Passages for Essay #5

"Realizing that we are divided on the things that constitute a true nation -- blood and soil, tradition and faith, history and heroes -- intellectuals have sought to construct, in lieu of the real nation, the nation of the heart that is passing away, an artificial nation, a nation of the mind, an ideological nation, a creedal nation, united by a belief in the new trinity: diversity, democracy, and equality. As Christianity is purged from the public schools, this civil religion is taught in its stead. The dilemma of those who conjured up this civil religion and creedal nation, liberals and neoconservatives, is that it has no roots and does not touch the heart. Americans will not send their sons to fight and die for such watery abstractions" ~Pat Buchanan, Deconstructing America (472)

"Of the four models of American ethnic relations, the one that I believe offers the best hope for a just and cohesive society is a cultural pluralism that is fully inclusive and based on the free choices of individuals to construct or reconstruct their own ethnic identities. We are still far from achieving the degree of racial and ethnic tolerance that realization of such an ideal requires. But with the demographic shift that is transforming the overwhelmingly Euro-American population of thirty or forty years ago into one that is much more culturally and phenotypically heterogeneous, a more democratic form of intergroup relations is a likely prospect, unless there is a desperate reversion to overt ethnic heirarchicalism by the shrinking Euro-American majority." ~George M. Fredrickson, Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical Perspective (459).

"Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we're approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities -- blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians -- will account for the majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of eighteen, the shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation." ~Hua Hsu, The End of White America? (499).

"Yet, [Hurricane] Katrina offers profound insights into how race operates in American society, insight into how various facts about our social life are racially interpreted through frames. As a result of racial frames, black people are both visible (as criminals) and invisible (as victims). Racial frames both capture and displace us -- discursively and materially. More than shaping whether we see black people as criminal or innocent, perpetrator or victim, these frames shape whether we see black people at all. Where have all the black people gone, long time passing? It is not hyperbole to say that post-Katrina black New Orleanians have become a part of an emerging social category: the disappeared." ~Cheryl I Harris and Devon W. Carbado, Loot of Find: Fact or Frame? (433).