Race & Identity

The fourth-grade teacher in Virginia who performed a mock slave auction in her classroom April 1 — with the white kids pretending to buy and sell the black kids — was duly chastised by school officials for her racial insensitivity. Given that she meant to be giving a lesson on the Civil War, she should also have been scolded for pedagogical inaccuracy.

Since Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi's Green Book was published in three installments -- in 1975, 1976, and 1978 -- every Libyan child has had to study it in school; but many, perhaps most, Libyans make fun of it in secret. Western analysts have tried to tease out the book's logic on governance, searching for clues to the intellectual influences on Libya's eccentric strongman, but this is perhaps an overly optimistic endeavor.

It could have been a historic teaching moment. Instead, President Obama, the most famous mixed-race person in the world, checked off only one race — black — last year on his census form. And in so doing, he missed an opportunity to articulate a more nuanced racial vision for the increasingly diverse country he heads.

Republicans like to claim that Democrats are the "European" party: the party that wants a big welfare state, believes in international law, and doesn't think America is an exceptional nation. But I've noticed a certain Europeanification of the GOP of late, as regard to Muslims. For years, Republicans have explained that their brand of patriotism has nothing to do with blood and soil.

Dance, monkey, dance.

That's what the United States has long shouted at immigrants and ethnic groups suspected of being disloyal. The nation asks its newcomers to perform in meaningless ways to "prove" they belong here.

The dancers change, but not the dance. Because the U.S. is continually incorporating immigrants, the perceived threat of betrayal is constant. This week, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) will call the tune on Capitol Hill, with hearings meant to test the loyalty of American Muslims.

Multiculturalism breeds terrorism. That's what British Prime Minister David Cameron said Feb. 5 in a high-profile speech in Germany, thereby opening up an absurd new chapter in the never-ending debate over how much to embrace, exalt and protect cultural differences in Britain and beyond.

Lately, cell phone companies have been trying hard to convince us that we control the airwaves. T-Mobile recently asked, "What do you want from your wireless company?" Verizon says we can "Rule The Air" with their service. These ads ignore that the airwaves already belong to the public, and that we are losing control, not gaining.

As if we needed more evidence of America’s political polarization, last week Juan Williams gave the nation a Rorschach test. Williams said he gets scared when people in “Muslim garb” board a plane he’s on, and he promptly got (a) fired by NPR and (b) rewarded by Fox News with a big contract.

Suppose Williams had said something hurtful to gay people instead of to Muslims. Suppose he had said gay men give him the creeps because he fears they’ll make sexual advances. NPR might well have fired him, but would Fox News have chosen that moment to give him a $2-million pat on the back?

Australian philosopher Simon Longstaff hopes Westerners are nearing the end of what he calls a long age of forgetting. Even in the midst of a digital revolution that's making it ever more difficult for us to delete traces of our individual pasts, Longstaff, the head of the St. James Ethics Centre in Sydney, thinks forgetting who we are collectively is the most powerful threat to Western societies.

The United States needs new immigrants to continually remind itself of its own values. That's the simple lesson I learned last week after a moment of despair.