Prelude
Though Mr. Thomas praised the
philosophical, scientific, and literary accomplishments of other cultures, one
has to conclude that he was at heart a tribalist. He was called a racist. He
called himself a culturalist, yet he did not believe his people (Western
Europeans) were superior to all other groups, though he certainly believed that
they were superior to certain cultures because of their inferior intellectual
and moral development or because their way of life was morally and
intellectually degraded. Judging from his class lectures, two peoples he
admired and respected were the ancient Greeks and Native Americans. What he
respected most about the European tradition was its philosophy and science and
its goal to create a society based on the principles of law, equality, and
respect for individuals, especially women, who have only recently achieved the
economic opportunities, political rights, and legal status accorded to men.
However, he also understood that the behavior Europeans and Americans displayed
toward other peoples has been immoral and criminal. Though an atheist, Mr.
Thomas had a great respect for Eastern religions, especially for what he called
the godless religions of Buddhism and Taoism. It is ironic that as a tribalist
Mr. Thomas was most critical of his own people—Americans. Nevertheless, his
view of other cultures was ethnocentric, though more Western European than
American. If I had to choose one country from Europe that represented Mr.
Thomas’ ideal, it would be France, a nation he believed aspired to the
universal embodiment of reason and beauty.
That brings me to the question of what
was his belief concerning different cultural groups and their relationship to
one another. As far as I can determine, he believed that every culture had a
right to preserve its ethnic and cultural identity. Every citizen deserves to live
in a place rooted in the earth where he or she feels safe and secure and
culturally at home. That to live among one’s own people is essential to feeling
at home in the world. This is especially true for ordinary people. Wealthy elites
may not feel a need to live among their own historical people because they
belong to a subculture that transcends ethnic and national identities. Such
people might consider themselves cosmopolitan even though they socialize mostly
with others who share their affluent lifestyle. Thus, I would expect them to be
more accepting of multiculturalism as long as their primary group is not
threatened. They are cosmopolitans who are free from national ideas, prejudices,
and loyalties and for the most part remain aloof from any particular national
homeland, history, or identity.
It is clear that Mr. Thomas believed
that American culture had been defined by and consisted of three dominant
groups: American Indians, African American descendants of slaves, and European
Americans. There are other groups in the country—such as Asians, Hispanics and
Jews—but he considered them ethnic and cultural outsiders who live on the
margins of American history and culture even though they may play an
influential role in contemporary America. He believed that America is unique in
that it defines itself as a nation of immigrants, but he also seemed to believe
that though the country was built by immigrants, at some point in its history
its ethnic-cultural identity crystallized. From that time on, certain groups of
immigrants violated America ethnic-cultural integrity, especially when the new
immigrant cultures are ethnically and historically other than the three main
cultures America evolved from—Native Americans, Europeans, and the decedents of
American slaves. As far as I can tell, Mr. Thomas believed America is trinity
society consisting of the three unique ethnic-cultural groups, each of which
seeks to sustain for itself homogenous regions but also shares with the other
two a common history that is the sacred substance of America.
Is he correct that most people prefer
to live among their own? Perhaps the answer is to be found in how well the
melting-pot, which is contrary to tribalism, has worked in America. Native
Americans have resisted attempts to force them to integrate into the American
mainstream and very much prefer to live among their own in spite of the social
costs of doing so—high rates of poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse. European
Americans have sought to maintain their ethnic-cultural homogeneity. Black
leaders have complained about segregation, but since the end of segregation
most blacks have not abandoned their communities in order to integrate into
white communities. Their main complaint seems to have been that the policy of separate-but-equal
segregation has limited their access to jobs and education, as well to private
establishments such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, and so on. Segregation
was separate but never equal. In other words, blacks want institutional
integration. They want to be able to work where whites work and to attend
college where whites attend college, but do not necessarily want to live apart
from their own ethnic-cultural group.
Thus the desire of black Americans to
integrate into white communities seems to be motivated not by wanting to
separate themselves from their own people but to live in an environment that is
safe and wholesome for themselves and their children. Whites, on the other
hand, see black culture as a threat to their own values. Thus, it seems the two
cultures are distinct and to some degree incompatible with one another.
What of the immigrants that have come
to America during the past century? They come for the benefits America offers,
not to dissolve in the melting pot. As Mr. Thomas says, they come to work,
shop, and play and to create ethnic-cultural enclaves. This has resulted in
discarding the melting pot idea as well as what it means to be an American. It
seems that being an American today is more about having official status, such
as citizenship, than about history, language, or culture. Native Americans,
black Americans, and European Americans share a common historical experience
that has woven them together into a single fabric. Any member of one group can
see in the other groups the historical role their people played in the creation
of America. The building of America was a tragic affair for Native Americans
and black Americans, and it was not easy for white Americans. But the tragedy
and suffering they endured during the building of the nation bind them into a
single culture. According to Mr. Thomas they are the only true members of the
American family.
The new people are interlopers,
outsiders. Most are indifferent to American history because their people have
their own history. Some, such as the Mexicans, are hostile to it. The
Mexican-American War, which resulted in America’s appropriation of a large part
of Mexican territory, continues to cause Mexicans to look upon America more as
an old adversary than a friend. It does seem that an undeclared war between the
two peoples continues today. The immigrants from Europe share with white
Americans a common culture. The Europeans established the first colonies in
what would become America and defined the American worldview. Mr. Thomas was troubled
most by what he saw as an assault upon America’s ethnic-cultural integrity. He
feared the emergence of a multicultural melting pot in which Americans would
become just another ethnic minority. He would say that today what is being
dispersed by the influx of alien cultures is America’s cultural soul, formed
over the centuries but now disappearing from the scene, soon to be relegated to
the history books as something that once was but is no more. He believed
America was becoming a nation without a soul, a place where various cultures
gather—some hostile, most indifferent to one another. They come to set up shop
and to do business with one another. They are not creating a new nation but a
mélange of many cultures, which multiculturalists see as having a beauty
similar to that of a rainbow, but which tribalists like Mr. Thomas consider to
be a defilement of a national work of art created by Americans’ ancestors.
As Dr. Yerkes says in the memoir, the
new aliens retain their ethnic-cultural homelands. Mexicans have Mexico;
Chinese, China; Vietnamese, Vietnam; Iranians, Iran; Jews, Israel; and so on.
Only Americans lose their cultural homeland. Mr. Thomas discusses numerous
times black Americans and white Americans being driven out of their communities
by invading newcomers. On their reservations, only Native Americans are safe from
invasion. Invasion is one of the central themes of Mr. Thomas’ nightmarish view
of the demise of the old America. Unfortunately, the invading other people’s
homelands is a universal theme of human history, quintessentially described the
Biblical Book of Joshua, which describes the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the
destruction and ethnic cleansing of Canaanite populations. Europeans and
Americans did the same to Native American populations. The Romans dispersed the
Jews living Israel and European Jews reinvaded the Palestinian homeland in
modern times. Invasion has been the humanity’s most self-destructive behavior.
Invasions have ignited the ire of Muslims against America and Europe. Americans
forget that Afghanistan has been invaded and occupied by the British, Soviets,
and now Americans. There is not a single homeland in the Middle East that has
not been invaded and colonized by Europeans. Many of the old European colonies
achieved independence only since the end of World War II. In many parts of the
world the colonization became permanent—North America, New Zealand, Australia,
Tahiti, Hawaii, South Africa, Palestine, and elsewhere.
Bin Laden and Mr. Thomas share the
same view of the importance of homeland: that the ethnic-cultural homeland is
sacrosanct. Europeans fought wars into the twentieth century to protect their homelands
from one another. Today their nationalistic patriotism seems to have waned, and
for reasons of economics or guilt they have allowed their nations to be invaded
and occupied by millions of immigrants whose cultures are dissimilar,
incompatible, and even hostile in relation to the European host cultures. Mr.
Thomas finds it ironic that as former British colonies seek to purify their
cultures by purging them of reminders of their former colonizer, Britain itself
has opened its doors to the peoples it once colonized, a process called
reverse-colonization. Apparently, it was assumed that the alien cultures would
eagerly assimilate into the European host culture, but Mr. Thomas would say
that assumption was based on naiveté and cultural arrogance.
He would have immediately given the
example of the Native Americans refusal to adopt the European-American lifestyle.
Americans considered the life of the Indians to be harsh, primitive, and
lacking the benefits provided by industry and technology. He would say it was
absurd to believe the Indians would have wanted to give up a way of living that
was so much a part of the primordial world of nature in order to live in
suburban track homes or city apartments. The resistance to the modern way of life
has in fact been a central theme in much of America’s art and literature. Can
one imagine Daniel Boone or even a modern-day cowboy wanting to trade his
rough-and-ready existence to work in an office and live in the suburbs no
matter how affluent that way of life might be? To do so would be tantamount to
selling one’s soul, surrendering one’s spiritual self for another that is designed
and constructed from the commercial marketplace of consumer goods and popular
forms of entertainment. A way of life is replaced by a commercially acquired
lifestyle.
It may be inappropriate to speak on my
own behalf in Mr. Thomas’ story, but I am not simply the editor of his memoir.
I was his student and after having spent months reading and preparing his
manuscript for publication I feel that I have been drawn into his life and way
of thinking. Because Mr. Thomas has caused me to reconsider my beliefs
concerning the many topics and issues he addresses, especially that of
immigration, I believe it is not inappropriate for me to comment on the problem
of immigration from my perspective, though within the context of what Mr.
Thomas has said in his memoir. I will not speak for or against his position but
only explore our different ways of seeing the problem. I am not sure, for
example, that the high level of immigration that the U.S. has recently
experienced is a problem per se. I suppose that will depend on how it works out
in the future. The fact is millions of Americans like Mr. Thomas believe that
runaway immigration has become a serious threat to the nation’s social and
cultural integrity. The support he has received indicates that much.
So now I feel I must go beyond my
teacher and offer a different perspective of the problem. I do this not to be
critical but because of the series of events—his killing the Mexican, writing
the memoir, and then being murdered in the facility, as he called the jail where
he was incarcerated, have left me dismayed and puzzled. The question that comes
to my mind is “What is happening to America?” I do not have an answer, but I
can offer my own experience and thinking on the matter. I was shaken by what
Mr. Thomas did and by what happened to him. And now I feel I must express
myself, and I do so as his former student. In class Mr. Thomas always sought to
get his students to express themselves. He could be very provocative, and he enjoyed
hearing what students had to say on issues. He called the back-and-forth
dialogue the dialectical approach to truth that Socrates favored. He said it is
not the best approach for determining empirical truth, though dialectic
discussion has always played a role in science by offering various perspectives
on a theory. Ultimately experimentation and empirical investigation are the
only reliable approaches for determining whether a scientific theory is
credible.
However, when it comes to beliefs that
are not a matter of empirical fact, but matters of morality, aesthetics, and
value, the dialectic method can be very useful. For one thing, its approach to
issues is very democratic. Everyone has his or her say. That is what Mr. Thomas
always wanted in class—for every student to have his or her say. So now I wish
to have my say about the issue of immigration that so troubled Mr. Thomas.
I do not identify with Mr. Thomas’
tribalism. It is not that I believe his desire to preserve what he considered
to be America’s cultural identity is wrong or misguided but because I do not
feel what he felt. I grew up in a suburb that lacks a distinct cultural
identity. It is just a place where my family and I live. The streets are
indistinguishable except for their names and are lined with newish
cookie-cutter houses. There are three schools located beyond walking distance
so except for a few students who rode bikes we never saw students walking to
and from school. Though the schools are considered quite good as public schools
go, my parents sent me and my siblings to Fairmont Academy, an expensive
college preparatory school. My parents are professionals who make enough money
to put them in the upper middle class, but they have had to manage their
expenditures carefully. Except on weekends our street was quiet and mostly
empty of human activity. One would see joggers in the morning and late
afternoon, a woman pushing a baby carriage, or a couple women walking together.
Many of the families had children but they mostly stayed indoors or played in
the backyard. A couple of miles from the house is a small, convenient shopping
center consisting of a bank, supermarket, a Starbucks, and other franchises.
Thus, the area where I grew up is a safe, comfortable, convenient living
environment, though it is very much an automobile dependent community. I am
reluctant to call my suburb a community or even a neighborhood. I suppose it is
what is called a bedroom community.
The other place where I spent most of
my time during the day was Fairmont Academy, which has a multicultural student
body. The school constantly preached that its diversity was a great benefit to
everyone. And I believe that aspect of the school appealed to my parents,
though more from the point of view of practicality than cultural enrichment.
Professionals—such as doctors, lawyers, or business people—are required to work
with people who come from different cultures. My parents told me to take
Spanish not for cultural enrichment but because it would be a useful language
to know. My brother and sister also took Spanish because they were told the
same thing. My sister also took French, not for its usefulness but for its
cultural appeal. The school had assemblies that celebrated diversity and it was
obvious that teachers were required to take diversity into account when designing
their curriculum. Also, throughout the year there were days devoted to
celebrating different cultures. There was international week, during which
foods from different cultures were served in the cafeteria, performances from
different cultures were given each day in school assemblies, and in-class
presentations or discussions were devoted to the topic of diversity.
However, I always thought the agenda
of the various on-campus celebrations of diversity to be a form of propaganda
intended to promote tolerance. I do not believe all the preaching of the value
of diversity made any significant difference in the way students thought about
people from other cultures. Our parents had taught us to be respectful of
others. And at school the students got along. Mocking someone for his or her
ethnicity would have been criticized as being boorish behavior. Intolerant
language or behavior would have been criticized more as a lack of self-control
or dignified behavior than for its intolerance. In other words, for the most
part students at Fairmont Academy treated one another with respect, but at the
end of the school day each cultural group went its own way. And that was even
truer during the summers. So what had been achieved by the time students
graduated? They certainly were respectful of one another and most would
consider expressions of intolerance as a lack of sophistication. Did the
students have a greater appreciation of cultures different from their own? I
would say that for most students the answer was no. The attraction to other
cultures remained superficial—their food or music, for example. The old
stereotypes remained but were less likely to be revealed except among close
friends.
My college experience has been
similar, though the administration does not preach diversity. It does not have
to. The student body is made up of students from all over the world and from
various ethnic and cultural groups. However, I would not say the cultural
diversity enriches the environment, nor does it detract from it. Just as people
do in the greater society off campus, students go about their
business—attending classes, working, and pursuing a personal life.
I have really never understood exactly
what the benefits of diversity are supposed to be for Americans. The benefit
most often pointed to is the variety of foods available when dining out. That
is hardly a profound benefit. I do appreciate other cultures, but they are most
meaningful in their native environment. Here they are superficial, clichéd
representations of the home cultures. The barrio in San Diego is hardly Mexico.
Little Italy is hardly Italy. Little Saigon is hardly Saigon. They are nothing
more than caricatures of the home country. Mr. Thomas is correct when he says
the real benefit is to the economy—cheap labor, an ever expanding economy, and
certain technical job skills Americans avoid acquiring. At the service end of
the economy there are what might called low- and semi-skilled drudgery jobs
that are essential but do not appeal greatly to most Americans. Then there are
the immigrants who are brought in by universities and corporations for their
technical, scientific, and mathematical expertise. The most popular college
majors among American students are business, social sciences, history, health
sciences, and education. Other areas of study are security services, parks,
recreation, and leisure studies. It seems obvious that American students are
attracted to jobs that are lucrative or have high enjoyment value. The U.S.
Government also needs native speakers for its overseas operations.
The benefits in these cases are clear,
but hardly ones that have to do with average Americans’ multicultural
experience. If cultural difference means anything special, it does so mostly to
the immigrants. Living in the U.S. highlights for them their cultural identity,
perhaps enhancing its meaning. Living in in the U.S. strengthens immigrants’
ties to their homeland and to their cultural identity. If Mr. Thomas is an
example, the response of millions of Americans to the presence of millions of
immigrants who have come to live in the U.S. has not been positive. It
certainly strengthens their patriotism and national pride, but the mood is not
celebratory but fearful, despondent, and angry. Americans feel threatened as a
people and society. Given that mindset I do not know how Americans like Mr.
Thomas will ever be convinced that diversity is good for them and their nation.
From what I have said the reader must
think that I agree with Mr. Thomas, and I do on the particulars. It is my response
that is different. My attachment to America is not what you would call strongly
patriotic. I believe I am fortunate to have been born in America because of the
opportunities it offers me to successfully pursue my goals in life. I am not
sure but perhaps I feel that way because that is how America presents itself to
the world—the land of opportunity, not the land having a particular history. I
know that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited in some high schools, but not at Fairmont
Academy. Occasionally, the national anthem
was performed, but I was not especially moved by it. At Fairmont Academy
the emphasis was on multiculturalism, not patriotism. The two seem incompatible.
If there was a time as a young adult that I felt strongly patriotic it was
during the 9-11 attacks and for a time after. Those attacks, however, did not
transform me into a fervid patriot. I did not join the military. I felt that
the terrorists had committed a crime and should be punished for what they did,
but unlike the president I did not think that America had come under attack by
a nation, such as when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I knew there would be no
enemy armies invading the U.S. I never feared for my safety, nor did I believe
Americans were in grave danger.
More importantly, no one I knew felt
threatened. And I understood why we felt that way. The terrorists who carried
out the attacks had to plan and prepare for months to carry out complicated
attacks using America’s own planes. We also knew that if another attack were to
occur it too would be a local incident. The nation was not under military
attack nor was it threatened as a whole. As it turned out, the men responsible
for the attacks were hiding out in caves in Afghanistan. The government and
media tried to whip the country into a state of hysteria, and it worked on many
people; but my friends and I calmly continued to go about our business. We were
not looking over our shoulders for terrorists.
When caution was required it was not
for fear of being attacked by terrorists. The greatest danger we faced was
being injured or killed in an automobile accident. After that was being robbed
or mugged. The greatest threats faced by American women continued to be
aggressive husbands, boyfriends, dates, and rapists, not terrorists. So like
many of my friends, I believed the threat of terrorism to Americans was
exaggerated. When America invaded Iraq I felt that something was terribly
wrong, not with the world but with my government. If the 9-11 attacks had made
me feel a greater sense of patriotism, the invasion of Iraq deflated my
patriotism. My feelings were disgust and shame. My response was to distance
myself mentally and emotional from the War on Terror and simply focus on my
education and pursuing a career.
What I find in Mr. Thomas memoir that
I do not find among the people I know is a strong feeling of nostalgia. Maybe
one has to reach a certain age before longing for a past time or past life. One
day I might feel such a longing, though I doubt it. I do think back fondly to
the time I was a child and the time I was in high school. Due to my parents and
my brother and sister, I had a happy childhood. Furthermore, my brother, sister
and I were good kids who got along well with one another. There were
disagreements of course but no serious outbursts of anger. We are a happy
family, and I will always cherish the memories of when we were all together. I
doubt, however, that I will ever wish I could return to the good old days with
my family. One reason is I still have my family. Only a few times a year can we
all be together but we stay in touch by phone and email. So when I think back
to those happy times, my family and school mates come to mind, not the
community where I grew up. There is nothing uniquely American about it.
In fact, I would say that it is
remarkable for its lack of cultural significance, almost as if a cultural
identity is incompatible with the artificial, monotonous character of the
design and materials of the homes and grid-like layout of the community—as if
it had been designed by a computer. It is a Starbucks community—friendly,
functional, yet artificial and superficial. Such a community could exist
anywhere in the world. It has a small park but no fields or clumps of trees, no
factories or old buildings, nothing old for that matter, no community hangout,
no places for young kids to explore. There is nothing to captures the
imagination, nothing that evokes mystery. It is a checkered board and every
square has been functionally utilized. Such communities do what they are designed
to do, yet everything seems fake, everything except the people who live in
them. And perhaps their lives have to some extent become artificially designed
and programmed, but that is another issue. If my sister, brother, and I went
out of the house we usually went no further than our yard. Life inside our home
was exciting—music, television, video games, computers, and ourselves. The
so-called neighborhood outside was boring.
I think nostalgia requires something
distinctive and unique to latch on to, but there is nothing at all distinctive
or unique about my neighborhood except perhaps its lack of those qualities. I
do not recall my brother, sister, and I playing on the block with other kids.
Of course, we did not attend the local public school, but I am not sure it
would have made any difference if we had because our connection would have
still been primarily with the school, not with the community. In a sense there
was no community. So as far as the place where I grew up is concerned, it is
just a place having nothing memorable about it except that it is the place
where my family lived and where I grew up.
I am also willing to admit that
perhaps my experience of growing up in America is not typical of the nation as
a whole but only for people like me who grew up in the suburbs. Still, what I
am looking for is the America that Mr. Thomas was so strongly attached to
because it seems I never knew that America. As a result, I have never felt the
despair and outrage he felt in response to millions of immigrants entering the
country illegally. He obviously felt some aspect of America was being lost with
their arrival. I think the reason he felt that way is to be found in Mr.
Thomas’ childhood.
Mr. Thomas grew up in a very different
place from the suburb where I grew up, a small Texas farming community called
Meadowview. He knew most of the people of the community, and the character of
the community was very much defined by a particular economy—farming and
ranching. Most of the people were white, but there was a small black community.
There were Hispanic workers as well. It had one elementary school, one middle
school, and one high school and all the kids attended these schools. The
students must have all known one another since the student populations were
small. I am certain that the sporting events were well attended by the entire
community. That was impossible at Fairmont because the school itself was the
only community. Sporting events were well attended but mostly by the parents
and school friends of the athletes. It is odd that Fairmont was the only real
community for most of the students and their parents.
That was not true for Mr. Thomas. The
entire town was the community, and its members came together at sporting events
and for church services. They also encountered one another at work or at
various places in the town—such as the two grocery stores, the filling station,
the two family style restaurants, the local Dairy Queen and Whataburger, and
the pharmacy. There was a theater when Mr. Thomas lived there, but it has since
closed. Based on the research I have done, crime rates were low in Meadowview.
Underage drinking was probably a concern. Fatal highway accidents did occur,
some involving teenagers. Apparently, drug use was not a serious problem in
Meadowview, certainly nothing similar to what one reads about occurring in
small towns today. There were no gangs when Mr. Thomas was growing up.
I believe Meadowview was Mr. Thomas’
America, and it became the benchmark by which he measured the changes that he
witnessed occurring in the country. Meadowview was in many ways idyllic. It was
a friendly and safe community. People knew their neighbors and trusted them.
They could leave the doors to their homes unlocked and the keys to their cars
in the ignition. People were content because they were devoted mostly to work,
family, church, and community. They did not feel the need to spend a lot of
money on nonessentials or entertainment. It was paradise if one did not demand
too much from life. Mr. Thomas was very fond of the Biblical story of Adam and
Eve, and perhaps that story can give a clue to what happened not only to
America but also to Meadowview.
In Paradise Eve wanted more, a very
human attribute. However, an enticement was required to create this need for
something more, and the Serpent offered that enticement. I doubt that when Mr.
Thomas was growing up he felt bored with Meadowview. I will guess that had he
the chance to teach there or some other small town he would have been satisfied
to do that, though I cannot say for sure. America had changed even when he was
a child. A different way of life was being offered—what Mr. Thomas called a
life devoted to maximizing individual experience and satisfaction. Once Eve
became dissatisfied, she had to leave Eden because Eden was a place of moderate
satisfaction—young love, work, family, and community. As America became more
affluent, there were more things to spend one’s money on—really cool things.
And there was more to do. Every year my family went skiing. As a family we traveled
often, twice to Europe. At one point we had three cars. And yet I considered
our way of life rather modest compared to that of some of my more affluent
friends.
For decades now, young people have
been abandoning the small towns for the big city to seek an exciting life of
self-expression, self-fulfillment, and self-indulgence, including causal sex.
It is a way of living that is very different from what Mr. Thomas experienced
in Meadowview. Neighbors and other members of the community no longer play an
important role in one’s life. They are replaced by a few close friends and
colleagues. Work can be important for certain professions, such as doctors,
artists, lawyers, teachers, firefighters, and police officers, but for most
people its meaning is limited and subordinate to how they spend their leisure
time. What no longer exists is a community that is defined by a dominant form
of work—such as farming, fishing or manufacturing. Thus, for modern Americans
life has become fragmented in such a way that there is no longer an overall
community structure with the individual at the center. Today the old physical,
organic community is being replaced by the micro-communities involving work,
play, and worship and by electronic social-network communities. People increasingly
pick and choose the components of their community, which consist of like-minded
citizens. Such a community disappears if the individual relocates or dies
because it is rooted in the individual, not in a place that exists
independently of the individual.
However, cyber communities are
emerging that are portable because of the computer and Internet. Mr. Thomas was
a science fiction enthusiast, and one genre he especially liked was cyberpunk
stories. He said that stories have always been a medium that allowed people to
escape from their humdrum existence into a more exciting and interesting
virtual reality. Today movies, television, and video games have replaced books
as the most popular forms of escape. One day he said something that really
struck me, and that was whereas movies, television, and video games are
considered forms of entertainment, thus not a part of reality or real life, the
social interaction that occurs online is considered a part of reality and real
life. He mentioned the cyberpunk novels Snow
Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer
by William Gibson. In both these stories the virtual reality of cyberspace is
no longer entertainment but a virtual lifeworld. The same can be said for the
social interaction that occurs online. Today online social-networks enable
hundreds of different cyber communities to exist that are populated by people
who share common interests.
A person can belong to a number of
these communities at once, which may consist of extended family and friends but
also special interest groups having to do with politics, religion, academics,
hobbies, sports, recreation, art, and entertainment. These are ideal
communities because all the members share a single interest they are passionate
about. Existing in cyberspace, these communities are portable. Place or
location becomes irrelevant. What seems strange to me is that people can also
feel nostalgic about the virtual worlds that they have been a part of if only
vicariously. I know this because some older members of my extended family enjoy
watching reruns of shows that they watched when they were younger. Equally
strange is how involved people become with television shows they watch. One of
my grandmothers, for example, will discuss at great length the characters of
her favorite television show, treating them as if they were her neighbors. It
is clear that she is much more involved in the lives of these fictional
characters than she is with her actual neighbors and the other members of her
community. That may be because like Mr. Thomas she does not live in a community
where she grew up, or in the community where she spent most of her adult life.
To be closer to us, she and my grandfather moved when he retired. I find her
obsession with long-ago television shows strange, yet outside of school and
work I spend most of my time interacting with members of my online communities,
many of whom are former high school classmates. And most relevant, I am not
close to any of my neighbors.
So perhaps an important difference
between Mr. Thomas and me is that our social worlds and their settings are not
the same. Whereas the influx of immigrants threatens what he considers to be
his home-world, they cannot threaten mine because it is a cyber construct. Most
important, I feel no strong connection to the place where I live. I will leave
Chicago when I finish school, yet I have no idea where I will eventually end up
living. I might end up in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle or some other city.
But whatever city that might be, I doubt I will develop a connection to it that
Mr. Thomas believes is so important. Cities have become like clothes and cars
in that they serve a practical purpose and at the same time can be enjoyed. I
cannot see that kind of relationship as ever being profoundly personal.
To Mr. Thomas Meadowview was a
profoundly personal place. Its meaning was similar to that of one’s family. I
believe that is why his response to illegal immigration and mine are so
different. To him, having immigrants occupy an American community is like having
a family member kidnapped. I do not feel that way because I have always existed
in a very different living space than that of Meadowview or any other
traditional American community. His community was unified by a common history
and by a traditional way of life. Other than my family, my living spaces have
been artificial in the way air travel and passenger planes are artificial. The
attendants and passengers are well behaved and polite. The accommodations are
comfortable. But unless a friend or family members are present, the other
people onboard do not matter, and the meaning of the experience is superficial
and forgettable. What is important is getting to one’s destination.
The people who have abandoned the old
community-based way of life have been white Americans like Mr. Thomas. Blacks
have retained their communities, if not pushed out by Hispanics or other
immigrants. American Indians have preserved their traditional communities. As
Mr. Thomas repeatedly points out, the new immigrants create ethnic-cultural
enclaves for themselves. And certain European-American groups have tried to
preserve a traditional community and language reflective of the homeland left
behind—the English, Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, and Poles, for example. And
perhaps these multiple European ethnicities made it more difficult for white
America to see itself as a distinct, culturally unified group. Yet, it seems to
me more than anything else what has undermined the white-American community has
been whites themselves. Certainly, millions of white Americans still live in
small-town communities, but they represent a minority of the white-American
population. Clearly, white Americans prefer living among other white Americans,
but not in the same way other cultural groups prefer to live among their own
people.
The community I grew up in was a
collection of mostly white people living in proximity to one another. It was
safe and convenient, and the quality of life was quite good. But such places
really are not communities. In some ways they are very similar to the places
where people shop or work. So if white Americans have come to see America
primarily as a place where they are able to fulfill individual goals in life,
then perhaps that is why they never really cared enough to protect America from
the large number of non-white, non-European immigrants illegally entering of
the country each year. I would even suggest that Americans were already
abandoning their America even before the great waves of the new immigrants
arrived, and only afterward did they, like Mr. Thomas, begin to reevaluate what
they were losing.
