The newest Americans: integrating the great Hispanic migration

Education Next, Fall, 2004 by Nathan Glazer

Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity

By Samuel P. Huntington

Simon & Schuster, 2004, $27; 428 pages.

Samuel P. Huntington's earlier, prescient work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, shaped much of the discourse on international conflict in the post-Cold War world. Now, in Who Are We? Huntington turns his attention toward what might be termed a domestic clash of civilizations--or at least a clash of cultures.

Huntington's central concern is that 35 years of heavy migration has established a large Hispanic population in the United States that is substantially different from earlier immigrant groups. He asserts that Hispanics are geographically more concentrated--in California, the Southwest, and Florida--than their predecessors, many living in states that border Mexico. In these enclaves, they retain many aspects of Mexican culture and assimilate into American society at a slower rate than previous ethnic groups did; Mexican-Americans have been relatively slow to become citizens, and their children continue to underperform academically. Furthermore, the large group of Hispanic immigrants who came to America from Mexico has the unique feature of emigrating to lands that were once part of their native country--and were acquired by the United States through conquest.

These attributes, Huntington argues, have combined to make Hispanics less likely to adopt American values and American culture, especially in a nation whose elites have embraced a multicultural ideology that makes assimilation ever more difficult. To Huntington, these factors suggest the possibility of a second Spanish-speaking nation within the United States that is at odds with the dominant American culture.

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Thus far, schools have served as the main battlefield in this potential clash of cultures. The debates over bilingual education, multicultural curricula, and text-book accounts of American history are evidence of a nation's struggle to define itself in the face of a shifting population. However, Who Are We? does not have much direct discussion of education issues; Huntington more or less assumes the victory of a patriotism-reducing multiculturalism in the schools and worries about its consequences.

The American Creed

Huntington does not criticize the scale of immigration per se--at least not directly. Nor does he bemoan--again, at least not directly--the changing racial and ethnic composition of America. Instead, he argues that the values brought to America by the new wave of Hispanic immigration represent a challenge to the values established by the original Anglo-Protestant settlers as the core of America's national identity.

That identity, Huntington believes, is based on a set of ideas--a unique American creed that people of any race or ethnicity can adopt. Yet, he writes, that creed "was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Key elements of that culture include: the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth."

Despite the clear association of Huntington's creed with Anglo-Protestants, he is careful to make it clear that he does not want to resuscitate race and ethnicity as the foundation of America's identity; he writes that his argument is "for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not Anglo-Protestant people." But he no longer seems to think--as he stated in a 1981 book--that a common commitment to the political values enshrined in the Constitution can serve as the basis of American identity. "People are not likely to find in political principle," Huntington writes, "the deep emotional content provided by kith and kin, blood and belonging, culture and nationality"--an argument that, of course, comes perilously close to resurrecting race and ethnicity.

The question is, Are Mexican-American values so different from "Anglo-Protestant" values as to pose a problem? At one point, Huntington quotes a Mexican-American arguing that Hispanics are indeed different. Huntington writes, "Lionel Sosa, a successful Texas Mexican-American businessman, in 1998 hailed the emerging Hispanic middle-class professionals who look like Anglos, but whose 'values remain quite different from an Anglo's.'" But if we were to inquire into the nature of those values, I bet we would hear reference to family, church, community, and the like. And how different would that be from Anglo-Protestant values? It is common for ethnic groups to proclaim that their values are distinctive, just as their mothers are sui generis. But when they are asked to articulate the differences, the values and the mothers turn out to be very similar.

Talking about culture and religion is a tricky business. If we take Anglo-Protestantism as the root of American national identity, we have to consider European Catholicism, which we all consider fully assimilated into whatever the American identity may be. Huntington argues that Catholicism has been "Protestantized" in America. But then why the problem with Mexican-Americans, who are largely Catholic? At one point, Huntington notes: "Unquestionably, a most significant manifestation of assimilation is the conversion of Hispanic immigrants to evangelical Protestantism." Here the head reels. Is Huntington suggesting that to remain Catholic is to remain unassimilated, but to become evangelical Protestant is to become more assimilated?