Americans rarely have their world views challenged as most of their politics are overwhelmingly centered around domestic issues (compared to other countries). Thus, this creates a large blind spot for liberal and conservative Americans alike, which has a particularly large impact on its immigrants, i.e. people who are not Americans who live in America — in addition to those who live outside the US but have to deal with the consequence of its foreign policies.
To be clear, I’m not here to discuss the negative impact liberal imperialism has on nations outside of the western imperial core. That has been well established among political scholars and the exploitation of the liberator myth for manufacturing consent.
As a warm-up exercise, think of all the times you have seen a video where someone is being accused of being racist. Almost every single time, the accused racist, instead of arguing if their opinion is good or bad, would just try to redefine what they consider to be racist. “Yes, I agree racism is bad, but I don’t think not wanting black people in my school district counts as racist.”
It is an act of redefining the law to acquit the crime, and it is one that many of us are familiar with.
What I am trying to extrapolate from this, is that similar label-denying arguments are also often used for issues outside of the US left-right political spectrum when it comes to imperialism — that imperialism is bad, but what the west doing isn’t imperialism. And this kind of label-denying bullshit is rarely called out by liberals.
Imperialism is racism on the global scale, it is racism on steroids, and it is the mistreatment of modern imperial peripheral nations (usually former colonies) by rich and “domestically democratic” nations. Because global trade is imbalanced, this exploitation is also mostly one-way, with rich “democracies” exploiting poor “authoritarian states,” where voters within the “democracies” enjoy prosperity and moral superiority over their exploit-ees. It is a globalized version of 19th century America, where the landowners were proud of their “democratic” political system while black people (the exploit-ees) weren’t allowed to vote.
But I’m not here to discuss that, that’s for another time. I’m here to discuss something more intimate to my own experience, as an immigrant (or ex-pat) who is lucky (or unlucky) enough to live within the western imperial core.
No meaningful space for minorities
Minorities are inherently diverse, as the only thing they share is that they are not the majority. You can have a majority of 50 M&M’s that are all green, and a minority of 10 M&M’s that are all of a different color. This, I think, is one of the many key blind spots in how many white Americans view minorities.
Tribalism, the common ancestor of nationalism and racism, is itself still alive and well. The growing schism between liberals and conservatives in the US, between Hong Kongers and mainlanders, within liberals themselves, and within Hong Kongers themselves. It is more and more difficult for someone with multiple identities to fit in, as their multiple identities grow oxymoronic against each other, ripped apart by the larger political fabric. For those who are disenfranchised on multiple fronts, they are forced to pick and choose which identity to forfeit to conform to the nearest tribe.
I am a Hong Kong ex-pat living in the US who does not agree with what an American may expect a Hong Konger to feel towards China. Each of these identities put me in a smaller and smaller box. Almost none of the issues that matter the most to me have any meaningful representation in the country I am living in, and so I am disenfranchised and disconnected from the political process. This is true for anyone who has multiple minority identities, whose each identity leads them on their own unique cascade toward political apathy.
Under a society with an absolute emphasis on voting, the political message overshadows the many nuances of democracy and encourages equating democracy to majority rule. If such a society also happens to be diverse, its minority groups must form alliances to have any representation. This process requires the already disenfranchised to forfeit their differing identities — something that majority groups do not have to do.
Each of my multiple identities stands in the way of me trying to find any political representation. For each part of me that I give up, I am rewarded with the embrace of a larger community. And with the rise of tribalism, this pressure to “melt away” grows disproportionately for those with multiple minority identities.
Heritage celebration as recuperation
As American liberals try to replace the melting pot with a salad bowl, the intended damage has already been done. There is a disheartening tendency for American liberals to gesture a solution when the solution is no longer needed, e.g. building memorials for dead Native Americans, etc. Moreover, even under this renewed embrace of cultures other than White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the “other” cultures are still being defanged and declawed, and only get to keep the parts that don’t clash with WASP. There is still the overwhelming emphasis on the so-called universal liberal values — but try our new flavors! This person thinks and acts just like us, but his skin color is a bit different and he speaks with a slight accent! What diversity we have!
And so, identities are reduced to heritages, like zodiac signs and Harry Potter Houses, with almost no political relevancy under a two-party system. Their most valuable asset being their aesthetics, to “educate” the majority about the “beauty” and “diversity” of the minorities. A modern human zoo.
One may even go as far as saying that the celebration of cultural diversity is a way to recuperate a country’s past and current colonialism and imperialism. When have you ever seen non-former-colonial powers celebrate any sort of cultural diversity? It is difficult to overlook the self-proclaimed moral superiority of imperial countries as they celebrate their looted diversity, given how often this moral superiority has been weaponized for manufacturing consent to go to wars with countries where this “diversity” came from.
I do not have an ending for this. It’s just a rant, for now. I may turn this into a series though, maybe I’ll call it the “Blind spots of well intentioned Americans” series. Stay tuned?
