Word: ethnicity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Americans, with their long, fertile history of ethnic invective, have lately grown extraordinarily sensitive on the subject. At the Arizona Democratic state convention last week, Congressman Morris Udall declared innocently -or so he thought-that "we were there as free, white, consenting adults." He was all but booed off the stage. Then former Ambassador to Ghana William Mahoney told the convention: "We often conduct ourselves with all the organization of a Chinese fire drill." Again there were hoots of protest...
...ethnic and religious communities have thus played a crucial role in extending Government control into rural areas. They have done this despite the suspicion and hostility of at least some elements in the Government. After a cease-fire, these are the principal groups which will be able to compete with the Viet Cong in the political organization of the peasantry...
...SECURITY OF that one-third of the rural population which is under a relatively high degree of Government control is in large part the product of communal--ethnic or religious--organizations. It is commonly assumed that rural security is the product of identification Government the extension of governmental presence into the villages. In much of South Viet Nam, however, the sequence has not been: governmental control, national loyalty, internal security. It has been, instead: communal organization, internal security, governmental control. The exercise of governmental authority has resulted from internal security produced by other factors. Governmental authority is, in fact, most...
...RELATIONSHIP between communalism and governmental authority in South Viet Nam today is thus almost precisely the opposite of what it is in most other Southeast Asian countries. In Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and elsewhere the ethnic and religious minorities are the principal sources of opposition to the political system. In South Viet Nam, in contrast, the religious and ethnic minorities are centers of support for the system, and the relatively unorganized rural majority--the ethnic Vietnamese with Confucian, Buddhist and animist religious beliefs--is the principal source of alienation and disaffection...
Rural areas which have been continuously secure are those organized by religious or ethnic communities. The most secure province in South Viet Nam is An Giang, in which there have been no major U.S. or Government combat units. The security of An Giang results from the political control of the Hoa Hao. The Hoa Hao in the surrounding provinces have achieved similar areas of security, as have the Cambodians elsewhere in the Delta. Catholic and Cao Dai villages tend to be more scattered to relatively secure in otherwise highly insecure areas, simply because the Viet Cong know that they will...