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From: Matheus Barrachi, Nadine Jebas, Gaelle Lemairie, Mihaela Pop and
Jenny Scheffel
Category: Category 1
Date: 4/1/04
Time: 8:43:26 AM
Remote Name: 131.94.222.194
This time we want to post our answer, in giving the points of view of our group members seperatly and in reaction to each other.
Matheus: Europe is the cradle of ancient civilizations. Groups whose gave origins to entire nations. Then, man created the State, and from the “fusion” between Nation and State we had the Nation-State, which the bases came from Europe. Americas could have had such a history. Americas had ancient civilizations too, with thousand of years of history and some technology. But the course of history wanted these civilizations to be defeated by European people, culture and institutions. If it wasn’t for its regional particularities, as weather, reminiscent cultural traces from the ancestors, other colonization’s flows (Asia), we could say that Americas are the Europe’s reflex on the mirror. And we are not talking about globalization. We are talking about history, years of colonization, population, exploitation. Institutions that tried to apply the same model for government and education, those in some cases were not able to achieve the same success from Europe. On the movie “American History X”, a boy talks on interview about “the minorities (blacks, yellow and hispanics) are in this country (USA) not to embrace it, but to exploit it. There are millions of White Europeans that established themselves here and flourished within a generation…” We can question if this kind of speech have some sense in the context of a country like the USA. On other American Countries, like those from the south, it sounds like a joke call yourself “neo-Nazi”. Inside a society composed of so many variations, result of a history of immigration and “mix”, how can we call ourselves protectors of the “white values”? Americas are not even a cradle for such groups, so why are there Amercian people (intellectuals, radicals) that insists to defend such values? How to classify such phenomena?? Is it nativism or xenophobia? And why this kind of phenomena is so evident on the United States? Nativism is a modern phenomena, much more than xenophobia. Xenophobia has cultural and national (nation) bases. Holy crusades, some colonization process were feed by this feeling, as others conflicts that were moved by the “fear from the other”, from those that are different or external to us. Nativism has a strong link with the land, and the values established upon that land, the State and its institutions and the culture that flourished from its process, from the process of establishment of a nation-state . In a nutshell, Xenophobia has to do with the protection of a nation and culture (Germanic, Celtic, Hispanic) and Nativism has to do with protection of a society (nation – state). So, its understandable, as nativism is a modern process, why we have xenophobia on Europe, cradle of ancient cultures which grown and prospered and battled themselves, and why we (at least we should) have nativism on Americas, and not Xenophobia. If an American starts to call his wills to defend its cultural values of Xenophobia, he risks of have fear of himself. But the composition of some cultural blocks, some of them created by media (the Arabian culture against the world) others created by intellectuals ( Samuel Hungtinton and its infamous “Clash of Civilizations”) opened a new precedent. Society in Americas is sharing itself, giving origin to two distinct groups: The partisans of nationalism and regionalism, which stress the differences between the country’s society and the rest of the world (so, NATIVISM) as way to resist against globalization; and the partisans of culturalism, which stress the common values between one country or more countries (the so-called Anglo-Protestant values, the English language…so XENOPHOBIA), a way not to resist, but to join to the globalization process in a “stronger” way. Both are movements of assimilation, positive (nationalism and regionalism) or negative (culturalism). Xenophobia in a Americas are, though, result of a recent process. On United States, has to do with its recent economical prosperity, as they try to stand against the “chicanos”, both mechanisms were used through its history. The building process for Xenophobia and Nativism in Americas is different from Europe. Even if radicals try to convince us that their fight has to do with the “values of our ancestors from Europe, the white good people that came here and flourished”, we know, is just an old excuse to try to solve what they see as a new problem.
Jenny: Matheus' gave us the whole historic background of the differences of xenophobia in Europe and nativism in the US. As he argued (and it is difficult to add something to that) xenophobia has a much longer history in Europe and was "imported" to the American continent. And it is true, with the creation of the nation state the "the desire of the population to protect their island of prosperity against outside poverty" has arisen, which is Betz's definition of xenophobia. This island definition helps to see some similarities in European xenophobia and US nativism of today which is in its expression not that different. In both entities, with an influx of many immigrants, negative (discrimination that even occurred in physical violence) and protective (after the definition) reactions. It is a reaction of fear that their little island and their wealth might be in danger and that they might have to share their gained comforts. Blaming a scapegoat for what goes wrong maybe in these peoples lives is (unfortunately) common. So, blaming "the others" is I think something universal and might existed since the beginning of mankind. In the US, it is a often a fear of the native population to become a minority in their own country, but discrimination and violence also occurs against non-immigrant minorities (Blacks or "Native Americans") -"other" then the ruling white Anglo-Saxon population. This happens in times of a economic problems. Recession and political dissatisfaction are other events that influences the reaction of the native population towards immigrants after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instability has to be fought -not always successfully as the nationalistic conflict in Yugoslavia has proven. A lot has to do with identification - either be found national, European or regional. New states are formed based on a common national sentiment in the separation of the rest of the previous state or entity with is not always unproblematic for minorities. That is a completely different situation as in the US. And yet, even there racism occurs on many levels as Matheus pointed out. Americans see immigrants as inferior in culture and democratic values, we just hve to look at the last piece of the scholar Samual Huntington where he refers to that perception of the native American population against the "massive" influx of Latin who he calls not willing to adapt in the American mainstream. This brings me to a problem, Matheus mentioned, dealing with assimilation and cultural differences. Immigrants are expected by the native population to adapt in the society of the "host" country to be less seen as different (or what ever). Even countries that are quite tolerant with that (particularism in the UK other then unilateralism in France), have this political campaigning, in order to solve discrimination of the new arrivals, stressing adaptation and integration; playing with negative stereotyping and fears. This is the case in the US and in Europe, although it has a complete different historical background.
Xenophobia and nativism is an expression of economic inequalities resulting from the capitalist and state-based system. And I can say that without being necessarily a Marxist. I also want to stress that in addition to what Matheus referred to, sure it has to do with history: nationalism and maybe civilization. But, I think that what we are building up in Europe now - a civil society based on human rights, the rule of law and democracy, is a step in the direction to fight this old model of racism and inferior cultures that predominated from the middle ages- the time of the crusades and later colonization.
Gaelle: In the context of globalization there is a general tendency both in Europe and in the US to perceive immigrants has a threat, as people who only want to take advantage of out relative prosperity and to live on our welfare state ( this latter comment being highly spread in Europe).I personally think that this is totally false, first most immigrants who come here do in fact work for a great part in the underground labor market, they produce wealth and are treated extremely bad by their employers. Beyond this well known fact I wish to stress that both in the US and the EU people have a hard time to understand that many migrants are living transnational lives, working partly in one country and in another, keeping in touch with their country of origin while socializing in the country they migrated to etc... . The best example of this I know are Mexican immigrants in the US. I got the chance to work with them while studying in the University of Minnesota I came to understand that those people do want to integrate in the US while keeping in touch with their families and friends at home, keeping their culture alive in the US but not by isolating themselves! Most of them want to merge their culture with the American culture which itself is deeply multicultural!! Most of the people I interviewed would like to go back to Mexico some day but they all explained to me that there experience in the US has forever change their way of living and that back home they were sometimes excluded precisely because they embrace too much American culture! . When I read Huntington's article I just could not understand his point, does this guy really understand people, does he talk to them? I send it to a Mexican friend who is working in the US and he just told me that Huntington like many other Americans that we might call nativist simply do not understand that Hispanic just want to keep their cultural roots but also to mix them with the more general US culture. I think that in the US it would be totally absurd to claim to protect "white values", why are people so unable to consider that it is possible to see cultures merging together, having a plurality of languages in the US? It is already the case, so why do they want to turn a blind eye on reality! I perceive such a backlash as being partly due to the fear of the ruling white elite to loose their dominant position in the US, they did it with African Americans and with all non Anglo Saxon immigrants and today the enemy simply changed!
I found the distinction Matheus made between xenophobia and nativism quite interesting but I personally think that the two phenomena are just two different manifestation of the same dynamic. Under cover of a rhetoric which claims to protect the nation/culture/state there is a goal to protect the current distribution of wealth and power ( this is one of the core principle one find in a state/nation building process because ,to an extend, the state is builded by elites for this exact purpose). Whatever the name you give to it, the come back of nativism is, I think, to be perceived in the dynamic that aroused after 9/11. Matheus clearly expressed it, radicals are using culture as an excuse.
I would like to conclude by discussing Jenny's last comment on the EU. I also want to see the promise of Multiculturalism in the EU but the more we build Europe the more I am afraid to see a dynamic very similar to the one that occured in the US. We are pushing the boudaries of EUrope and include people who were once perceived as outsiders, I think of Spain, Italy, Portugal etc... we are drawing on religion in order to find a common identity which will ultimately create dangerous exclusions and portrayal of people who do not fit this model as a danger, it might have more to do with xenophiobia than nativism given the historical heritage of the EU but it will bring the same dangerously exclusionary rules.
Mihaela (Focusing on US nativism): Xenophobia is an ancient term, that exists from a long time in Europe. In the US the term is recent, as it is for the nativism. The US is a land of immigration, since the beginning the statet was formed of people from different parts of the world. So we couldn’t say that the American nation has an ancient history or culture-the majority of the “white people” couldn’t identify with the culture of the ancient population. So they created their own identity which is based on the political institutions, of which they are very proud. The Americans think that they are unique because they invented something-the modern democracy-in fact they put in practice something - an idea- that only existed in words and writings. Still I think that Americans, as Europeans, were always looking in each others “backyard”, so the two systems never really stopped all the connections – even if they developed separately.
Even from the beginning, the American system has had some failures: especially when we think about the fact that black people, indigens and even Chinese population were either persecuted, or they had almost no rights until 19th and even 20th century!! Here the conception of superiority of race existed, that we cannot deny- perhaps “imported” from the European tradition .
So I think even if we have to admit the innovative American political system, we should say that it isn’t entirely true that Americans were always welcoming all persons to their land and giving them equal rights from the start .
It is true that nativism and xenophobia appear later in the US. It is has to do with the fact that first the formation of the concept of “American nation” had to appear. For most European native Americans, they were all tied by their democratic system, which had some limits-as I said before. For the US, being an American means being a good citizen, loyal to your country and to your ideals of liberty and democracy. I think nativism is a movement that came especially from the “White Anglo Saxon Protestant People” and that tried to reject the non-English origin people. The first victims were the German and the Irish immigrants, but this shouldn’t be surprising if we look into the past and how the Americans instaured equality in their land. As for the recent reactions against especially the population coming from the south parts of the globe, I think they are explained in the same reason. None of the less, we shouldn’t forget that the United States are still the first modern state who imposed the rules of democracy- be it only for a part of its population, and that when we talk about phenomena like nativism or xenophobia we shouldn’t forget the democratic values that countries took from the US.
Nadine: For me it seems also really strange, that people with roots different as roots can be, want to ‘protect’ just one kind of values- the “white values”. Which are these white values? Maybe we could find some common agreements, but I don’t think that every white person has got the same values. And which are the differences compared to for example to hispanic ones? Isn’t it a question about priorities? Jenny’s point about the island definition is an good example to show similar aspects as well as differences. Even if there are two words, both are about the separation of one group from others –and- they have the same consequences or reactions like wanted protection, misunderstanding, hate , discrimination… Jenny spoke about the fear of being a minority in the own country, but who is the owner of the country? (especially US) Economic problems are often taken into account as a reason- the case of Eastern Germany is an example for this point. Xenophobia and nativism as expression of economic inequalities resulting from the capitalist and state-based system. I agree with that point, and you really don’t have to be a marxist to say that. Immigrants are often expected to adapt in society. It is a try to make life easier for immigrants and citizens, but there has to be added a social change, because people make the difference out of too small points. So it is really hard for an immigrant to try to adapt, but being not accepted after all. Recent developments are a step in direction of the acceptance of variety.