Glen's hypothetical counter argument - Irish and jews don't get asked to deface or abandon their heritage in order to take their place in the US order - is actually plainly incorrect on its face! Every other white ethnic group in fact did have to go through a very painful ful process of amalgation and acculturation to the "mainstream." Norman Podhoretz called it "the brutal bargain" - abandon your history, language, heritage and holidays (aside from what anemic shadows and foodways can be assimilated into the common vernacular) and you can be as American as someone with an unbroken line of descent back to the Mayflower! White ethnics are massively deracinated, even including Jews, who are massively distinct from their prichly, traditionalist forebears (haredim notwithstanding, as the exception that proves the rule).
The punchline is, this process is also well-described by the modern race-theorists who describe the process of how "whiteness" as an identity separate from Britishness, Frenchness, Germanness, etc. was created. They have bonkers ideological priors, but not all of their historical analysis is bad. Wouldn't the ultimate irony be assimilating "blackness" - the ultimate "enemy" of this "white" concept - to a general "Americanness" which supersedes and subsumes "whiteness" as well?
Traveling around the U.S. reveals that we are not merely a former British colony, but also various other antecedents. Louisiana people are French. Ohio people are German. Florida people are Spanish. And by and large they have been asked to abandon their heritage.
My Hebrew name would have been Johanan, but like many Jewish immigrants, my grandfather and namesake was "John" for the sake of fitting in.
I thought the overall debate was interesting, but the side of post-racial thinking was basically asking black people to do what "white" people, to a significant extent, have already done. Whether this is the right path is a good debate.
Glen's hypothetical counter argument - Irish and jews don't get asked to deface or abandon their heritage in order to take their place in the US order - is actually plainly incorrect on its face! Every other white ethnic group in fact did have to go through a very painful ful process of amalgation and acculturation to the "mainstream." Norman Podhoretz called it "the brutal bargain" - abandon your history, language, heritage and holidays (aside from what anemic shadows and foodways can be assimilated into the common vernacular) and you can be as American as someone with an unbroken line of descent back to the Mayflower! White ethnics are massively deracinated, even including Jews, who are massively distinct from their prichly, traditionalist forebears (haredim notwithstanding, as the exception that proves the rule).
The punchline is, this process is also well-described by the modern race-theorists who describe the process of how "whiteness" as an identity separate from Britishness, Frenchness, Germanness, etc. was created. They have bonkers ideological priors, but not all of their historical analysis is bad. Wouldn't the ultimate irony be assimilating "blackness" - the ultimate "enemy" of this "white" concept - to a general "Americanness" which supersedes and subsumes "whiteness" as well?
Same thing I was going to say.
Traveling around the U.S. reveals that we are not merely a former British colony, but also various other antecedents. Louisiana people are French. Ohio people are German. Florida people are Spanish. And by and large they have been asked to abandon their heritage.
My Hebrew name would have been Johanan, but like many Jewish immigrants, my grandfather and namesake was "John" for the sake of fitting in.
I thought the overall debate was interesting, but the side of post-racial thinking was basically asking black people to do what "white" people, to a significant extent, have already done. Whether this is the right path is a good debate.
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