Back when Richard Nixon began the culture-wars that have led America to its current political paralysis, he and his cynical advisors used the friction between a generation bent on change and the so-called silent majority to win elections. Thus came to be the modern-day Republican Party that exploited the nation’s fears about a new culture dominated by acid, amnesty and abortion and then took advantage of the resentment against movements seeking to affirm women’s rights, the civil rights of minorities, protection of the environment and the rights of gays and lesbian. The culture-wars were anchored by the infamous “southern strategy” that was – and is – racist to its core.
Instead of incorporating the change that a generation born of television, openness, wealth and mobility were going to bequeath on the nation and bending it to produce a positive result, the Nixon cohort sought to abuse the divisions of a culture-war that after so many bitter years has been won by the generation of change on every front. Nothing punctuates the victory over reaction than the pre-Christmas lesbian couple selected in San Diego for the traditional kiss by which the Navy celebrates the returning home of a ship. Seen around the world, the kiss should be seen here for what it is: The end of the Nixonian culture wars. Nevertheless, a new war is being stoked by Nixon’s political descendants who put HispanicLatinos in the cross-hairs of history.The old and passing generation of political misanthropic strategists possesses enough juice to win an election or two (when the rest of the country does not vote) to throw the nation into chaos by capturing enough seats in Congress to make impossible the progress the country needs to make. And believing they still can squeeze enough out of their old, nasty turnip, they are trying to start a new culture-war – a real cultural war – by provoking sentiment against the HispanicLatino population and masking its culture as an existential threat to America.
As if on cue, Arizona last week penalized the Tucson public schools for teaching in its Mexican American studies courses why Mexican American students lag in almost every positive economic, social and political indicator.
I never took a Mexican American studies course but they evidently are needed. How else to explain to students why they are being attacked in almost every state of the Union from South Carolina to Arizona? Most Mexican Americans are proud to be Americans, probably more so to be American than of their Mexican heritage – about which, by the way, most are less than knowledgeable. Though HispanicLatinos because of their immense demographic growth are in the process of finding their identity for the next chapter of the American story, they understand one thing: That the forces that kept them from being more successful parts of American society are still alive and kicking. But by far more important is that the last dregs of the Nixonian reactionaries do not realize that they – more so than HispanicLatino kids studying their history – are defining the next moment in American history in the most counter-productive way possible: They are causing more HispanicLatinos to self-identify in a manner that no one expected.
(The GOP might reconsider how much time and money it invests in Arizona to win the state in this year’s 2012 elections. The attacks by the Republican Sharon Angle on HispanicLatinos in next-door Nevada last year so motivated them that they pushed Harry Reid to victory in the face of a Republican tide in an off-year election.)
In due time, the old will give way to the new, but the time in between might be as harrowing as the last 40 years – not a good thing for an America that has many more problems to address than when Nixon took office.
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