Brexit, Racism, Trump, Part I

In the supposed populist revolt we are experiencing with the Trump and Sanders campaigns in America, coinciding with Brexit and rumblings of other European -exits, charges of racism and xenophobia have enjoyed a resurgence.  My default response is to disregard anything further the writer lays out, as they are clearly quick to judge, quick to insult, and prone to exaggeration.  If someone uses a milder term like ethnocentric I may stick around a bit longer. Because there is certainly something to the observation that people feel their culture or customs are being eroded or even taken, and they are trying to preserve something of Our Customs, Our Institutions, Our People.  When one culture dominates, those from other cultures feel left out. When the left outs create changes, either by law or by sheer numbers, the previous owners of the joint feel they have had something taken from them and push back.

This is not just racial and tribal.  It is noticeable when people move into a small town, turning it into a suburb. It's not like the old days.  Swedish churches have always had Luciafest, but when the families are more Italian and Korean and mixed ancestry they sometimes let it drop. Schools have traditions that fade for a dozen reasons.

Who gets to choose can be complicated, but there are some unwritten rules that people seem to acknowledge.  A.) Being in the majority has some weight.  When a new tribe moves into a place and eventually outnumbers the original inhabitants they change the culture more in their own direction.  B.) Whoever got their first, or more importantly, whoever established the institution (cleared the land, built the school, organised the choir) has some say. Obama's "you didn't build that" has enormous cultural implications that I'm sure were intentional.  C.) Whoever is willing to do the work now gets an important vote.

Much of the conflict comes from moving about so much these days.  People who come from there to here are used to having their own ways in the old place, and want to have them where they arrive. Yet isn't this a bit intrusive?  All fourth-graders take NH history here.  If I move to Michigan can I demand that they teach NH history to my children?  Am I right to move to California and complain that it's not enough like New England?

This isn't going quite where I planned.  One thing leads to another, and it's another example of learning by speaking, of discovering things yourself as you go.  Perhaps this will have to be Part I.

The people who want to keep their culture regard it as an innocent thing, something they deserve and have a right to.  John Derbyshire is clearly of this school and makes some solid points about it in one of his Brexit discussions.   Four things to note in that essay:

Roger Cohen, who writes a column called "The Globalist" for the NYTimes, bemoans Brexit because "...it's a personal loss.  Europa, however flawed, was the dream of my generation." Well, no. Your age bracket voted against it, Roger.  It's your transnationalist elite class that dreamed it. But even if it were true, why should your dream rule?  Who cares, really?  My tribe has dreams, too, and we're not going to get most of them.

Anthony Lane's tying the embrace of difference into the (implied) more advanced because open culture of urbanites, sounds a bit like our recent discussion of New York and American urban-fanciers http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2016/06/new-york.html .  Derbyshire separates that into separate elements quite nicely.

Derb doesn't notice or pretends not to notice that some of the Brexit anger is not anti-Mediterranean/Muslim, but anti-Eastern European, hating Poles because they have competitive skills and hating the Roma because they don't. Yet I think he is right in that the English would have put up with that without revolt, and even endured reduced numbers of Syrians and Afghans.

His contention that the English are annoyed because there are whole sections of major cities where there are no white Englishmen, because groups have taken over what used to be fish-and-chips neighborhoods, may be true but seems odd to Americans, who expect that's what cities are supposed look like.  Chinatown, Little Italy, Germantown.  We are getting closer to actual racism here, though it's not as pure as it's made out to be. People like things to look and sound as they used to.Nothing personal

There is a considerable problem that people's memories of how things used to be is often rosily inaccurate, and traditions which seem long-standing actually go back little more than a generation, but we'll tackle that later.  For now, let's have a song.