First, the ethnic element. There is no concept about which Americans are more inconsistent, hypocritical, ambivalent, confused and just plain miserable than that one. Often it is used as a way of making a racial designation without seeming to. “Ethnic,” for example, is often (and unaccountably) employed to mean black. “Ethnic” is also commonly used to describe certain white, mostly Eastern Europe-extracted American minorities; they are called “ethnics,” and the term here usually has an unfair negative connotation. These “ethnics” are assumed by a lot of people to be a nasty, socially regressive piece of business as a group. Some think of them as a collection of onetime concentration-camp guards and anti-black (anti-ethnic?) demonstrators. This is an awful group libel, but it is often bought into by people who fancy themselves models of unprejudiced, openhearted liberality.
Our main problem with the idea of ethnicity, however, goes beyond its being used selectively as a camouflage term. Our problem is that we spend half our time embracing the idea and the other half repudiating it. When we are not thanking our lucky stars that we have assimilated ourselves into ethnicity-free Americanness, we are organizing ourselves into ethnic-extraction lobbies and/or singing the praises of newly rediscovered ethnic consciousness. This fundamental contradiction extends to our attitude toward people and countries abroad. What is known as “multiculturalism” is having a great vogue in our schools and elsewhere at the moment; we are admonished to be more curious about and respectful of the values and ways of groups other than our own. But when we crash into some we don’t like - the Saudis’ attitude toward women, the Afrikaners’ attitude toward blacks, and a wide range of ancient group biases in Africa, Europe and, frankly, every place else - we don’t see why we have to be so respectful anymore.
Right now, in fact - in the golden age of multiculturalism at home - there is a widespread tendency toward total contempt for all the ethnic, cultural and sectarian turmoil that has followed the collapse of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. “Will all these minor, premodern subgroupings please cut it out and get back in line?” the exasperated American lament goes. And then, from our bottomless fund of geographical and historical innocence, “And what is a Moldavian, anyway, or a Slovak, or an Azerbaijani?” The period after World War II, which is coming to a close now, saw an enormous effort to subdue or squelch nationalistic, cultural and tribal impulses to independence. “Union,” as opposed to “nationalism,” was the key word, and it was happily if wrongly believed by many that a new day of political supremacy had dawned. In it, once fragmented populations would band together in the name of governmental and economic efficiency and common security, and their separatist aspirations would be put in the cedar chest along with the colorful national dress that only got dragged out for klunky folk dances to amuse the tourists anyway. The Soviets’ outright repression of the nationalities under their control completed the postwar picture, so that for upwards of four decades we lived under the illusion that all these currently bursting impulses had vanished or were being ironed out in various international political and financial institutions.
We know better now, but we don’t know what to do about it. Combined with economic desperation, these longstanding desires to assert - to live out - an ethnic destiny have proved powerful enough to withstand years of suppression or diversion and to burst through not just the disapproval, but the governmental constraints imposed by all the big-guy powers of the world. That is one of the phenomena we will have to figure out how to deal with in the new world order, and the other, of course, is the popular, mainly urban, insurrection - the critical-mass demonstration that has brought down governments from Teheran to Manila to Prague and that can be counted on to keep trying elsewhere.
Surely the street crowd has done more than the Warthog or the B-52 to change the face of government and to bring down tyrants around the world in recent times. Every time someone says triumphantly that the ’60s and the age of Vietnam are gone (and I’m not exactly one who misses them) I think that the distinguishing feature of that period - the mass demonstration that finally alters government policy and even drives some from office - has become a principal instrument of political change in the contemporary world. And, from this country’s point of view, most of the crowds’ handiwork has been desirable. Still, our institutions and our officials and to some extent we ourselves are not quite comfortable with the procedure.
Our bureaucrats, politicians and statesmen are disposed to work with governments, not protest groups of whom they are by nature suspicious. Governments find the obstreperous opposition (Boris Yeltsin was a good example) not reliable or to their liking and won’t deal with them until they absolutely have to. And settled nations such as our own which have a lot to protect have a stake in stability. Officials in well-cut suits look (and often feel) funny dealing with the disorganized, ad hoc, protest crowd. But somehow, they - we - are going to have to get over that. In the messy new world order, as I see it, defense, smart weapons and smart diplomats all have a place. But our biggest challenge may turn out to be creating safe and stable relationships in an age of ethnic self-discovery and explosive assertions of popular will.
