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Sorry for Excluding Your Chinese Ass; End of Multiculturalism, Middling Minority, Hotel Owners Protest
European leaders like England's David Cameron and Germany's Angela Merkel have been leading an attack on "multiculturalism." One indication of this has been a new law passed that removes racial concerns in adoptions. Others include the eviction of mosques from public property and mandatory courses to assimilate. Will this spread to the U.S.? The Tea Party movement would definitely welcome a similar offensive.
Mike Honda, congressman from California, and others has called upon the United States for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This is only legislation excluding a group of people from immigrating on the basis of ethnicity. Honda made the proposal a San Jose, CA event marking the internment of Japanese Amercians during World War II. He also connected it to the current anti-immigrant campaigns.
Recent research indicates that things aren't so swell for Asian Americans. One report, which actually aggregrates some other research, claims that Asian American females 15-24 suffers the highest rate of depression. A second report out of University of Maryland documents that the economic return to Asian Americans to education. Meanwhile the University of Calfornia Irvine has issued a report that shows that most people perceive that Asian Americans lack leadership qualities.
Asian American hoteliers - mostly South Asian - shouted down Kenneth Feinburg, the federally-appointed claims adminstrator for the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while he testified at the Florida statehouse on February 18th. The 700 members of Asian American hoteliers assocation claim that 85% of their claims in Florida have been denied. They say that many are facing foreclosure. Feinburg is known best for adminstrating claims for the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.
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The backlash against multiculturalism in the West is part of the rising tide of racist nativism and nationalism that all these "democracies" are experiencing.
In the USA, this trend is evident in terms of three parallel forms of American nationalism:
-Latinophobia, or anti-immigrant sentiment against primarily Latinos.
-Islamophobia, or anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment in the War on Terrorism.
-Sinophobia, or anti-Chinese sentiment with the emergence of China as a challenger to the American superpower.
In the final analysis, these parallel nationalist phobias are a consequence of a capitalist system in crisis.
Whenever capitalism undergoes systemic crises, there is often a resulting increase in nationalism and militarism--above and beyond the "normative" levels.
A historical analogy would be the Great Depression and a little thing called World War II.