People are to America as Kleenex is to Snot.

[SoCalDem]

Use it, wad it up, and throw it in the trash.

Historians have alternately labeled America as a 'melting pot' or 'salad bowl'. The melting pot myth evaporated when newer waves of immigrants quit being eager to jettison their heritage, languages, and customs. Salad Bowl Nation emerged as the 'new and improved' symbolic image for America. The idea was that melting pot just turned everyone into a boring mooshy concoction , that had no character...Salad bowl meant that everyone could hang onto their own distinct 'self', and yet mix together in an appealing. blended-but-not-congealed mixture, complementing each other without any one entity overpowering the others..

Fear and loathing of "the other" has always run just under our surface, like an underground stream. Revisionist history tells us that we are just one big happy family, eager to lend a hand to all who need it.

In reality, 'groups' have always defined us. We have never been all that friendly to 'the other'. Westerners CAME to this country, looking for freedom, and it did not take long for them to start depriving the people who were already here, of THEIR freedom.

Immigrants were welcomed, as long as they were needed for the dirty work. If they were white, unobtrusive, and strong-bodied, they eventually were allowed to assimilate.

Groups that did not fit the western mold, were only needed for their labor. They were always expected to 'know their place', and have never really been welcomed or accepted. They have been accepted grudgingly, but only temporarily. Every time they have asked for/demanded/sued for/marched for rights, they have been shunned in one way or another.

Slavery was 'ended', but as soon as the freed slaves started to become real citizens, and started to serve in the legislature, new 'laws' appeared, to once again, put them back 'in their place'. It's no accident that almost a hundred years elapsed before those rights were once again in place..but WERE they? Voting rights, unemployment rates, housing, poverty, education...can we really say that the descendants of slaves, and others who came later, but who looked like them have truly 'made it'? Some have, but in a heartbeat, a black lawyer/doctor/professor/businessperson can be spread-eagled on a car hood, if a cop thinks he 'fits a suspect's profile' or looks 'out-of-place' in a neighborhood..

Chinese were welcome enough to build railroads, but the early arrivals were not 'allowed' to bring wives and family. Their labor was all that was wanted, and the ones who did survive, clustered into their own communities for safety, as much as comfort. They were expected to 'go back to China' once their work was done.

We USE people here, but rarely really accept them.

Late Twentieth century immigration that so many bigots rail against is largely due to wars that we either started, or participated in, and failed foreign policies. The influx of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Honduran, and so many others are comprised of people who looked at America as their last best chance to live. Most of these people would have happily stayed in their own countries, had our government not barged in and helped destroy their way of life.

The US has always romanticized our melting-pot image, but all it takes is a walk through any city/town to see that it's not the case in reality. People lead lives separated from people 'not like them'.

The difference now is that vitriol is accepted in more and more circles.

The deliberate nurturing of hatred and fear of the other, is a terrible thing, and it's more prevalent now, than it's been for decades.

When the Japanese were interred, it was out of an extreme fear of people who were never really assimilated into America. They owned businesses, sent their kids to school, owned homes, and were part of the community, but probably most people outside their own groups never really saw them as "Americans". THEY did, but the ones who controlled government did NOT. That's why it was so easy to demonize them and send them away. The Japanese people believed the melting pot myth, and were horrified to learn that they could NEVER be 'real' Americans as long as they looked the only way they could look.

There are people still alive today , who think nothing of calling any Asian person a 'jap'.

Soon after the WTC horror, is didn't take long for people to start the demonization of any darker skinned person, who 'might' be middle-eastern. Sikhs were attacked, Turkish people, Greek people...anyone who 'looked the part' was automatically assumed to be 'one of them'.. and just who is 'them'?.. Why anyone who is not one of 'us', of course.

Now the division has been ratcheted up another notch. The republicans have managed to spread their vile within 'our own ranks'. Now we are more divided than ever. People need to take a daily look at the papers and TV to find out who their 'enemy of the day' is.

There are Christians and then there are CHRISTIANS
There are people who love the war and people who hate the war
There are people who think the economy is just peachy, and people who think it's going straight into the shitter
There are people who think the government knows what's best for you and people who think THEY are the best ones to decide their own path
There are people who think that women should have control over their own bodies, and those who think that legislators know what's best for women
There are people who think that it's OK to hire illegals for cheap wages, but they should not be allowed to breathe 'our' air, or live here
There are people who think that only their votes count, and people who think that all votes should count.

Once upon a time, people minded their own business, and didn't feel the need to critique other people's lives. Most people led busy enough lives that their time was occupied with their own endeavors. These days, there seems to be a hyper-vigilance towards 'other people's business and lives'.

We never really were a melting pot...we only tolerated each other, and tolerance is an endangered commodity these days.

We are being lined up and made to choose.. Styron's heroine had to do that and it drove her insane.

[joemurphy]

1. Excellent post. Tolerance is vital.

I think sometimes that our transient divisions have been cynically exploited by politicians with the net result being that we can no longer achieve any real sort of concensus. My hope is that eventually we can all agree on a few things -- like ending the Iraq War, addressing the deficit, taxing the Rich, rebuilding our infrastructure, educating our children and staying out of no-win foreign adventures.

As for immigration, we've got to do what we can to make Mexico less of a basket case.

[msongs]

3. mexico is what the US could become - & I don't mean immigration ->

mexico is strangled by a small group of extremely wealthy people who hold monopolies on all the important infrastructure
like communications/media, agriculture, sales & distribution, manufacturing, land ownership, the government, the military, and the catholic church.

despite the desires of ordinary people to break free and conduct their own businesses and concerns, they are squelched by the
small group of dominating families and interlocking companies.

deliberately designed lack of opportunity is one of the driving forces behind emigration from mexico into the US. immigrants are free here to send money back to their families in mexico and the dominating monopolists are happy because the poor people get a little pocket money and the pressure on the monopolists is reduced.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/impeachbush.htm

[joemurphy]

4. Good point.

The Rich basically own the U.S. In the United States, in the last survey year, 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of all wealth. The top 5 percent owned more than half of all wealth. In 1998, they owned 59 percent of all wealth. Or to put it another way, the top 5 percent had more wealth than the remaining 95 percent of the population, collectively. Today, the top 20 percent owns over 80 percent of all wealth. In 1998, it owned 83 percent of all wealth. This is a very concentrated distribution.

The bottom 20 percent of the U.S. population basically have zero wealth. They either have no assets, or their debt equals or exceeds their assets. The bottom 20 percent has typically accumulated no savings.

A household in the middle — the median household — has wealth of about $62,000. $62,000 is not insignificant, but if you consider that the top 1 percent of households’ average wealth is $12.5 million, you can see what a difference there is in the distribution.

The richest 10 percent of families in the U.S. own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth.

If you break things down by race, you find something very striking. Most people are aware that African-American families don’t earn as much as white families. The average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family. But the disparity of wealth is a lot greater. The average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family.

We are much more unequal than any other advanced industrial country. Perhaps our closest rival in terms of inequality is Great Britain. But where the top percent in this country own 38 percent of all wealth, in Great Britain it is more like 22 or 23 percent.

What is also remarkable is that this was not always the case. Up until the early 1970s, the U.S. actually had lower wealth inequality than Great Britain, and even less than a country like Sweden. But things have really turned around over the last 25 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of countries have experienced lessening wealth inequality over time. The U.S. is atypical in that inequality has risen so sharply over the last 25 or 30 years.

One reason we have such high levels of inequality, compared to other advanced industrial countries, is because of our tax and, I would add, our social expenditure system. We have much lower taxes than almost every Western European country. And we have a less progressive tax system than almost every Western European country. As a result, the rich in this country manage to retain a much higher share of their income than they do in other countries, and this enables them to accumulate a much higher amount of wealth than the rich in other countries. Certainly our tax system has helped to stimulate the rise of inequality in this country.

We also have a much lower level of income support for poor families than do Western European countries or Canada. Social policy in Europe, Canada and Japan does a lot more to reduce economic disparities created by the marketplace than we do in this country. We have much higher poverty rates than do other advanced industrialized countries.

So yes, we are looking more and more like Mexico.

[msgadget]

2. Maybe it's not 'we'

who have always nurtured these divisions and prejudices but They, the ones with the money and power. Historically They have been the beneficiaries of them.

[SoCalDem]

5. But, supposedly, "we" either elect them or allow them to be elected

"they", being the ones who legislate, "are" us..:cry: We can huff and puff and all the rest, but the ones who sit in DC are the ones who make the rules for all of us.. (They don't often play by those same rules)

[msgadget]

6. That's true

We do share some responsibility for the ones in Washington but there are a great many influencers who have never held elective office and there always have been. Big donors, corporations, religious leaders, bankers, etc. - they're not our fault and they've always been around.

Huffing and puffing is a GOOD thing. Even if you lose, don't you like for your foe to at least feel like s/he's been in a fight? :)