Responses To Huntington

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Responses to Huntington's artcle:

Giles Goodhead

Los Angeles, Calif

Huntington's cover story is incredible. Huntington observes that Hispanics are becoming a larger slice of the U.S. population, and that Hispanics currently dominate immigration numbers. He concludes that these are worrisome trends but is carefully vague on policy prescriptions. Yet, even if you agree that the trends are worrisome, bolting the immigration gates would not make much of a difference. Much of the future growth of the Hispanic population will be due to its tendency to raise large families and its high birth rates, not immigration. Given this, there are no policies to "fix the problem."

In any case, why is a growing Hispanic influence on America a bad thing? Huntington suggests that the U.S. way of life is fixed in its Anglo-Protestant origins and that this culture is superior to that of Spanish-speaking countries. WASP-dominated nations certainly have earned bragging rights in the economic and military arenas, but Hispanic culture has much to offer in terms of family stability and community values. Could it be that this combination is precisely what makes us stronger?

ABRAHAM LOWENTHAL

Professor

School of International Relations

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, Calif.

Huntington is one of the most influential academics of his generation. Throughout his long career, he has framed issues on an astonishing variety of questions. His penchant for big themes, his lucid prose, and his willingness to pose unconventional, and at times unpopular arguments have combined to make him a must read. He has also trained hundreds of students, including myself. We will always be in Sam Huntington's debt.

I was saddened, therefore, to read Huntington's troubling argument that Mexican and Latin American immigration threatens the cultural and political integrity of the United States.

Much of the evidence Huntington offers is dubious at best. Quoting second-hand one third-generation Mexican American saying that he knows few in the Mexican community of South Tucson who rely on education and hard work as the way to prosperity and are thus willing to "buy into America" is a weak basis, indeed, for concluding that cultural differences between Mexican Americans and Anglos could divide the United States.

In fact, none of Huntington's major arguments holds up under critical scrutiny.

To take just one example, palpable here in California, the strong increases in Hispanic-American voter registration and political participation during the past 15 years undercut the claim that Mexican Americans do not identify with the United States. So do Mexican-American voters' demonstrated support for municipal bonds that pay for educational facilities and their rapid embrace of U.S. cultural mores. Mexican immigrants are hardly contemptuous of American culture but rather admire the rule of law and rewards for hard work so often lacking in Mexico. Far from rejecting the values of the United States, Mexican Americans are more likely to adopt core American tenets of individualism and patriotism than are non-Hispanic whites, according to survey data. To the modest extent that U.S. Latino communities affect U.S. foreign policy, their impact is to advance the mainstream U.S. goals of strengthening democracy and promoting international trade and investment.

An accelerating process of economic, demographic, social, and cultural integration is taking place between Mexico and the United States. It is not invited or formally condoned but nonetheless real and irreversible. We must work to manage its pace and effects—to reinforce its positive aspects and to reduce and fairly distribute its costs. However ill-informed, poorly supported, and nostalgic Huntington's argument is, it can make a positive contribution by helping Americans focus on the ever closer U.S.-Mexico relationship.

PATRICIA SEED

Professor of History

Rice University

Houston, Texas

The arrogance of an East Coast Brahmin—who eats lettuce and broccoli harvested in California by Mexican Americans, has his Cambridge-area restaurant dishes washed by Mexicans, and then disparages that very group—is ungrateful to say the least. At best, he betrays ignorance of the reasons how he eats safe, inexpensive food in affordable restaurants. Rather than counting the ill-conceived cultural costs of the presence of Hispanics in the United States, Huntington should investigate what he (and the rest of us in the United States) owe to the many hard-working, decent, Mexicans and Mexican Americans.