant groups surrendered their
ancestral language.
The reconquista
(re-conquest) of the Southwest
United States by Mexican immigrants is
well underway.
Huntington, however,
discloses the cause of his personal
biases against Mexican Americans with
these words: “Mexican Americans
no longer think of themselves as members
of a small minority who must accommodate
the dominant group and adopt its culture.”
In other words, we are no longer
subservient; our people are proud to
acknowledge their ancestral heritage and
are either relearning or freely using
Spanish as their second language.
According to
Huntington the Anglo-Protestant culture’s
key elements include the English
language; Christianity; religious
commitment; the work ethic; dissenting
Protestant values of individualism and
the belief that humans have the ability
and the duty to try to create a heaven on
earth. So he sees Mexican Americans as
‘culturally inferior’ and
speaking Spanish as a ‘language
disability,’ and that
white-Anglo-Protestants are the only ones
with the right attributes. The others
immigrant groups learned from them, but
Mexicans refuse to learn (continue to bow
down).
According to
Huntington, Anglo-Protestants created the
US – they then allowed others to
come in – proviso: forget your
personal ancestral history, surrender
your culture and language and adopt the
Anglo-Protestant culture created in the
US. Ignoring historical facts, and
contributions from other groups, and he
also believes this was done smoothly and
without internal conflict.
He ignores that in
those early days German and English
competed as the potential national
language. English won, and German (and
other foreign languages) was forbidden to
be taught – defying teachers went to
jail.
He claims the Irish,
Polish, Italian, Jew, German, Russian and
other immigrants adapted to their new
surroundings quickly assimilating, and
(get this one) they did not live in
ethnic enclaves. He also supposes that
African Americans joined the mainstream
with the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights
Act and harmony reigns.
Mexicans on the
other hand – just refuse to adapt.
And refuse to be educated, and refuse to
stop using Spanish, and refuse to abandon
their culture, and live in enclaves. And
he also complains – look what Cubans
have done to Miami!
James Crawford (“Bilingual
Education: History, Politics, Theory and
Practice” -1999), wrote: “Contrary
to myth, immigrant children were more
likely to sink than swim in
English-language classrooms. In 1908,
just 13 percent of such students who were
enrolled in New York City schools at age
twelve went on to high school (as
compared with 32 percent of white
children whose parents were native born.”
Huntington does not
consider that Mexican immigrants not
unlike European immigrants are proceeding
through the same path in language and
educational acquisition. The newcomer
adults suffer the consequences of
non-English, and limited education
opportunity. The second generation
improves, subsequent generations continue
to improve.
In his own words,
“…results for the U.S.-born
second generation. Just 11.6 percent
spoke only Spanish or more Spanish than
English, 25.6 percent spoke both
languages equally, 32.7 percent more
English than Spanish, and 30.1 percent
only English. In the same study, more
than 90 percent of the U.S.-born people
of Mexican origin spoke English fluently.
Nonetheless, in 1999, some 753,505
presumably second-generation students in
Southern California schools who spoke
Spanish at home were not proficient in
English.” He presumes indicating he
doesn’t know, and does not consider
the failure of the educational system,
rather places the blame on the students.
He contradicts his
premises showing that a study of US-born
second generation Mexican Americans 11.6
percent spoke only Spanish or more
Spanish than English; 25.6 percent spoke
both languages equally and 62.8 percent
more English than Spanish or only
English. Another study, Huntington points
out indicates that more than 90 percent
of Mexican Americans spoke English
fluently.
Mr. Huntington, the
boogieman under your bed is not Mexican;
it’s your own mind.
_______________________________________________________
Patrick Osio, Jr. is
Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com).
Contact at: posiojr@aol.com
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