Interesting article on the real strength in our diversity:
When Americans think of our nation’s power (or our imminent lack of it) we tend to point to the national debts, GDP or military prowess. Few have focused on what may well be the country’s most historically significant and powerful weapon: its emergence as the modern world’s first multiracial superpower…
…Over the next few decades this pattern of ethnic and racial integration will separate America from its key competitors. In 2005 the U.S. swore in more new citizens than the next nine immigrant-receiving countries put together. These newcomers will reshape the very identity of the country and allow the U.S. to continue growing its labor force.
Our prime competitors of the future – India and China – are unlikely to evolve in this direction. India is a highly heterogeneous country itself and remains driven by ethnic and religious conflicts. China, like Japan and Korea, remains a profoundly homogeneous country with little appetite or capacity to accept newcomers…
While our liberals like to think in terms of racial bean counting, the reality is that race, as a thing, is becoming ever less important in our society. I mean, seriously, how many of you out there would really be disturbed if a child or grand-child married someone of a different ethnic extraction? I imagine, not too much – a few hold overs aside, its just not that important.
It never was, of course, and save for purblind idiocy, it never would have been an issue. We’re all human beings – and the genius of America is that we can take any human being, from anywhere in the world, and turn them in to Americans. I remember shortly after 9/11 I was reassured by watching news of an American soldier on patrol against further attacks – my guess was that he either was an immigrant or the son of an immigrant…looked like he, or his blood, hailed from Indo-China. But he was an American soldier, and I’d stake my life on his willingness to defend me, a fellow American.
Back at the last census there was a bit of a debate about what a mix-race person should identify themselves as. If you’re half black and half white, should you be counted as white, or black? In my view, it was time to stop even asking such fool questions – the only question should be, “are you an American, or an alien?”.
I have in my blood Irish and German and Jewish and Scottish and Lord only knows what else. Don’t give a darn about it – what is Ireland to me? I mean, other than an excuse for beer and corned beef? And, heck, you don’t even have to have a drop of Irish blood to take advantage of that. I am native to this land; I am an American – if we are to have a race, then that is my race: American. And it is we Americans who will keep this nation strong and defy the whole world, if need be, in order to preserve the precious gift of past Americans.
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