One nation under a groove

Debate brews over at Volunteer Voter, a show down between Sarcastro and Aunt B over a comment by right wing gabber and master of the slippery slope Steve Gill about the dangers, evils, and divisiveness of multiculturalism. I break from my blogging respite to jump in. Gill, Sarcastro, and other "I hate hyphens" folks still have not, and CANNOT refute Aunt B.'s point, that simply calling on people not to note their ethnicity in nomenclature is not going to divide what is already divided. AC sez: “I don't have a problem with taking up with my tribe, if that's how it's gonna be, but I would much prefer that we get back to the idea of unhyphenated Americanism.” I'm not really sure when this period of unhyphenated Americanism existed. Oh wait, that was when people were called wops, spics, kikes, pollacks, etc with impunity. Yeah, no hyphens needed then! What a great time of unity! Sarcastro seems to confuse multiculturalism with moral relevancy. He suggests that multiculturalism will allow us to embrace things like clitorectomies. Bringing up things like clitorectomies is irrelevant. For one thing, many Somalies came here to ESCAPE the kind of life that allows such practices, yet, funny, they don't shy away from being Somalian, even though American on paper. It's an extreme example that doesn't prove much of anything except that Sarcastro is up on current affairs (and down the slippery slope).   Multiculturalism (which means so many different things to different people) is certainly not about the "supremacy of ethnic identity" over being an American. Multiculturalism does not (and in all likelihood, NEVER will) lead to the Balkanization of the US. People living here just have too much invested in each other. How would young white boys get along without having Allen Iverson and E-40 to emulate (forget about where AC would get taglines for his posts)? Who would watch the toddlers in the Upper West side of Manhattan? WHO TELL ME WHO? Seeit? Our similarities sneak up on us without us knowing, so fast we come up with cute names for them after they're ingrained in our culture (whigger). Our similarities, like a love for gas guzzling vehicles, a slavish devotion to Best Buy, and water cooler chat around a show about (gasp) hyphenated American criminal enterprise, are always there. Some, like Gill, just need a whipping boy for the "what's wrong with our country" question. They hate looking in the mirror, I think. Lastly, wtf do yakuza have to do with it?