Does Ethnic Diversity Portend the Disuniting of America?
Whether or not “The First Universal Nation” of Ben Wattenberg (Buchanan 466) fixes its meaning? Despite it is in law, not all people have the same point-of -view about it in practice. George M. Fredrickson’s “Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical Perspective” and Patrick J. Buchanan’s “Deconstructing America” essays are typical exemplars. Fredrickson and Buchanan are famous politicians. “Race in US” is one of popular topics of Fredrickson who used to serve as the “president of the Organization for American Historians and Stanford University” (Fredrickson 449). Buchanan is “one of the most influential and outspoken conservative voices in the US… and has campaigned for
Obviously, Buchanan doubts about ethnic diversity.
What is an ideal vision of America to Buchanan? In “Deconstructing America”, he emphasizes, “America… was a European-Christian nation whose institutions, languages, and culture remained British” (Buchanan 471). In addition, his apparent vision was shown in next evaluation: “by 1960, 88.6 percent of our nation was of European stock and 95 percent Christian. America had never been a more united nation” (Buchanan 471). While Fredrickson believes in the advantage of multicultural model, Buchanan reflects the other side of ethnic diversity. The example of Britain which Buchanan offers is also informative for reader to consider in the fact our country is going to build a better diversity society. However, this example to me is not convincing enough because what Buchanan shows is just one side of the problems. In Britain, people leave their country because they feel life is unbearable for them. However, is that all because of unbearable life change or because they don't try to change themselves? Everything has two sides which we have to consider. Here in our society, to achieve equality, we have to sacrifice old things and accept new things. Nevertheless, it does not mean the new we get is totally bad. Therefore, in contrast to Buchanan’s ideal vision, I prefer a “universal nation”. I do not think ethnic diversity portends the disuniting of America.