How Obama blew it

Michael Meyers: Obama blew it

Ref: Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2008

“We can’t be united as a nation if we continue to think racially and give credence to racial experiences and differences based on ethnicity, past victim status and stereotypical categories.”

Hypenated Dissolution

Roger Kimball: ”Affirmative Action,” hyphenated Americans, and other conundrums

Ref:  Pajamas Media, November 18, 2007

“The various movements to deconstruct American identity and replace it with a multicultural “rainbow” or supra-national bureaucracy have made astonishing inroads in the last few decades and especially in the last several years.”

Genetic diversity revisited

US NIH: Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies

Ref: Pub Med Central Feb 2005

“On the other hand, several studies have shown that individuals tend to cluster genetically with others of the same ancestral geographic origins (Mountain and Cavalli-Sforza 1997; Stephens et al. 2001; Bamshad et al. 2003). Prior studies have generally been performed on a relatively small number of individuals and/or markers. A recent study (Rosenberg et al. 2002) examined 377 autosomal microsatellite markers in 1,056 individuals from a global sample of 52 populations and found significant evidence of genetic clustering, largely along geographic (continental) lines.”

Identity and migration

Francis Fukuyama: Identity and migration

Ref: Prospect Magazine, Feb 2007

Francis Fukuyama on the difficulties of assimilating into a culture that is increasingly non coherent under the aegis of multiculturalism:

“Multiculturalism—under- stood not just as tolerance of cultural diversity but as the demand for legal recognition of the rights of racial, religious or cultural groups—has now become established in virtually all modern liberal democracies. US politics over the past generation has been consumed with controversies over affirmative action for African-Americans, bilingualism and gay marriage, driven by formerly marginalised groups that demand recognition not just of their rights as individuals but of their rights as members of groups. And the US’s Lockean tradition of individual rights has meant that these efforts to assert group rights have been tremendously controversial—more so than in modern Europe.”