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Schwarzenegger's Statement on Assimilation--A Campaign Ploy or Pie en Boca?

By Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Communications Director of PowerPAC.org

In his recent comments about immigration and assimilation, Gov. Schwarzenegger has opened up the door to a critically important conversation, one that has been largely avoided in California and the nation in recent decades.

Schwarzenegger, in a September Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times and again in a speech to Asian Americans in Chinatown last week, laid out his “vision” for a multi-racial democracy: a monolingual society in which immigrants leave their language and customs and culture behind at the border and “assimilate” to what we can only assume, barring any elaboration by Schwarzenegger or his team, is the lifestyle of white middle-class suburban Californians.

“They try to stay Mexican but try to be in America, so there's this back and forth,” Schwarzenegger said of Mexican immigrants. “What I say to Mexicans is you have got to go immerse yourself and assimilate into American culture and become part of the American fabric. That's how Americans will embrace you. The secret -- if there is one -- to success, I was embraced by the American people because I love America, I learned the language and I made every effort to become American.”

There are many things wrong with this statement, and Ruben Navarrette takes Schwarzenegger to task perfectly on each count, saying the comments were “inaccurate, impolite, inconsistent, imprudent, insincere and incomplete.” I would go a step further and say that quite simply, Schwarzenegger’s vision of a bland and homogenous California is un-American. It runs counter to 200 years of American tradition, which has called on immigrants to add their identity, their culture, and their history to the American tapestry – not check them at the door.

Schwarzenegger’s handlers, who in the past have found themselves backtracking after the Governor’s off-the-cuff ethnic remarks, this time only reiterated his point. They are deliberately making Schwarzenegger’s view on Mexican immigrants a campaign issue, even calling on challenger Phil Angelides to “share his views on assimilation.”

In throwing down this gauntlet, Schwarzenegger is making the same crass political calculation as Republicans running for office across the country this year. They have determined that their best chance of winning is to side with the enemies of immigration – the people who would rather scapegoat Latino farm workers, gardeners and hotel workers than deal with the failures of Republican economics that is at the root of this problem. They are capitalizing on the timid fear of Democrats who have shied away from championing the immigration movement – and the millions of families it represents – as a centerpiece of their politics.

But there is no need to shy away. There is an inspiring alternative to Schwarzenegger’s very limited vision of what California could be.

We don’t have to look any farther than the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Fresno, where millions of Californians this spring marched and rallied, asking peacefully and passionately to be included as part of the American fabric. They waved American flags along with the flags of their home countries. Their children in tow, they spoke English and Spanish. They organized their friends and their neighbors and employers – using cell phone text-messaging and block parties with home-cooked tamales – to join them in this most fundamental expression of democracy. From the rooftops they shouted, over and over again, “We Are America.”

There is nothing more American that what we saw in the streets at those rallies. And, just as with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there is great power in walking alongside, lifting up, and fighting for a vision of America that is kind, inclusive and based in equality and mutual respect. That is particularly true in California, where demographic shifts have put people of color in the majority, and where more than one-third of the state population is Latino.

Our path to creating a productive and vibrant multi-racial, multi-lingual democracy begins with deciding that it’s possible. Schwarzenegger has made it perfectly clear he is not willing to do that. We need a leader for California who will.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona is Communications Director of PowerPAC.org, a statewide political organization that champions democracy and justice in California.

Posted on October 12, 2006

Comments

We have the video, in its entirety at Tracking Arnold:

http://powerpac.org/trackingarnold

I have to agree with Navarette. I mean, what would we have said if he told us Jews that maybe we should consider blending in a bit more, and you know, give up wearing those funny beanies. What right does he have to tell any other group how to live their lives? None.

Posted by: SFBrianCL at October 12, 2006 07:10 PM

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