Booman wrote a post recently called A Doughboy Nation. The gist of it was that the U.S. relies on immigration to keep the working fires burning at home. He wrote:
Let’s face it. Our middle-class white youth are addicted to video games, lack ambition, are priced out of college (and will mostly squander their opportunities if they do go), and don’t have enough entrepreneurial spirit to lead this country forward. If we’re thinking that our low work-ethic kids, who are more interested in their piercings than making a buck, are going to compete with the Chinese, the Indians, and the Brazilians, we’re kidding ourselves. We don’t even make these kids fight in our wars. We’re soft. The only toughness we have left is from our immigrant population, and our urban and rural poor.
Now…he may have slightly overstated the case, but basically that is what I found when I left NYC and moved into a mostly white bedroom suburb around 1994 because the NYC school system simply wasn’t doing a good enough job for my 8 year-old son and I thought that he would be better off in a suburban school environment. We chose a town the school system of which had a very good reputation (Fool me once…), took the plunge and paid the necessary dues to live there.
Boy…were we surprised!!!
Booman’s statement “Our middle-class white youth are addicted to video games, lack ambition, are priced out of college (and will mostly squander their opportunities if they do go), and don’t have enough entrepreneurial spirit to lead this country forward” was totally backed up by our experience in that school system. Teachers who did not even have a thorough grasp of their subjects taught bored kids who rapidly became slacker kids in sheer self-defense. The whole experience gradually spiraled down until we pulled my son out in late high school and sent him to an experimental school that basically saved his mind and soul. (He’s thriving now, thankfully. An environmental biologist working in really high-level research.)
However, this morning I ran into an article that gives me real hope for the future.
Read on.
Race Remixed. Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above,
The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.
One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating.
That’s right…”One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities” in the U.S.
Hmmmmmm….the white supremacists’ worst nightmare; the single most important reason (although largely unspoken because people just didn’t talk out loud about about sex at the time) why segregation was instituted in the first place.
Miscegenation. The sin that dared not speak its action.
Wars have been fought over it. Empires have been founded on it. Millions…billions… have died because of it.
And when examined in the cold light of reason, it is the single most anti-evolutionary concept ever to arise in human experience.
Cole Porter knew.
Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love
Yup.
Do the birds, bees and fleas ask whether their chosen mate of the moment is from another colony or slightly different in coloring? Not often. If it gives off the right pheromones, it’s fuckable. End of story.
And evolution exists on earth because of that single reason. The mating of differences.
Lemme ask y’all…
Where on this great green earth (or this little ball of dust, depending on your point of view) is human evolution most rapidly progressing at this moment in time?
Answer?
In first place? The Western Hemisphere.
A close second place? Western Europe.
Bet on it.
That’s right, folks.
In South/Central/Caribbean/North America and to some slightly lesser degree Western Europe, “miscegenation” is becoming not only allowable, but stylish!!!
Oh, the shame!!!
Or is it…
Oh, the glory!!!
You know my answer, if you know me at all.
I am primarily a latin and jazz musician… a Long Island Celt who somehow ended up playing with people like Charles Mingus and Tito Puente.
Go figure.
Musical miscegenation at its finest. Arguably the most potent musical force in the world over the last 100 years.
The real story of America.
And that evolutionary force is now happening in and to mainstream white (“Doughboy” in Booman’s phrase…nice one, Booman.) culture, to the point where it is happening sexually!
Sex is the real deal, folks. Once that barrier breaks down, all the rest of the shit just flies right out the window. It’s really hard to napalm people who look just like your son or daughter, know what I mean?
So when you start to get really down about America (I know, it sure as shit is tempting, ain’t it?) try taking the long view.
The dinosaurs are being backed into an evolutionary corner by new breeds. Mixed breeds. New strengths to meet new demands. Just as it has always been. My son went to a very good college and worked his butt off to become an environmental biologist. One day we were talking about his lab work and he said to me “You know who are the hardest and best workers in the labs?” When I came up (the middle/late `60s in Ithaca and Boston/Cambridge) the answer would have hands down been “Jews and Asians,” and that’s what I figured he’s say. But he didn’t. He said “The Mexicans.”
Hmmmm….
It ain’t just lawn workers, Ms. Palin.
Not anymore it isn’t.
It’s lab work. And bed work as well.
Y’all dinosaurs are so screwed!!!
Patience, folks. The gene sinks are busily at work in the doughboy world, sinking the evolutionary losers into the tarpits of history.
Patience.
We’re gonna make it through.
Hold the fuck on.
Watch.
Later…
AG