John,
So long as Latinos's claim is a fair bilingualism, I think the US mainstream should not feel threatened. After all, former POWs Ramirez and Gonzalez seemed to feel at home in English when interviewed by the medias.
Perhaps a better comparison with Belgium would be Canada: think of Belgian Flemings as of French-speaking Quebecois. Both take a hard line with the other half of the country (ie Walloons in Belgium and English-speaking Canadians in Canada) and both feel threatened by the other's cultural imperialism.
I think that a similar tension might develop in California when an affluent Hispanic bourgeoisie will feel discriminated in its ''legitimate'' claims to the full range of power... Yet, is the American social fabric vulnerable to such shortcomings? I mean a corporate icon such as Coca-Cola Corp. has been run by a Cuban-American for a while and Hispanic people are no longer stereotyped as West Side Story's quarrelsome Puerto Ricans --or are they?
That's one big divide between the European citizenship and the American's: in Germany, it's a ''blood'' matter --that is, if your parents aren't German, you just don't qualify. In France, integration is easier although more stringent than in the US since the French have coined the very special concept of Republique. Such a concept calls for a would-be French citizen to jettison everything (religion, language, morals, clothes, etc.) that doesn't smoothly fit with France's valeurs republicaines (republican values). In short, a good immigrant is an immigrant that's doing his/her best to completely assimilate with the host society. All the other European countries have an integration protocol between the French's and the German's.
Maybe a strength of the US model is that minorities are allowed some latitude as far as their cultural legacies are concerned. But such a cultural leniency to minorities has always been felt as a threat to the national unity by the European bourgeoisie at large. Europe doesn't want ghettoes, whether they are cultural, ethnic, religious, or classist ones. Instead, our motto is One size, one color, one flavour, and one price fit all the citizens.
Gustave. |
