|
It used to be that America had a center that was white, and everybody else was on the margins. The people on the margins didn't have power, they didn't become judges, they didn't become city-council members, they didn't run the school boards, they were just out there, sort of like the forgotten people. Well, it's a little different now. If you look around L.A., for example, you see companies that are full of Asian engineers, and Hispanic women managers, and black computer programmers. These are all people who have simply gone about their business, moved on and up, got an education, found jobs, bought homes. They aren't kicking up a ruckus, so it's easy to miss what's going on, but they've fanned out across America, and they're building businesses, and getting tenure, and being successful. The truth is that in some ways it's just not a big deal anymore. There used to be the white center and then just a few recognizable categories of "other" -- the Jews, the blacks, the Hispanics. But now there are hundreds of categories of "other," and their numbers and proportion are growing. What happens when they are suddenly a quarter, a third, a half of the voting population? When I was growing up, people didn't make a big deal about acknowledging the difference between, say, Presbyterians and Baptists. Everyone's attitude was, So what? In terms of American public life, it mostly didn't matter whether you were a Methodist or a Lutheran. I think it's getting to be that way about more and more kinds of people. I think there's a whole lot of cultural mixing going on among people who aren't making a stink about it. I sometimes want to pat myself on the back for being the white half of a venturesome interracial marriage. But the truth is, sorry, it's not venturesome, it's old hat, it's no big deal.
-- Peter Norton (interviewed by David Owen in the New Yorker)
|
