John's Blog: On Ethnic Tensions

On Ethnic Tensions

In his 'blog essay "Feeling Lucky", Tim Bray discusses the fortuitous lack of ethnic tensions in Vancouver, despite the many cultures in evidence, and ventures some theories on why this may be so so. I felt I had some additional comments on why this might be so, or, more accurately, why it might not be so in other places.

I'll start by making the somewhat obvious conjecture that it will be easier for immigrant groups to integrate into a new culture if it was their choice to be there in the first place. Not that leaving the old country would have been their first choice in an ideal world, but nonetheless it was their choice (or that of their forebears) to "escape" to what they hoped would be a better life elsewhere.

On the other side of the coin, as an American, I think that two of the groups that have had the hardest time integrating into my country over many generations are precisely the groups that historically did not join the culture by choice: Descendents of African slaves brought here forceably, and descendents of the native peoples who were here first but were by-and-large forceably integrated, displaced, or eliminated. It's hard to put this into words, especially since it is not my personal experience as a 4th generation or so English/German mix, but it seems to me that the effects in these ethnic groups of this profoundly negative introduction to what has become our dominant North American culture still linger even down to the current generation. In some cases, this can take the form of continued hopelessness, cynicism, and lack of self-esteem. In any case, it's very subtle and I can't explain it too much more than this.

These groups, more than most others, I think, have had historically to form their own subcultures, and keep more to themselves, as a method of self-defense. This is more than just establishing an Irish-American club, or living in a "Little Italy" or "Little China". It has been harder, because of historical circumstance, for these groups to trust the dominant culture, hence to understand it or get along with it, much less try hard to integrate with it. And as a "white American", I can attest that it is harder for me to know how to approach American blacks and Native Americans than, say, the 2nd-generation Irish-American kid who lived down the street from me growing up. (Note: the right answer is "no differently", but intellectually knowing that does not guarentee that I can do it socially.) I know that we really have more shared experience than not, but the lack of interaction (on all of our parts) tends to only foster uncertainty and hesitation, not to mention distrust, ignorance, and even hatred among the more paranoid and scape-goating among us.

It must be said that if it sounds like I am placing all the blame on those groups for "not interacting more", that is not my intention at all. Real reasons for suspicion of the dominant culture are well-documented, from the post-reconstruction Ku Klux Klan, to real-estate "redlining" in the mid-20th century, to land grabs, to current racist groups. Bottom line, I think, is that historical difficulty in getting along is not easy to overcome. Conflict feeds negative energy all around, which lead to more conflict, in a vicious cycle.

An historical footnote: We don't hear much positive stuff in America about historical relations with our indigineous peoples, but I've been doing some interesting reading lately on pre-Revolution America and its relation with the Iroquois confederacy. When Euro-Americans numbered less than a million, and had penetrated less than a few hundred miles inland from the East Coast, relations with the Native Americans were (wisely) very friendly. They helped us defeat the French is the mid-18th century, and not only taught us a lot about survival in the New World, but also very much influenced the Founding Fathers with their system of government.

Labels: politics

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