John RapleyRECENTLY, THE results of the latest US census were made public. Although the survey confirmed expected trends, there were some surprises in the details. In particular, America is waking up to the reality of its growing Hispanic presence. While the USA will remain a predominantly white country, the Hispanic share of that population will soon displace the country's black population in numbers.
The rapid growth in the Hispanic community is having social and political consequences whose ramifications are only just starting to be understood. The Latin impact on music and culture has been growing more important for the last couple of decades. However, until recently, the impact of this community on the country's politics was largely confined to regional bastions like Miami. But it is telling that in the last presidential election, both major candidates could speak Spanish.
The USA may come to imitate the Canadian practice, where no serious candidate for national leadership can any longer be unilingual. For several years, the growth of Spanish has provoked the expected backlash among American conservatives, who worry that the white European culture of the USA will be swamped by a Latino tide.
There have, for example, been calls to make English the official language. But what is interesting is that white conservatives are finding common cause with seemingly unlikely allies, in particular, among African Americans. While black political leaders have in the past tried to reach common ground with Hispanic leaders, the marriage has not always been an easy one.
In particular, while one might think that immigrants would be more likely to favour liberal politicians less inclined as they are to racism the reality has often been different. To begin with, Hispanic voters are not a homogeneous group. Puerto Ricans in New York carry a different cultural and political heritage from Miami Cubans.
Both, in turn, being highly urbanised populations, differ greatly from Mexican farm labourers in California. And so forth. Therefore, the Hispanic vote offers at least as many opportunities to conservative Republicans as it does to liberal Democrats. Add to this with the fact that the party alignments in the USA appear to be changing.
The traditional dichotomy, of the poor voting Democratic while the rich vote Republican, is becoming increasingly muddied. The white working class is increasingly flirting with the Republicans, while the white upper middle class, attached as it is to what has come to be called "lifestyle liberalism", is finding common cause with the Democrats. The result is a political landscape that is going through profound transition. Then, insert into this blend the recent soul-searching that has become evident in the African-American community.
While still firmly wedded to the Democratic Party, the black vote is increasingly revealing strains of conservatism. A survey done in 1995 at the Million Man March by some Howard University resear-chers revealed a strong representation of well-educated, middle-class men. What appeared to unite them was a conviction that the integrity of their communities and their cultural identity faced twin threats.
On the one hand, the very success of civil rights policies had fragmented their communities, as the growing black middle class left for the suburbs. On the other hand, the growing presence of new Americans in the population left them with a feeling of potentially worsening marginalisation. Their weight in the body politic, which had done much to define race relations in the USA, was now diminishing. In such circumstances, the potential for a nativist politics similar to that found among white conservatives goes up.
Therefore, the seemingly obvious fact that in this century, the USA will become less white, is perhaps not the most important one. What may yet emerge is a white-black coalition forged along nativist lines, one that seeks to defend the interests of "long-established" communities. It is thus not evident that the growing presence of foreigners in the USA will necessarily make it a more tolerant place. Still, the American capacity for regeneration has few equals.
Although it is too early to tell how the American political landscape will change in coming years, it appears that it has already started a tectonic shift. Tectonic shifts, of course, are quiet and glacial, but they do alter everything. Nevertheless they are, relatively, peaceful. Somehow, I suspect, America will rise to the challenge of its changing character.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
