White Anxiety... Is There a Cure?

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Gangale

White anxiety? Are you serious? Sounds like the title of an old Mel Brooks movie. Praise the lord and pass the Xanax.

Will someone please explain to me why I should give a damn about "massive demographic changes?" My great-grandfather came from Ireland as part of a "massive demographic change" which flooded the unskilled labor market and depressed wages, not to mention the "drinking and brawling" his people brought to this country. My grandfather came from Italy as part of a "massive demographic change" which flooded the unskilled labor market and depressed wages, not to mention the "noise and crime" his people brought to this country. Come to think of it, the native Americans of the Hudson Valley probably weren't too wild about my Dutch ancestors moving into their neighborhood in the 17th century.

If the America Laura Ingraham once knew and loved doesn't exist anymore, sucks to be her. She never really loved it because she never really knew it, what she thought she knew was just a sad, narrow-minded, WASP delusion.

The America I know and love does indeed exist. It is the America which is always changing, always re-inventing itself, always struggling to become more inclusive, always searching for new rights to be won, always striving to form a more perfect union. There was a time when the idea of an Irish American like Jack Kennedy running for president would have been unthinkable, or a Greek American like Michael Dukakis, or an Italian American like Mario Cuomo or Rick Santorum, or a Mexican American like Bill Richardson, or an African American like Barack Obama or Ben Carson, or a Cuban American like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Does Laura Ingraham have a problem with the prospect of Nikki Haley, a South Asian who was born Nimrata Randhawa, running for president someday? Put that name on a lawn sign and tell me how white she is. The America I know and love welcomes the good and the hard-working from wherever they may come.

That is our strength. America can take whatever, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Arab world, or any other would-be adversary may care to bring at us. Laura Ingraham may fear them; I don’t, because we are Russians, we are Chinese, we are Iranians, we are Koreans, we are Arabs. All of these angry lands have American branches in their family trees. That is what makes America an unstoppable force of history. We are the world. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to us. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

And that goes for you, Laura.