Word: xenophobia
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THIS context is vital to understanding the current pledge flap. George Bush--or more likely his advisor, Roger Ailes--is not simply capitalizing on a cheap means of portraying Dukakis as a flaming liberal. He is tugging on the strings of xenophobia which run from coast to coast...
...young Americans aren't being taught to understand the world around them; they are growing up secure in the supremacy that ignorance breeds. It's easy to accept unquestioningly the xenophobia of "we're number one" if you can't even locate the competition on a map. Mom, baseball and apple pie thrive on a single-minded vision of the United States, one which hardly acknowledges the vast majority of the world's population...
...hardly new, the scope of the current sentiment is alarming. Just as middle-class community groups have absorbed lessons in organizing from the civil rights movement, they seem to have turned inward. Their very sense of community, of wholeness, seems to derive from a homogeneity that can breed xenophobia. "Often communities that are the most cohesive are also hostile and fearful of outsiders," says University of Chicago Sociologist Richard Taub. "Community spirit says, 'Take care of your own.' The ethical challenge is to make people see that the world is their community...
...easily blame the Republicans, who have a tendency to be more conservative on immigration policies. But xenophobia is in every stripe of politician. Democrat Dick Gephardt is making a bid for the presidency by engaging in Asia-bashing. A ranting protectionist is not likely to limit his hostility toward other countries to matters of trade. But maybe some of us don't think it is such a bad idea to keep the outsiders outside...
There is the fallacy that Mexicans, Salvadorans and Haitians threaten our jobs--a fallacy because these are jobs that even the poorest American citizens refuse to take. And the prejudiced stereotype of Asians as miracle-brains seems a good excuse to limit our sympathy. Xenophobia is nothing less than and insidious form of racism...