America's Inherent Multiculturalism

One central theme that I go back to again and again, when it comes to American racists, and which I have always found so strange, is the manner in which these people often don't seem to understand their own history, as "white people". They especially do not seem to understand - in my opinion- their history as the descendants of white people who literally fled from "White Land". 

White Land, of course, is Europe, where - last I heard - all white people originated and were initially "created". Europe is, to ths day, as I have written before on my blog, still a majority white place. Most major cities in Europe are not at all like major cities in the United States: They are usually 90% white, if not more. In some European cities, like Rome for instance, you will hear a lot about immigration in certain conversations; but what is never said is that the majority of immigration to those places is just of other white people. Now, Paris and London -- two European cities which are often referenced in American media as being "overrun by refugees" -- are fairly diverse places, but Paris and London also are not at all indicative of the "average" European city. Paris, in the first place, is essentially regarded as the biggest capital of all of Europe, and as for London, it's important to always remember that England is not even a part of continental Europe (it's an island) and it also gave its language to many different parts of the world ... like India and Jamaica and so forth. Once you put those two cities aside, life in Europe looks pretty white.

 Therefore, when you're talking to a European, you can be pretty sure that they never had the same experience that I did in the States, where I went to school from 9th grade to 12th grade, in a school that was half black. For most Europeans this is absolutely unheard of, no matter how poor or not poor they are, and no matter where they are living. I will again stress: Anyone - European or American-- who would even attempt to make the argument that the average European city is just as diverse as the average city in the States has no idea what they are talking about. The phenomenon that is, in America, known as "white flight" (when whites fled from all the cities in fear of minorities) never occurred in Europe. Nobody "Flees" to the countryside of a European nation becaues they see minorities moving in. Nobody goes anywhere. There is not even really a sense in many European countries, truth be told, that the country living lifestyle is "wildly superior" to the urban lifestyle. It's all just another place to live. Most Europeans, truth be told, would probably prefer to live in the center of the bustling city, primarily because most Europeans like to have friends. In America this is not the case: the country and the deep suburb, where nobody walks and nothing happens, is the best place on Earth.

 Indeed in the States, this is a deeply prominent idea, if not one of downright obsession for people. In fact, I often have remarked to people that success in the States, for many Republican type folks, seems to actually be measured not by how big your house is, but by how far away you have managed to move, from wherever blacks might be living. The further you are, the more successful it seems the white Americans will thinkyou are.

Why do I find all of this so important to mention of course? Well, the reason is very simple: Many racist  white people you will talk to in the States, many of whom are often Republican, generally always seem to sort of "imply" that the main problem with many American cities is that these cities are not filled with white people ..."like they used to be". In other words, the American racist seems to think that everything in the States would be just dandy, if only this one element -- its diversity -- was removed. This argument makes next to no sense, of course, since we all know that these peoples ancestors, as I say, were all originally in Europe, where every city is and certainly was all white, and they FLED from them all the same.

If a place being all white was the answer, what then, exactly, was the problem for these people who fled from White Land in 1905, in 1860, in 1777, in 1650 and so on? Why were so many of these people so willing to jump into a diversified country -- where anything could happen-- instead of stay in their ethnicities safe and secure homeland, if everyone being the same is the only answer to every problem? What on earth were these people thinking? Even when you go as far back as the 1500s, you really have to think about just who these people were who left Spain and so forth for this continent. They had a homeland; they left it. They left it for someting NEW.... and unpredictable....

If you are to try and look at everything from the perspective that the American white supremacist seems to be looking at it all from, then the people who decided to come to America made the absolute worst decision of all time, because they went from a place that literally was an "all white ethno state"  to a totally diverse country cut up along many, many different cultural lines. From the racist perspective, it is easy to immediately jump to the conclusion that these peoplee---their own ancestors--were literally the biggest fools of all time, for making this decision to leave White Land for this strange land. After all,I think the reader has to consider a few things here about White Land in relation to America, "strange land": In the first place, concocting an argument about keeping European countries free of immigration is far easier than concocting the same argument about the States (no such argument is valid, in my opinion)...and number two, the borders in Europe are also just far easier to keep clear of "Random peoples" anyways, in comparison to Americas (so far as I see it). Therefore, we see that anyone who was really gung ho for a White Land lifestyle really would be a bit of a moron to flee from Europe, for the American continent. They already had a considerably better chance to live an all white life; and they passed it up. They came to a place that is and always has been "NO MANS LAND". 

Yet .. this is the other incredibly strange thing about the American racist and his ridiculous approach to the country and the decision his ancestor made: His ancestor is never to be spoken badly of, and his ancestor, he will tell you, most certainly was not a moron for coming to this country, and leaving White Land. If anything, the American racists often seem to believe literally the exact opposite of their ancestor that fled Europe: It was a genius move, and it was glorious, and the white ancestor is to be put on a pedestal for having fled and left. His white ancestor who fled White Land is apparently smarter than all the other people who just stayed in White Land. His ancestor was adventurous and courageous. His ancestor went looking for a better life. He is to be commended. He is certianly not t obe called a moron. Yet, under the ideology of the white supremacist, does not that ancestor sound like an absolute moron? Does he not sound like someone who went stepping into the worst country he could possibly go to? Again and again it must be said, it must be screamed as high as the heavens: The American white supremacist is yearning for something that his ancestor already had, and purposefully  abandoned. He is yearning for a "homeland". He doesn't seem to understand that the United States can never be a homeland. Ever. It is, as I said before, NO MANS LAND.

Trying to call the American continent a homeland - for anyone except the indigenous people -- would be like trying to say the Moon was Earth, just because some Earthlings have been living on it for a few hundred years. It's absurd.It's absolutely absurd and it will never make any sense. Biologically speaking, some homo sapiens literally became white , as a result of moving out of Africa and to Europe, where it was much colder etc, however many thousands of years ago. No one turned white in America, however. Therefore, it is not a homeland for the white race. If anything, whats happening in America is that a whole new interesting "race" is being created, and this is a mixed race. It is an exciting first in many ways - at least on the scale it is happening here! To my mind, there is nothing more American than someone who can say something like "...I am a mix of Cherokee, Japanese, Ethiopian, Nigerian, Italian, German, and Inuit". That to me is the real definition of an American!

But, alas, the illogical white supremacist/white nationalist will be very angry with me for my idea that America is No Man's Land, and that it can never be a "Homeland". He will tell me that of course it can be this thing, and in fact, he will also probably tell me that, for him, it "already is a homeland". Well, in my opinion, if he really feels this way, then I think he ought to begin to understand, as I'm stressing,  that an enormous aspect of his "Homeland" is that it is a multicultural place, that has been filled with multicultural blood literally since its inception.

 America and the discovery of it is so intimately connected with multiculturalism, as well as "non white peoples", in fact, that, for the most part, the entire coinage of a term like "white man" or "white boy" etcetc., actually goes hand in hand with the entire American discovery period. In other words, white Europeans generally weren't conscious of themselves as "white skinned people" until the entire Sailing age/New World discovery occurred. If the white supremacist was able to actually read and peruse his own literature, he might know this already. Terms like "white boy' etcetc start to pop up in 1800's American literature, ala Huck Finn, and terms like white man of course start to pop up in English/American and some Spanish literature, after the Sailing Age commences and America is found (and subsaharan Africa as well). In some very real sense, the Sailing Age was the first period in world history when "everyone first met each other".

 Prior to this, no one was even really thinking in this multicultural way. America was literally the beginning of it. Even all the way back in the 1600s! The 1400s! Many people in the States, for example, I have noticed, seem to think that the "non-white" element in America is something that just started to happen "recently". They have this vague idea , I hav esometimes felt, that America was some all white place, just like Europe, prior to, say, 1955. This is absurd of course: American stories have been filled with non-white peoples since 1492, when Christopher Colombus sailed the ocean blue.  So, honestly, if you really don't like multiculturalism,and you're in America, you are literally in the worst possible country on Earth. You're literally living in the country that began multiculturalism....

All of this of course leads to another, even wider discussion, which to my mind is a discussion about the American past, and the way many people in this country seem to interpret it. How is it possible that so many people in this country, even sometimes actual "minorities" themselves, seem to be convinced that the American past was as white as snow, just like Europe? How in hell is this happening ? Well, I suppose the answer is very simple: the Media , and especially old media, has contributed to this false reading of America in an ENORMOUS way. Essentially, the simple explanation here is that, non-white people were indeed always present in America's reality, but they were "conveniently" blocked out of its media and its "dream" of itself. For example, when it comes to something modern like the hip hop music, many people seem utterly convinced that this is the first time young whites have ever been eager to listen to black music.

This is ridiculous, of course: American whites have been listening to black music, agian, since America's inception. They were listening to it in the 1800s. They were listening to it in the 1950s with Elvis. They were listening to it in the 1970s. They're listening to it now. And yet... the general idea remains with each passing generation, even today, that it's "always the first time the whites are interested in black music". Even young blacks in America are led to believe this: They're--at least many of them are --  convinced that hip hop is the first time they've really "spoken" across the tracks. It's not true of course,as I am saying. The only thing that is true is that the memories of the blacks and the indigenous peoples, as well as Asians etc, in a period like the 1950s and earlier, were all conveniently erased. This is the biggest problem of all, you see...it is this erasure, and thus this idea that the American past "was once white", that seems to be leading to all of the problems for many new up and coming Americans. They're reading the American story as though it's vaguely European or something, even though it's anything but...

 I firmly believe that this issue is much like the issue I tried to talk about another time, which concerned gays and liberalism in general: Many people in this century, even gays themselves, seem to seriously be convinced that gays "have no history" outside of recent & late 20th century history, with performers like Prince and Madonna, etcetc. Just like the case with the multiculturalism of America, however, this limited history is also not the truth: Gay people have been around since the beginning of history, and have been a prominent part of many vital historical periods (like, say, the Italian Renaissance in the 1500s) and yet...many modern people are so clueless as to history, that they really believe gays just popped up in the 70s, and rapidly "multiplied" from there. Its a false interpretation of history which I am beyond convinced is leading to their fear. If these people who identify as conservative were only able to understand just how long this has all been going on, without the world coming to a violent end, they would probably have an easier time accepting it. After all, the core tenet of conservatism is to preserve the past. Well...once you make it obvious that gays and multiculturalism has been a part of our past for a long time now...you might have an easier time convincing these people.....