RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/ossified-americana-part-one/

Here are a few institutions that have quite outlived their age.

Tribal Graduations

Consider 40 percent of California’s population now identifies as Latino, predominately Mexican American. Fifty percent of current BAs in the California State University system this year were awarded to self-described Latinos.

That paradox brings up the question, why are there Chicano/Latino separate graduate ceremonies at CSU when the Latino community is both the largest ethnic group in the state and graduates the greatest percentage of students at CSU?

Many of the Latino graduates are children of mixed marriages and do not speak English. If someone does not speak Spanish and has three grandfathers who are so-called Anglo and one Argentinian grandparent, is he allowed to participate?

Such absurd questions arise anytime we revert to tribalism, as we saw with the desperate but ultimately successful efforts of Elizabeth Warren to high-cheekbone her way into a Harvard Law professorship.

I think the prior arguments for ethnic theme houses and segregated graduations were predicated on victimized “minority status”—i.e., “marginalized peoples” who need the resonance of ethnic solidarity or indeed chauvinism to fend off various perceived threats from the majority.

But is that premise any longer valid in 2023?

What exactly is the point of a racially segregated graduation ceremony when your particular tribe is the largest in the state and the university?

Was the current practice and idea of segregated dorms and graduations a universal one or simply ad hoc to be used in particular advantageous situations?

That is, if there were a white dorm or “European-American theme house,” and a white graduation ceremony to incur “ethnic pride” and to foster “solidarity”—borrowing the protocols from the former Latino minority—would the Latino academic establishment say either “Congratulations that you followed our precedent and let us know how we can help to advise you on instilling ethnic pride in your heritage and confidence that you are vigilant against systemic bias and prejudice” or “You are flat out racists and have no business emulating the segregationist practices of the Old South”?

Then we come to the mechanics of tribal selection and qualification, a contentious process as we have learned from fierce in-fighting among tribal casino gambling enclaves.

Would a so-called Italian American, Spanish literature major, fluent in Spanish, be allowed to attend a Latino/Chicano graduation ceremony to sit beside a one-quarter Mexican-American engineering major, with blond hair and blue eyes, who does not understand Spanish? Do not laugh. I have had hundreds of Mexican-American students who did not speak a word of Spanish and were indistinguishable from Greek, Italian, Arab, or Anglo Americans. And yes, I have a few so-called Anglos who spoke Spanish and seemed more Mexican than fully assimilated third-generation Mexican Americans.

We are witnessing two centrifugal antithetical forces heading for a collision—overt ethnic tribalism ultimately bent on rendezvousing with Rwanda, versus the insidious, ongoing invisible forces of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage that simply follow the melting pot paradigm of the last three centuries. Stay tuned to see who wins—Yugoslavia or old Teddy Roosevelt’s melting pot.