[Marxism] Samuel Huntington's racism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NPQ, Spring 2004

Huntington and the Mask of Racism

Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, is a member of NPQ’s advisory 
board. Translation by Thomas D. Morin, Professor of Hispanic Studies, 
University of Rhode Island, Kingston.

Mexico City—“The best Indian is a dead Indian.” “The best nigger is a 
nigger slave.” “The yellow threat.” “The red threat.” The Puritanism one 
finds at the base of WASP culture (White, Anglo Saxon, and Protestant) 
in the United States of America expresses itself, from time to time, 
with shocking color. Now, another of these forceful and freely expressed 
simplistic ideas can be added to the colorful expressions already 
mentioned: “The Brown Menace.”

The proponent of this idea is Professor Samuel P. Huntington, the 
tireless voice of alarm with respect to the menace that the idea of the 
“other” represents for the foundational soul of white, protestant, 
Anglo-Saxon United States of America. That there existed (and, still, 
exists) an indigenous-“America” (Huntington uses the United States as a 
name for the entire continent) prior to the European colonization is of 
no concern to him. That besides Anglo-America, there existed a prior 
French-“America” (Louisiana) and, even, a Russian-America (Alaska) is of 
no interest to Huntington. What worries him is Hispanic-America, the 
America of Ruben Dario, the America that speaks Spanish and believes in 
God. For Huntington, this brown danger is an indispensable danger for a 
nation that requires, in order to exist, an identifiable external 
menace. Moby Dick, the white whale, is a symbol of this attitude which, 
fortunately, not all North Americans share, including John Quincy Adams, 
the sixth president of the North American nation, who warned his 
countrymen: “Let us not go out into the world in search of monsters to 
destroy.”

Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, discovers his necessary 
external monster (once the USSR and “the red danger” disappeared) in an 
Islam poised to assault the borders of Western Civilization, in an 
attempt to outdo the feats of Saladino, the Sultan, who captured 
Jerusalem in 1187. As a result, Huntington outdoes the Christian Crusade 
of Richard the Lion Hearted in the Holy Land. Huntington the Lion 
Hearted’s anti-Islamic Crusade expresses the profound racism in his 
heart and, in similar manner, his profound ignorance of the true 
kulturkampf evident in the Islamic world. Islam is not poised to invade 
the West. Islam is living, from Algeria to Iran, its own cultural and 
political battle between conservatives and Islamic liberals. It is a 
vertical battle, deep within, not a horizontal one of expansion.

The Mexican as exploiter | Huntington’s new crusade is directed against 
Mexico and the Mexicans that live, work, and enrich life in the northern 
nation. As far as Huntington is concerned, Mexicans do not live—they 
invade; they do not work—they exploit; and, they do not enrich—they 
impoverish, since poverty is part a Mexican’s natural condition. All of 
this, when taking into account the number of Mexicans and Latin 
Americans in the United States, constitutes a cultural threat for that 
which Huntington dares to mention: the Anglo-American, Protestant, and 
Anglo speaking white race.

Are Mexicans invading the US? No, they are simply obeying the laws of 
the job market. There are job offers for Mexicans because there is a 
North American labor need. If some day, there were to exist full 
employment in Mexico, the US would have to find cheap labor from another 
country for the jobs whites, Saxons, and Protestants—naming them as does 
Huntington—do not want to fill, since they have either surpassed these 
levels of employment, or because they have grown old, due to the fact 
that the economy of the US has passed from the industrial period, to the 
post-industrial, technological, information age.

Do Mexicans exploit the US? According to Huntington, Mexicans constitute 
an unjust burden for the US economy: they receive more than they give back.

All of this is false. California earmarks a billion dollars a year to 
educate the children of immigrants. But if it were to do 
otherwise—listen up, Schwarzenegger—the state would lose $16 billion a 
year in federal aid to education. Similarly, Mexican migrant workers pay 
$29 billion a year more in taxes than the services they receive.

full: http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2004_spring/fuentes.html

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