- Joined
- Feb 19, 2017
Dude, I'm of both Irish and Scots-Irish ancestry (as well as Italian) and I'm simply citing a historical precedent. In 1800's America, we would've been considered "ethnic" instead of "white" and would have been the "near out group" while the Blacks and Native Americans would have been considered the "far out group" in American society, as pointed out by @Senior Lexmechanic
Despite the historical past, I'm pretty sure that it's safe to assume that both of us would consider ourselves to be white. You might be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying the Irish aren't white. In fact, I consider the Irish and the Italians to both be white.
What I am saying is that they came in immigrant waves but did not undermine the core American culture and the Latino community has the same potential if the issue of immigration reform is properly resolved.
Irishmen and Italians are both considered white for all intents and purposes in the modern era. But historically they were put in the category of "European Ethnic" when they first came to America, before being considered "White Ethnic" and then just "White"
Honestly, Latinos would probably have been considered culturally white by now if it weren't for the massive waves of illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America. The only thing that keeps Tejanos, Cuban Americans, and your third and fourth generation Latino Americans from being considered part of mainline "White America" is the fact that they are outnumbered by the more recently immigrant out group.
Even taking the brown complexion of Latinos descended from Mestizo or indigenous stock into account, the Latino groups I mentioned earlier (Tejanos, Cubans, and American-born Latinos) often have a lot more in common culturally with your average blue-collar working class white person than with inner-city blacks or Middle Eastern Muslims.
The only real exception are the immigrants who live in the major cities and the first generation that comes after them in those urban areas.
There's a reason why coastal leftists want to keep more illegal immigrants coming into the country and discouraging any attempt at assimilation and it's not about destroying the white race. The Democrats want a captive voting block similar to the black community, but larger in size.
However, the Latino community didn't have the same history that allowed the black vote to be bound to the Democratic Party in the 1960's. The only way for the Democrats and other leftist groups to really pull this off is to keep the flow of illegal immigrants coming, so Latinos as a whole remain the immigrant near-out group by association and border state Democrats in places like California can keep using the immigration issue to keep the more recent generations loyal voters.
If you resolve the immigration debate, you lose control of the Latino vote. There's no gibs or Civil Rights figures like LBJ to keep them tied to the Democratic Party like there is with the blacks. As it stands now, East Asians are starting to leave the progressive wings of the Democratic Party and moving in a more centrist direction thanks to the decline of the old Religious Right and the rise of the SJW Left. Asians are barely a step above Whites in the hierarchy of the Progressive Stack and a lot of the younger Asians are starting to wake up to that.
Even the dreaded Jews aren't as captive to left-wing voting blocks as they used to be. Your wealthy secular Jews on both of the coasts will still support the lefties and back the ADL, but a lot of religiously observant Jews and working-class jews in Middle America are being increasingly viewed with contempt by the Left thanks to the Israel debate.
If the issue of illegal immigration is properly resolved, then the Democrats can potentially lose a massive chunk of their electorate and only have inner-city blacks and white coastal elites as permanently reliable voting blocks.
The point isn't that we should be multicultural, but that there was a mild de facto multiculturalism in America from the get-go since the country wasn't really founded on a singular ethnic or religious identity.
