Give it up Sam
by
Jaime O. Perez
Samuel Huntington argues to his White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASPs) brethren, the primary axis of conflict in the future is along cultural and religious lines. He suggests competing civilizations and their panoptic cultural identity will become the critical framework through which to anticipate world conflict.
Huntington asserts, “It is my hypothesis the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will …be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.”
Across the country, the views of this Harvard historian, has found a strong gut level acceptance among self-identified WASPs. Symptomatic of the wholesale adoption of his views, are strong right-wing anti-immigrant, gun rights and anti-human and individual rights policies. The imperative to save America is the underlying cultural war cry of the chauvinistic WASPs.
The view explicitly proposes the superiority of WASP culture over other civilizations and suggests the Anglo dominant group must stop the principled trend toward cultural diversity and inclusion. Failure to stop acceptance of inclusiveness as an all-encompassing value threatens America.
Us vs. Them
Huntington’s theoretical framework sets up a cultural competition between WASPs and other groups for political and military supremacy. By doing so, the theory implies the obvious need to establishing a military superiority over other groups.
This belief is the ideological underpinning of the battle for the world’s oil resources, for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. The dominant group must produce larger numbers of weapons and greater police forces, armies and superior military technology in order to dominate the Muslims, he argues.
Internally, the WASPs must maintain their domination of non-protestant non-whites.
Deterrence
There is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of other competing groups. In addition to pursuing a relative superiority, the dominant group must establish a deterrence strategy.
Deterrence by punishment is a strategy of ‘Protestant Whites, Rulers By Right (POWRR)’ that control governmental agencies threaten other competing groups with. It simply means an immense retaliation if they get out of line. They are deterred on pain of serious hurt or death as a result of actions that are perceived by the WASP dominant group as challenges to their political or economic superiority.
Deterrence by denial is a strategy whereby the dominant group builds up or maintains police or undercover systems with the purported aim of neutralizing non-protestant, non-white groups. Challengers from other cultural groups are deterred if they choose not to act because they perceive the cost of their action to be too high.
Just Say No To Diversity
Deterrence, by Protestant Whites, Rulers By Right, is the opposite of inclusiveness where diverse groups are brought into the arena of participation on the basis of equality. A major problem of course is that a self-identified ‘superior’ cultural group can easily misunderstand the thinking and philosophy of their perceived competitors. A protestant religious group can mistakenly see a peaceful group, with a strong belief in Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, as a threat because Protestants largely admit of no icons.
The second problem is an effort to arm ordinary citizens and maintain police domination of cities may create an arms race among cultural groups that could escalate the risk of accidental conflict along the cultural fault lines identified by Huntington.
The strategy is also greatly inefficient as a great deal of time, money, energy, and resources are expended on implements of force and a greatly diminished quality of life.
The intermediate downside is that such build up of force creates community budget deficits, restrictions on civil liberties, the creation of a police machine out of the control of local authority and other repressive measures that result in greater conflict over time.
One problem also is the ‘superior’ group may assume their fundamental goals are inimical to those of other groups by definition and forget the myriad overlap of beliefs that may make them a great deal similar to their perceived enemies.
Sadly, some WASP leaders may feel the need to exert force on groups different from them, if only to maintain their individual supremacy over other members of their group. The group itself is subject to enormous stresses because of the internal competition among them.
Often intra-group and inter-group conflict assumes a competition with opposing actors who behave in rational and well-informed ways with clear objectives. But, this is often not the case and legitimate leaders of competing groups may not be identical to the military leaders who mobilize group actors on the ground.
Free Market Of Ideas
Huntington is wrong and his arguments are born of bigotry and, therefore, fundamentally flawed. First, there is a problem of definition. Despite the elegant outline of a WASP, the reality today is the group is diverse. To refer to a “white” is to refer to any number of European immigrant groups that are ethnically mixed and have interests beyond their skin color. To refer to “Anglo” (read: British) heritage makes some historical but little practical sense. It is next to impossible to identify a clear Anglo identity. Protestants as a class of Christians is similarly diverse. Put in a room, they would be hard pressed to agree on much of anything except in the most general of themes.
Add to this the great number of religious and ethnic cross-cultural marriages and the concept of WASP in America today is very different than what may have been a reality in 1776.
Huntington is a bigot and if an academic defines the world along ethnic, religious or class lines and a government, additionally the most powerful in the world adopts his prejudices; it is no wonder we are at war. The theoretical framework becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seen through the eyes of Huntington, every self-conscious color and religious group may as well pick up a gun and shoot anyone not sharing their skin tone.
Beyond Racism
The fact is the fault lines of conflict in the future are not ethnic, religious or cultural, they are, at bottom, fault lines of nationality and economics. Seen in this way, there are pragmatic solutions to the world’s problems that include good faith negotiations. Americans must ensure diversity, democracy, environmental sensitivity and inclusiveness become the ruling values of the America of 2007 and beyond.
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This perspective first appeared in Border Observer, Jaime O. Perez, Editor