30 June 2009

United We Stand, But We May Have to Agree to Disagree — Part II

As racial conflicts ease, tensions likely to shift to major new challenges

Jonathan Freedman, an American studies scholar at the University of Michigan, expects human beings naturally to exhibit divisiveness.

By Jonathan Freedman

Jonathan Freedman is a professor of English and American studies at the University of Michigan and author of Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2008). In a two-part series written for America.gov, he provides analytical and anecdotal observations on America’s increasing diversity.

(begin byliner)

To turn from the statistical to the anecdotal: I am noticing different attitudes toward race and ethnicity among my students, my peers and my fellow citizens.

Black-white relations have been historically quite tense here in Michigan, and when I first arrived at this university some 15 years ago, that tension was palpable on campus as well: little mingling between black and white students, tense charges and countercharges of racism and reverse racism after some ugly incidents.

Relations between white and black aren’t perfect here, but I see noticeably more interracial couples, more interracial friendships, more social concourse. The same is true of ethnic students. There have been some ugly incidents, largely following charges of racism made by Asian-American students, but by and large, these have receded.

The main tension on campus I currently observe is between students of Jewish and Arab-American descent, focused on the inevitably touchy question of Israel, but there has also been a remarkable attempt to keep dialogue going even among people of diametrically opposite points of view.

As far as Michigan the state is concerned, there remains a gap between black and white, city (Detroit) and suburb, which is deep, structural and irremediable. But the collapse of the auto industry is affecting everyone, of every race; so again, tensions that once existed seem less pronounced.

What do these changes on the planes of race and ethnicity mean for the future? Deep divisions remain in the U.S., and while the ethno-racial future is clearly one of increasing diversity and one of increasing political power for people of color, immigrants and their children, we’re not yet a perfect country, and doubtless never will be. We are, after all, a democracy composed of 300 million-plus human beings, and people are by nature fractious and divisive.

Given the demographic shifts under way, I do expect, in the future, to see those divisions staged differently, as conflicts among lifestyles (urban vs. suburban vs. rural) and between regions (the West will have different agendas than the Northeast; the Midwest, than the South) rather than among races and ethnicities.

We’ve already seen some of the latter in the battle over the bailout of the U.S. car industry. White and black legislators from the Midwest of both political parties organized to support it because it helped the industry in that region. Black and white legislators from the South opposed it because foreign-owned manufacturers had built new plants in their districts, and the bailout would aid the competition.

We will see more of the gloomier prognostications about global warming come true and ecological disturbances follow in their wake. The far West, for example, is water-poor; the Midwest and Northeast, water-rich. They will have conflicting demands on an already-strained federal purse in the event of a falling of the water-table in the West, which is already beginning.

Similarly, cities like New York and Boston are at or near sea level — indeed, they were initially built precisely as ports. The dramatic rise in the sea level projected and some catastrophic accounts of global warming will demand responses that may make the rescue of New Orleans look like small potatoes; how will the inlanders respond?

Racism and ethnocentrism will doubtless remain part of the civic culture but will be of increasing less importance as our nation, like the rest of the world, faces the far different, but equally compelling, challenges of the 21st century.

Experts Re-evaluating Ideas on Racial Progress — Part I

(end byliner)