Is Trump Stupid or Is He Just Sowing Discord?

I have always thought that Trump was a shrewd person who saw it was to his advantage to sow discord.  But recently Trump was invited to appear at a conference of Black journalists and he was interviewed by three journalists.

His most oft-quoted remark from that interview is that Kamala Harris is not really Black.  Questioning her identity, he said that she was totally Indian until recently when she decided to be Black.  The implication clearly was that she made this change for political advantage.

I am not aware of the reaction of Trump allies to his statement (I found nothing on the internet).  All others have trashed the statement as a misstatement of fact.  The Vice President said it was "divisive and showed disrespect."

Yes, it was a misstatement of fact.  Ms Harris' mother was Indian and her father was Black.  While it's true that she identified strongly as a child with her Indian identity, and still does, she also identified, certainly since she was a teenager, as a Black, attending Howard University, a Black college. Her identity as a Black is thus not recent.

The reason why I raised the question of whether Trump is stupid, as opposed to just divisive, is because it's quite possible that he truly doesn't understand what it means to be bi-racial, to have two identifies. 

Maybe that's why it comes so natural to him to vilify immigrants –  he truly cannot understand being, for example, Muslim and being a proud American.

Which means that he doesn't understand most Americans.  Most Americans have an immigrant background and a large percentage are either the child of immigrants or immigrants themselves.  In 2013, Census data shows that 13% of all Americans were foreign born, 12% were born here but the child of an immigrant, and 56% were the grandchildren of immigrants.  All Americans have an immigrants in their background.

While immigrants to the United States have in the past always worked to assimilate into the larger culture (that is less true recently of Hispanics), many have tried to retain their ethnic identity as well.  So they were both proud of their ethnic background and proud to be an American.

To not understand this basic characteristic of most Americans and the nature of American citizenship makes him unfit to be President, on top of all the other reasons why he is unfit.

 

The American Dream?

We all know what the “American dream” has been.  As the phrase is generally used, it has meant the material benefits of freedom … upward mobility, financial success, home ownership.  That hard work will pay off and that each successive generation will be better off.  

African-Americans have never as a group had that dream for obvious reasons … their history of slavery, Jim crow in the South, segregation and discrimination in the North.  These facts … ongoing discrimination, segregation, and poor education, with the resulting lower income and for many poverty … form the context of their dreams or better put, lack thereof, for most blacks.

But this dream is what drove the tens of millions of immigrants who came to this country after the Civil War and in the 20th century, including more recently Latinos.  Since immigrants and their descendants now form the majority of Americans, their view of the American dream has predominated.   

It was thus with great surprise when several days ago I read an article in The New York Times based on data from a National Opinion Research Center survey that found a very different concept of the American dream to be current among Americans.  I should start by saying that NORC is one of the most respected survey research organizations (note I did not call it a “polling” organization) in the country.  (I must also note that I am a former NORC employee.)

The survey found that for the vast majority of Americans today, regardless their income, ethnic, or racial group, the American dream was “freedom of choice of how to live” and “a good family life.”  About 40% felt they had achieved that dream and another 40% said they were well on there way to doing so.

Huh?  This was a surprise in two respects.  First, not lusting after material prosperity seems almost un-American.  Second, given what has been happening to people, what the majority of people have experienced, in this country over the past four decades (starting with the Reagan presidency), most people feeling positive about their lives was unexpected.

But on reflection, that very fact … that excepting the top 20%, most Americans have been so battered financially over the course of the past 40 years … plus the fact that blacks have been constantly disappointed by the promise of the American dream ever since emancipation, offers an explanation for the survey’s surprising findings.  I believe that in order to cope psychologically, the definition of the American dream for most Americans has changed to something that they feel they either have or is within reach.

The good news is that most people report feeling pretty good about their lives.  The bad news is that this is mostly based on an illusion.  First, they don’t really have “freedom of choice of how to live;” one of the things that made America exceptional … that very freedom based on upward mobility …  is no longer the case.  Most people only have freedom of choice of how to live today in the sense that the government doesn’t tell them what life to lead, as in Communist countries of old, and they have choices regarding what to buy and what services to use.  And “a good family life?”  If surveys and anecdotal stories are to be believed, this is also an illusion; there is much dysfunction in the typical American family.

So despite the article presenting a very rosy take on this transformation of people’s definition of the American dream, this report is not something to feel good about but rather something to read with concern.  

If my take on the survey results is correct, it may be the explanation for the phenomenon that has been noted often with concern that so many young men are little better than slackers.  It is women who have more drive today, and that also makes sense against the backdrop that women are more emancipated today than ever; they can see themselves being more than their mother’s were.

What has made America great and powerful over the years has been the American people pushing the envelope of their lives as well as pushing the envelope of what is known, what exists.  They have done this within the context of American democracy and freedom, but it is what they have done with their lives which has made the real difference.  If Americans lose the drive to make their lives better by pushing the envelope, America will deteriorate into a second-class nation.

Donald Trump does not understand what has made America great, so nothing he is doing will fix what is currently wrong.  It’s not as simplistic as creating jobs or fixing trade imbalances.  

There are many things that are currently wrong in America, but what most impacts America’s greatness is paradoxically it’s corporate culture.  Rather than strengthening America, as it did for many decades, corporate culture is now bleeding America.  It is the corporate culture which must change if America is to regain its greatness, if young people once again are to have hope in the future and thus have the drive to push the envelope.

And how do we accomplish changing corporate culture?  Part of it certainly starts in the business schools that educate future executives.  Part of it comes from a change in the general culture which has elevated greed … one of the seven deadly sins … into a virtue; that wanting as much money and material things as one can amass is a good thing. 

It means a return to values that served America and its citizens well for 200 years.  Progress is not always to be found in going where no man has ever gone.  Sometimes, progress is returning to the past.

The Case for Compulsory Language Education for Immigrants

The functioning of a healthy democracy and society requires that all members of that society feel a part of it.  They can have complaints, arguments, but they need to still feel part of it.

There are several things that indicate I believe that we don’t have a healthy democracy at this point in our history.  The one is the percentage of people who don’t vote.  Typically 40-45% of the eligible voters don’t vote, even in a presidential election which gets the highest voter turnout.  Why?  People often say they don’t feel their vote makes a difference; in various ways they indicate they are politically estranged.

But when you look at who doesn’t vote … 20-somethings, Hispanics, and those making less than $30,000/yr are much less likely to register and vote than others … the more fundamental reason is likely that they don’t feel part of the system, part of society.  Why?  Because they don’t see themselves as benefiting from it.  That has to change.  But that’s a topic for another post.

Another, which has reached I believe a true danger point in the 2016 election, is that half of the population feels that it has no commonality with the other half.  I do not believe this is an overstatement.  I do not know if there has been any point in time, with the exception of the Civil War era, when the country has been so deeply divided.  It’s not that we haven’t often been divided 50/50, but the division has never been so sharp, the passions so visceral.

But in this post, I want to address another problem area … the percentage of Americans who can barely speak English, if at all.  America has always been a nation of immigrants.  In all the waves of immigration in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, immigrants settled in areas of a city or the country where other immigrants from their country lived and their native language was freely spoken.

But whether it was because they wanted to be proud Americans or whether they felt it was necessary if they were to get ahead in life, they made it their business to learn English.  The older generation might only learn to speak English haltingly and with a heavy accent, but the younger people always became fluent English speakers.

For most immigrants, this pattern of assimilation still holds true.  But it is not true for many Hispanics.  Why?  The main reason I believe is that there is so many of them that they comprise a culture unto themselves.  To the point that if they don’t get more than a high school education and work in the jobs available to that cohort, they don’t need English, or barely, to meet the requirements of their jobs.

According to the 2011 Census, sixty-two percent of Hispanics (not just recent immigrants; they have no published data on recent immigrants) spoke Spanish at home; the next highest were Chinese at 5%.  The other percentages are miniscule.  While the data make clear that the vast majority of Hispanics in this country, even those who speak Spanish at home, are fluent in English, a large percentage (25%) of those Hispanics who spoke Spanish at home did not speak English well or not at all, 

The actual number of Limited English Proficiency Hispanics is large enough that this weakens the health of our democracy because if you don’t speak the common, native language, then you do not feel part of the larger society.  You only feel part of a separate society.  

For that reason, while I am as liberal and progressive as one can be, I have always supported the proposition that immigrants must learn English to become citizens and that English should be the only language officially used … for example, on signage of all types, instruction on ATMs, elections materials, etc.  Obviously one can’t implement this “English only” standard at the current time because we have not had this education requirement.

One of the things I’ve done as a volunteer is tutor adult immigrants in English.  I’ve seen how hard it is for them to learn English.  First, it’s not an easy language.  But more importantly, they typically live in a household where English is not spoken and they associate with friends who don’t speak English, at least amongst themselves.  Many have not worked or were in menial jobs with other same-language immigrants.  

So they have lessons for an hour or two a week, but then they are immersed not in an English-speaking environment but in their native language environment, and so they make very slow progress.  (Interestingly, I haven't personally seen Hispanics in the programs I’ve been part of.)

To break this pattern, I suggest the United States needs to introduce compulsory language education for all new or recent immigrants under the age of, say, 60 who have not yet obtained U.S. citizenship.  And it needs to be sufficiently robust that it works.  It needs to be for several hours, several days a week, so that the new language can begin to take hold.  And it needs to be available at enough times so that it does not interfere with an immigrant’s attempts to find employment.

Luckily, we have an infrastructure of schools in every neighborhood in every city.  These public buildings typically go unused after the regular school day is over.  They can and should be put to use in the new compulsory language education program.

Yes, this will mean an added expense for government budgets, but it is I feel a critically important expense if we are to maintain both the health of our democracy and the character of this country.  We are not, like Canada, an historically bi-lingual country.  However, we have in many respects already become a bi-lingual country, not by virtue of the number of Hispanics who have immigrated here, but because we have not had in place systems and requirements regarding their learning English.

This must change.  And while I would not make it a requirement for those who have already become U.S. citizens, the government should make English courses readily available so that if a citizen wants to learn English, there are as few barriers as possible.

During this transition period, how should the existence of English/Spanish signage, etc., be handled?  I would suggest that after a one or two year “warning” period, all signage should revert to English only.  That is an important way of making this new requirement work.

It is important to note that this program would be targeted at and aid all immigrants in becoming productive members of our society, not just Hispanics.  I have tutored Asian and Arab immigrants.  They have been very motivated, but the obstacles to their learning English, as I indicated above, are substantial.

This proposal is not anti-immigrant and should not discourage immigrants.  It is also not against retaining immigrant culture (as a child of immigrants, I value that culture very much).  Instead, it shows immigrants clearly that we welcome you and want you to become a valued part of our country.  But that means learning the language so you can prosper and partake fully of what the country offers.