Thanks for the reply Oxford. I’m not sure anybody needs to be flattered, but there is the question of why people emigrate out of their culture in the first place. The answers benefit from social science and empirical testing as much as psychology. Where do people migrate and why?
Certainly, Asians don’t emigrate to western countries that are historically white because they want to be white. So there probably is a cultural appeal. Even if one migrates for economic reasons, there is a conflation of culture and economic success that can’t be denied. And an individual’s success is usually enhanced by assimilating into the dominant culture. (IMHO, American culture is not white or European, but better defined by the ideas of liberty, justice, and self-reliance. Most immigrants I know cite opportunity, not only for economic success but also for self-actualization.)
I suppose WASP cultural ideology is flattering to white males too, but it also has a history of success. (Not always in the most defensible way, but the world revolves around power.) Non-Western cultures also have achieved many measures of success so I suppose legal migration is a reflection of peoples’ choices and trade-offs.
It seems that one can claim all this provides cover for underlying racism, but that seems an unnecessary and complex reversal of cause and effect. Due to history, one can try to root all modernism in the dominant role of white Europeans — for better or worse — but, at some point, I’m not sure that’s really productive. There are plenty of negative attitudes toward the “other” in this world, and in a world far removed from white male Europeans, not to go looking for more.
What’s far more interesting than those white males who voted for Trump are those 25% of non-white males who did. What exactly were they thinking? Should have been 0%. After all, some 95% of blacks voted for a half-white, half-black candidate, but white voters put him in office. Politics and social behavior is a lot more complex than the simplistic ideas we read in the news media. I commend your taking a deeper stab at it. As you can tell, I’m not particularly moved by arguments that rely too much on racism. If racism is everywhere, then it explains nothing.
