Len’s Letter #20 Nationalism and Homogenity

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Len’s Letter #20 Nationalism and Homogeneity

Look at the news. In the US. Outside the US. Everywhere. Differences among people create hardship or worse, danger. Countries seem to have a vision of themselves as homogeneous. Or as places where the “real people” of the country should dominate. Not a pretty picture.

There are no large homogeneous countries. Every large country has minorities. Every large country deals with heterogeneity.   It may be impossible to be afraid of heterogeneity and be democratic. Imposing homogeneity by forcing people to behave like the majority is seen as one route to national unity.   Ensuring dominance by the majority is seen as another route to national unity. Neither is likely to work in the long run.

How do the largest and most powerful countries in the world deal with heterogeneity.

  1. China has 1.4 billion people and the third largest economy in the world
    1. It could be a confident, nearly homogeneous nation. More than 90% of its population is Han. As it grows prosperous, it is more aggressive externally, seeking to dominate the East China Sea, seeking to build economic relations throughout the Pacific, the world even.
    2. The Chinese recall a history of a unified country under powerful dynasties, shameful European dominance in the nineteenth and twentieth century, a successful Communist revolution that restored order and punished the wealthy, a disorderly cultural revolution, and a strengthened Communist Party committed to enterprise and prosperity.
    3. Why then identify dozens of different ethnic groups? Why react so harshly to peoples (Buddhist Tibetans, Muslim Uighurs) who have sought autonomy? Why react so strongly to religions that seek a measure of personal autonomy (Fulan Gong)? Perhaps Chinese history is seen as a history of alternating between a single powerful authority and chaos. The possibility of freedom and autonomy combined with national loyalty seems foreign to Chinese leadership.
  2. India: 1.35 billion people with the fifth largest economy in the world (calculated by including all EU economies except Great Britain as part of a single economy).
    1. Less prosperous than China, less aggressive internationally, India is extraordinarily diverse ethnically and can be seen as relatively homogeneous religiously. Eighty percent of Indians are Hindu. India has accepted a nationalism that is based on ethnic heterogeneity, but not a nationalism based on religious heterogeneity. India’s history and the numbers, themselves, make India’s 15% who are Muslim problematic for the majority.
    2. Indians recall a history of diversity, but Muslim dominance.   The subcontinent was first unified at the beginning of the thirteenth century (dominance in the north, influence in the south) by Muslim Central Asians; unified again (again dominance in the north, influence in the south) by the Muslim and Persian oriented Mughals. The British turned its economic intrusions in the 18th century into a 19th and 20th century empire. After World War II the British acquiesced to independence leaving murderous chaos as Muslims moved to what became Pakistan and later Bangladesh and Hindus moved south to India.
    3. Within India, tensions between Muslim and Hindu have never ended. Different from the Sikhs, for instance. Difficult relations between Sikhs and Hindu, marked by the 1984 assassination of the Indian Prime Minister by her Sikh body guards, did not become a permanent crisis. India has even had a Sikh prime minister. Relations between Hindu and Muslim, however, are in crisis. The current government is imposing Hindu dominance by ending the autonomy of the Muslim-majority Kashmir province and threatening the citizenship of Muslims with new laws. Is there any level of dominance that would satisfy Hindu nationalists? What response can be expected from Muslims unwilling to be second class citizens?
  3. The European Union: 450 million people after subtracting Great Britain and still the second largest economy in the world after subtracting Great Britain.
    1. It is not a country. It could be and should be. It could be an enormously powerful country. Instead, it is an entity. The member countries have their own issues of national homogeneity to cope with. Britain getting out of the EU or Scotland leaving Britain. Hungary or Poland abandoning democracy for nationalism. Third party nationalist movements in France. Secessionist movements in Spain.
    2. Europe has had centuries, even millennia, of national disputes. World Wars I and II are relatively recent memories. The Balkan Wars even more recent. National identities may be too powerful to permit unity. Neither Russia threatening to regain its “near abroad” nor Trump’s United States threatening and bullying about tariffs and the weakness of Europe’s military seems sufficient to create European unity. Neither the EU nor NATO (which is not exactly the EU’s military arm) can unify the EU sufficiently to protect itself militarily and economically.
    3. The EU’s “national” institutions are jury-rigged. A capacity to see itself as a nation of nations, an entity in which heterogeneity is valued within a context of a central government would make it a model for the world. The creation of a European people by allowing members of the EU to travel and work anywhere in Europe has been undermined by European reaction to Middle Eastern refugees. European central banking is powerful, but you can’t create a new national identity based on banks.
  4. The United States of America: 330 million people and the largest economy in the world
    1. Does the United States demand homogeneity? It accepts religious diversity. 75% identify as Christians. Of those, one third are Roman Catholic. Most of the rest are Protestant. The largest minority is not Jews (2%) or Muslims (1%), but those who have no religion (20%). Our most volatile differences have a religious basis – abortion, same sex marriage, issues identified as part of the culture war. Despite these religion-based disputes, the United States has effectively integrated nineteenth and twentieth century immigrants into an American people.
    2. Despite success integrating Europeans, ethnic diversity in the United States is an enduring problem. Black and African Americans are 12% of the population. Hispanics are 18% of the population. The United States has not recovered from its history of slavery. African Americans are protected from, but also subject to, discrimination. The American South remains distinctive.
    3. The United States does not recognize the extent to which its heritage is Hispanic, its territory is composed of parts of what was the Spanish empire, its population, once composed of Native Americans and descendants of subjects of the Spanish Empire. The great American mass movement West has obscured these origins. Now, many of the people of the United States would wall the country off from Mexico believing that undocumented Hispanic immigrants could be prevented from seeking asylum or from immigrating here. Though the United States has had an African American President and currently has four Hispanics in the US Senate (two of whom have run for President), the relationship between African-Americans and Hispanics and mainstream America is uneasy. More uneasy than the relationship of the 5.5% whose heritage is Asian, at least as complex as the 1.5% of the population who are Native Americans.
    4. In a sense, the differences among these ethnic groups are differences in their understanding of their history in the United States. The differences would not be erased if school history books treated slavery differently and included the founding of Saint Augustine and Santa Fe as well as Plymouth and Jamestown. History is not a small matter. A shared and respectful history could strengthen both national unity and diversity. That may be a lesson for us. For other countries as well.