Transformation of the American
mind By Dinesh Sharma
With President Barack Obama's reelection
it is increasingly clear, as I have argued in my
book Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The
Making of a Global President, that the
American mind is in the midst of a transformation,
driven by several long-term demographic and
cultural shifts. In many ways, Obama's successful
marketing of his biracial and multicultural
biography
mirrors the social and demographic
change already underway in this country.
The Obama win may not have been possible
without the ethnic voting blocks that he gathered
in large numbers from the African American,
Hispanic and Asian voters (Todd, 2009). Does the
Obama election represent the full-fledges triumph
of multiculturalism over and above the "culture
wars" of the 1990s? I believe this is one of the
clear outcomes of the historic 2008 and 2012
election.
The results from the 2012
re-election have only confirmed this trend. The
American electorate is changing its colors and
hues, remaking the American dream, and will
fundamentally change the world. As the president
said, "I believe we can keep the promise of our
founding, the idea that if you're willing to work
hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you
come from or what you look like or where you love.
It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or
Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or
old or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or
straight. You can make it here in America if
you're willing to try."
There will be a
push back, however, from the other side. "The dark
side" has not been defeated yet, as Jedi master
Yoda would say; they are simply regrouping.
American multiculturalism
redux Samuel Huntington predicted this
correctly (2005). He identified several important
micro-trends that are reshaping the fabric of
American society. Loss of the Soviet empire as a
traditional adversary led to allegiances to
sub-cultural or sub-national interest groups based
on ethnicity and language. Liberal calls for a
great multicultural revolution as the third
revolution that would follow the American
Revolution and the Civil Rights Revolution hit new
heights. The new immigration laws of the 1960s
allowed for the first time individuals from Latin
America and Asia to come to this country in any
numbers. All of these trends have led to a major
demographic change in the US.
He also
believed that American identity will swing back
and forth in the coming decades between various
positions: 1. A multicultural position with an
ideological allegiance to a creed in the founding
documents and principles; 2. An exclusionist
stance with the white majority backlash; 3. A
bifurcated alignment along Anglo and Hispanic
lines; and 4. A nativist or cultural move with
a return to Protestant values, culture and ethics.
With the Obama election, we have already
seen several of these positions playing out in the
American electorate. Anyone who noted the backdrop
of the two candidates during their speeches
witnessed the two Americas, one diverse and the
other homogenous.
America's impressive
human capital, a necessary pre-condition for
fighting the challenges of globalization, was at
display during the 2008 election. The Democratic
delegates were 43% minority, 25% African American,
and consisted of more women than men. This
diversity was forward looking, an early sign of
the demographic changes that will sweep this
country by mid-century, according to the latest
report from the US Census Bureau (Sharma 2008).
In the 2012 election, 96% of African
Americans are estimated to have voted for the
president, 71% of Hispanic Americans, and 73% of
Asian Americans. Combined with the strong women's
vote (55%), Obama was able to carry the day in the
key swing states.
The idea of "cultural
pluralism" has been espoused by a long line of
Western thinkers, including James, Dewey and
Bourne, which has led to multiculturalism as a
policy in several Western countries, such as
Canada and Australia.
In America,
continuous immigration has been a cornerstone of
the society and economy, which in an earlier era
gave rise to the idea of "the melting pot"
(Norgren and Nanda, 2006). While cultural
assimilation formed the basis of the melting pot
with previous waves of immigration, it no longer
holds the same power over the American population
(Jacoby, 2004).
The immigration policies
set forth in the 1960s by the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations have led to a major influx of new
immigrants. While we are celebrating the first
African American president, Obama is also the
first multicultural head of state of any Western
democracy. Even though Canada and Australia have
spearheaded multiculturalism as an official policy
of the state, it is America that has taken the
lead in electing a multicultural leader to the
highest office in the land.
However,
multiculturalism has come under serious attack
throughout Europe and in other parts of the world
in the post-9/11 world (Oxford Analytica, 2006).
The criticism that multiculturalism, especially as
portrayed by some Muslim youth, is not in
consonance with the Western secular values and
freedoms is at the heart of this attack.
In Europe, multiculturalism is considered
a high-brow elitist idea constructed by armchair
liberal thinkers, and European countries are
pulling back, , suggesting that cultural policies
related to bilingualism and education in the
schools and workplace keep immigrants from
embracing Western democratic ideals and values.
In a rapidly globalizing world, does
multiculturalism offer distinct advantages that
the world cannot do without? Is the American brand
of multiculturalism, which as the historian Ronald
Takaki has argued may be something inherent in its
DNA (Takaki, 1993), a distinct strength in
business and geopolitics? Have Americans elected a
diverse leader for diverse times precisely because
the history of the American people is
multicultural and diverse at the core, shaped by
the indigenous Indian and African-American
populations?
The returns from the 2012
election would suggest that the American people
have stared into the abyss and made a quantum leap
of consciousness. They have confirmed that they
are all in this together. "We are greater than the
sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more
than a collection of red states and blue states,"
Obama said.
'We're all
multiculturalists now' Several years ago, I
heard the well-known sociologist Nathan Glazer
present a lecture at Harvard University about the
virtues of multiculturalism, titled "We're All
Multiculturalists Now" (Glazer, 1996). Almost a
generation ago as one of the younger members of
the New York intellectuals, Glazer with Daniel
Moynihan had co-authored the well-known report,
"Beyond the Melting Pot", documenting the melding
of changing ethnic identities in New York City.
Yet, during this lecture he argued that the
assimilation policies of the melting pot era had
not worked for the traditional minority groups and
that the evidence was undisputable.
John
Ogbu, the Nigerian-born Berkeley anthropologist,
based his life's work on the cultural theory that
the achievement gap between "voluntary" and
"involuntary" minorities compared with the
majority population formed the basis of a
caste-like system in American society (Ogbu,
1978). Involuntary minorities consist of
African-Americans and American-Indians, the
traditional ethnic groups who by default do not
have an alternative homeland. Voluntary
minorities, on the other hand, consist of the new
immigrants, such as, the Chinese-Americans,
Indian-Americans and other ethnic groups.
Involuntary minorities tend to perform
poorly on achievement tests compared with the
majority population. Due to their "histories of
self-perception" involuntary minorities interpret
barriers to advancement as "institutionalized
discrimination". In some parts of the country, the
well-performing minority students may even carry
the stigma of "acting white". Voluntary
minorities, on the other hand, view challenges in
this society as opportunities to be overcome.
Obama has confounded these cultural
theories and stereotypes by transcending the race
barriers that many African Americans feel still
exist in this society (Sharma, 2008). However,
Obama also represents to some degree a growing
number of African immigrants, about 1 million in
major US metro areas. Part and parcel of the
demographic transition sweeping America, these new
Africans are not descendants of slaves even though
they are often lumped with the African-American
population. Thus, the Obama tent consists of a
broad spectrum of demographic segments.
According to Benjamin Akande, the Dean of
the Webster University School of Business, some of
the notable personalities of the Obama generation
include several prominent Africans in America:
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Wole Soyinka and Chinua
Achebe in academia; Hakeem Olajuwon and Joseph
Addai in sports; and Gbenga Akinnagbe and singer
Akon in entertainment (Akande, 2008).
As
an American of Kenyan descent, Obama's story
validates Ogbu's theory that the caste-like
pathologies that plague some segments of the
American population can be a social barrier not
evident among the new African immigrants. If race
were not a real or perceived barrier, then
Americans would have already narrowed the
achievement gap and there would have been more
African Americans in the United States Senate
vying for the executive office.
Now, with
the help of a transformational leader like Obama,
can America uplift Ogbu's involuntary minorities
across "the promise land" and shore up its human
capital? The achievement gap is only one of the
challenges confronting us as we move into the 21st
century. "To those whom much is given, much is
expected," said John F Kennedy. The progressives
have gotten their man re-elected; not since F D
Roosevelt has a Democrat been re-elected with more
the 50% of the vote. Thus, the responsibility now
falls squarely on the shoulders of the Obama
Democrats - as "the torch has been passed to a new
generation of Americans" - to get their agenda
fully enacted to change America and the world.
Notes: 1. Todd, C.
(2009). How Barack Obama Won. New York: Alfred
Knopf. 2. Sharma, D. (2008). New-Blooded
Americans: Obamagenomics and the End of
Race 3. Jacoby, T. (2004). Reinventing the
melting pot. New York: Basic Books. 4. See here 5. Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: a
history of multicultural America. Boston:
Little Brown. 6. Glazer, N. (1996). We are
all multiculturalists now. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 7. Ogbu J. U. (1978).
Minority Education and Caste: The American
System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. San
Diego, CA: Academic Press. 8. Sharma, D.
(2008). Post-Obama
world: Can America close the achievement gap?
OpEdNews. 9. Akande, B. (2008). The
Obama generation.
This article is
adapted from an excerpt of "Barack Obama in
Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global
President by Dinesh Sharma. The book was
rated among the Top 10 Black history books for
2012. His next book on President Obama,
Crossroads of Leadership: Globalization and
American Exceptionalism in the Obama
Presidency, is due to be published with
Routledge Press.
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