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.MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 36MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 37action and special preferences are based neither on skin color noron patterns of past discrimination, but simply are tied clumsilyto a particular minority’s failure to match the perceived economicperformance of whites.Koreans, likewise, are as “unwhite” as Mexicans; yet theirculture puts a premium on business, education and family, notgovernment largess.Like the Punjabi immigrants of today, andlike the Japanese, Chinese and Armenian immigrants of the past,they have shrugged off the worst sorts of racial prejudices.So far,Mexican-American citizens have not been interned; nor have theybeen blown to bits while building railroads; nor have they suffereda holocaust by an invading Islamic power—disasters that did notstop the Japanese, Chinese and Armenians from reaching per cap-ita economic parity with the majority in California.These otherimmigrants were at the end of their migrant odysseys and morelikely to ponder the present and the future than to live in the past.Isuppose “Don’t get mad, get even” was thematic among these othervictims of American racism and oppression.In my hometown ofSelma, Armenians were zoned out of particular neighborhoodsin the 1920s and were refused entry to the municipal swimmingpool.Yet in two generations their capital and influence ensuredthat their homes and their private pools were the town’s largest andmost envied.No Armenian today, despite skin color with a higher mela-nin content than that of the average white, claims to be “a personof color.” Most Japanese do not either.“A person of color” doesnot necessarily mean that someone is, in fact, “colored” in anyreal sense; the term is largely absent among communities of darkPunjabis, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians and a host of brown andolive peoples.Instead, the nomenclature advertises that the self-described minority has deliberately defined himself in oppositionto whatever “white” culture is—either out of real pride, justifiedanger, petty hurt, racial hatred or simple crass opportunism.Andin a state rapidly growing more multiracial, we will soon need [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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