Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

I'm not saying that Anglo-whites are somehow less than others simply because of their ethnic heritage. I think that it's a combination of a sort of nativist ideology and class. If people don't have that nativist ideology who come from this background, and they don't have class benefits because of this, then I don't have a problem with them. I think the problem on its face is one of a particular sort of ethnic nationalism and, on its less public side, a class issue. Poor rural whites think that they can get ahead by allying themselves with which whites, who speak in the name of whiteness being the issue, of race being the issue, and not class.

Getting rid of the nexus between higher class status for people from these backgrounds and the idea of native superiority, of 'embodying America', would not make the U.S. a utopia but it would be a great first step towards moving us to a better state of things.

There'd still be racism, there'd still be class, and, in terms of race and class, people of European descent as a whole, including religious minorities like Jews, would still be the main beneficiaries, with there being both a 'white' working class and racial oppression for blacks, latinos, Native Americans, and poor asians, as well as other poor recent immigrants.

But the way I see it this nativist stuff is a step backwards beyond even this; it's something that has more in common with pre-WWII America, or even before, when there was still segregation and when ethnic and religious minorities really weren't considered "Real Americans", than it does even with normal, exploitative, capitalism.

And people of varying backgrounds believe in this stuff as well, but despite some sort of pseudo-Nativist sentiment out east there's a reason why this thing, the Minutemen, and their allies, popped up in the Southwest, in the mountain states, and, to some extent, in California and the Northwest, as opposed to New Jersey. That reason being that in those areas, with California being the wildcard here, it's more a question of Anglo-white against hispanics than it is of assimilated non-anglo whites against hispanics. Italians in New Jersey can fulminate all they want about various ethnic groups moving in, but the heart of this thing is in areas of the country that are much more obviously whiter than anything existing on the East Coast.

Maybe New England.

I could make a crack about Connecticut here......

Anyways.

For me this connects back to a fundamental crisis which allowed 9/11 hysteria to dominate and to take the course it took, but that's a topic for another post.