"If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to U.S. companies, employment of U.S. nationals would likely grow as well. For instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities."
Bill Gates,
Testimony before the Committee on Science and Technology, US House of Representatives,
March 12, 2008.
G. Pascal Zachary, Author of "The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge: Picking Globalism's Winners and Losers" and Senior Writer for the Wall Street Journal
With Comments by: Peter Skerry, Senior Fellow,Government Studies, The Brookings Institution;
and Tyler Cowen, Author, "In Praise of Commercial Culture" and
Professor of Economics, George Mason University
Introduction:
Brink Lindsey, Director, Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies:
MR. LINDSEY: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Cato Institute. My name is Brink Lindsey. I am the Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies here at Cato. We are here to discuss today the new book by G. Pascal Zachary, "The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge: Picking Globalism's Winners and Losers."
Well, these days we are all obsessing over the raging battle for
Meanwhile, Ralph Nader ran for president on an anti-globalization platform, and either cost Al Gore the White House or, at the very least, has rendered his victory a Pyrrhic one.
Most of the debate sparked by this growing anti-globalization movement has focused on economics. Does increasing international economic integration promise to widen the circle of affluence, to include the billions of people still struggling in poor and under-developed economies, or is globalization, as the protestors claim, really just an immiserizing race to the bottom in which only multinational corporations are the winners?
The question is an enormously important one. And there is no question on which side of it we here at the Cato Institute stand. But to understand what is driving the anti-globalization impulse and to respond to it effectively, it is necessary to go beyond economics. For this impulse is powered as much by cultural hostility to globalization as it is by any considerations of material welfare. Specifically, it is alleged that the spread of markets around the world is imposing a drab and lifeless global mono-culture on a previously rich and vibrant planet.
I refer you to a truly remarkable full-page ad in The New York Times, which was run by a group called The Turning Point Project, a coalition of 50 nonprofit organizations that has now run 23 such full-page ads in the New York Times. I put copies of the ad outside so that you could follow along.
The ad shows 12 scenes of the supposed horrors of globalization. We have a cloverleaf intersection, a bunch of newly manufactured automobiles on a parking lot, people working at computer terminals, an industrial poultry plant, a housing development, industrial runoff, a deforested area, grocery store shelves, a high-rise apartment building, people bustling in and out of an office building, an urban skyline and, of course, McDonald's.
So, by my tally, we have two pictures of environmental despoliation and 10 pictures of material well-being. If these pictures provide any kind of window into the soul of the anti-globalization movement, and I believe they do, what they show is a movement that, in the name of decrying poverty is in fact a rage against prosperity.
And what is so bad about affluence? Let me read from the opening statement of this ad's text:
A few decades ago, it was still possible to leave home and go somewhere else. The architecture was different. The landscape was different. The language, lifestyle, dress and values were different. That was a time when we could speak of cultural diversity. But with economic globalization, diversity is fast disappearing. The goal of the global economy is that all countries should be homogenized. When global hotel chains advertise to tourists that all their rooms in every city of the world are identical, they don't mention that the cities are becoming identical, too. Cars, noise, smog, corporate high-rises, violence, fast food, McDonald's, Nikes,
Not surprisingly, multinational corporations are cast as the chief villains in this assault on diversity and local color. As the Turning Point ad goes on to state, "Economic globalization and institutions like the World Bank and the WTO promote a specific kind of homogenizing development that frees the largest corporations in the world to invest and operate in every market everywhere. For these agencies and corporations diversity is not a primary value; efficiency is."
In other words, globalization and its corporate handmaidens are erasing the differences between people and nations, crushing local cultures and leaving us with an altogether dull world. At least that is what they claim.
But here today to present a very different view of globalization is Greg Zachary, author of the new book, "The Global Me." This book explores how the movement of people, ideas and products across borders and ethnic boundaries is leading to an explosion of diversity and hybridity. Cultures, ideas, and even people are combining in new and creative ways to give us a world not of uniformity, but of dazzling variety.
The cosmopolitan citizens of the new globalized world see traditional ethnic categories as resources, not restrictions, and define themselves not just by what they are or by what others say they are, but by shared work interests and experiences. Such people aren't lacking in identity, Greg argues, but have both roots and wings. They develop complex new associations while not renouncing their origins.
According to Greg, an important consequence of this increasingly hybridized world is that those individuals, companies and nations with a strong commitment to diversity and openness will rise to the top, while those that seek to insulate themselves from outside influences will languish. Diversity, therefore, does not fall victim to efficiency; rather, it is an integral component of it.
With that brief introduction, let me step aside and give the author a chance to discuss his own book. Greg Zachary is a senior writer in the
Greg joined the Journal in 1989 and in the past three years has reported from 20 countries. He has also contributed to many other publications, including a regular column for Technology Review and acting as a contributing editor for the news magazine, In These Times.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Greg Zachary.
(Applause.)
G. PASCAL ZACHARY, AUTHOR, "THE GLOBAL ME," AND SENIOR WRITER,
WALL STREET
MR. ZACHARY: Thank you, Brink. That was a wonderful introduction. In fact, I probably don't have that much more to say now. But, no, that was very good and I really appreciate that.
I appreciate it because he has obviously tried to think about what I have written, but also because it frees me a little bit to talk about perhaps some basic concepts that stand beneath, or underpin, some of the ideas I have. And I think these concepts are important to try to grapple with, to understand, first of all, what we mean by diversity, what kind of diversity we want, and also what we mean by globalization and some of the other concepts that are kicked around.
One thing I want to say is that what I mean by "The Global Me" is trans-nationality. It is the rise of multiple national and ethnic affiliations, ties, both within nation-states and between them, across them. I see trans-nationality as a distinct and independent force from global economic integration, or globalization. Trans-nationality is not the same as capitalism, although when people talk about globalization, it often seems as if what they really want to talk about is capitalism.
Trans-nationality is not a consequence, merely, of capitalism. It has preceded capitalism historically in that multiple ties were a character of pre-modern societies, pre-national societies. And just like technology is an independent force on the world today, I think that trans-nationality is an independent social, cultural and economic force.
Now, I favor a specific type of trans-nationality which I call "hybridity" or "new cosmopolitanism" to distinguish it from the classic form of cosmopolitanism, or I use another word that maybe younger people would like, "mongrel" or "mongrelization." My basic argument is that hybrid nations or communities, or even individuals, for a variety of reasons, are more vital, more attractive, more competitive economically than the traditional fixed identity-based nations and societies and individuals, the idea of fixed and static identities.
Now, the justifications for my view of the world and its implications will hopefully come out through some of the dialogue and questions, but I feel, given the time that I've got, I want to throw out three important sets of concepts and then a brief sort of report from the front from different parts of the world, where I think, more dramatically than the United States, societies are grappling with diversity.
Now, the first thing I want to talk about is something that was mentioned, this notion of roots and wings. Because, basically, what we have been sold in the past 10 years by writers like Samuel Huntington or Benjamin Barber or Robert Kaplan, Michael Ignatieff, is that there are really just two types of people. There are people that are traditional, that want to preserve their roots and elevate their roots, and then there are these rootless cosmopolitans, people like us, who will do anything, and that there is some collision occurring within societies, but, more significantly, around the world between cosmopolitan people and these rooted people.
Now, there are a couple of problems with this formulation. One is that, empirically, in our everyday experience, we rarely meet people who fall into these two neat categories. And while there are some countries that seem to be either on the extreme grip of traditionalism or of anything goes, by and large, people want, and that is in the
So I talk about roots and wings as a metaphor. They want to be able to take their roots with them. One scholar has talked about a notion of portable roots.
Now, this is important to understand because this concept at least, whether you buy it or not, it is an important concept. Because in the
What I am saying is there is a way to transcend this dichotomy, this apparent opposition between tribalism and internationalism. And if we don't transcend this division, we are going to be stuck in a way of thinking that isn't productive and, worse, doesn't describe what is going on.
The second set of ideas is about types of mixed societies. At this point, I would turn to the white board, but they don't have one here. So there are four types of mixed societies. Because one of the problems that we have today is that everybody is for diversity. Everybody is a multiculturalist. So what we really have to ask is what type of diversity, what kind of multiculturalism are we favoring and what type do we have?
So I have got my little grid of four types. The first type is hierarchical or coercive. Historically, say, the American South was a mixed society and in fact, proudly so. Whites in
In
The second type of mixed society, if you are old enough to remember or you grew up in
Now, this approach is generally unacceptable to people. It is unacceptable to Americans, by and large. And it is also difficult to sustain because you don't develop a constituency for diversity; you are just sort of hiding it. And as you see in a place like
A third one, which technically we would think of as pluralism but often is presented as multiculturalism is, we have diversity, we see it, we hear it, but we have a tendency to freeze it. So that, in the United States, we hit upon this is ethno-racial grid in the 1970's and African-American, Hispanic-American, then Asian-Americans and whites, and we have this grid and people try to fit into this grid and policies and programs are directed at supporting this grid because that is part of the multicultural ethos.
And in places like
Now, a fourth type is what I call hybridity, or flexible identities. This is my variant of trans-nationality. I think, if we stop and think about someone like Tiger Woods, who is a remarkable person because we have seen many prominent black Americans, over the past 300 years, emerge in the United States, but I can't think of another who has insisted that he is black-plus. He has challenged this ethno-racial grid. He has presented a flexible identity that even he himself, whose mother is from
So when we talk about diversity, we really need to think about where do we fall on these four types. You can slice them up and see what are you most comfortable with, what are you really favoring. But when somebody like Nathan Glaser, who talks about how we are all multicultural, he is really begging all the important questions. Nathan Glaser is a pluralist. He is number three. He thinks these individual groups have integrity and you shouldn't mess with them.
He happens to think that there are four or five privileged groups. I think one of the problems in the United States today is that we have so many distinct groups, so many distinct identities, that it becomes difficult to privilege the old grid of Irish, Italians, Jews, blacks, and it becomes harder to see why these traditional groups are necessarily more durable or more resilient or more important than the newer ones.
Now, another concept that I would like to just throw that I think will make the discussion a little easier is about this notion of world citizenship. My own son was watching the elections the other day on CNN. We are living in
This same kid is very interested in a single currency for the world. Anyhow, you can see many people have been seduced by this notion that we have global problems and we need global solutions, ergo, we need a global government.
One of the things that motivated me in writing this book was that people are very confused about how to create transnational solidarity. I mean, in a sense, what many NGO's are trying to do is create a basis for people from different countries to feel a sense of solidarity, a common bond, to tackle problems.
Now, that is good. Unfortunately, the further step, that we need some kind of world government or even specific international regimes to solve these problems, is not so good. The record of these international regimes is poor and it is disappointing.
I feel that we need to build up national capacities to deal with international problems, that the nation-state, far from declining or disappearing, actually needs to be renewed. It needs to be strengthened. It needs to function in a new way, but it needs to function.
So the type of mixed society that I favor and the type of individual, this marriage between roots and wings, should be consistent and should support a kind of patriotism, what I might call a global patriotism or a global nationalism, and that this juxtaposition of opposites is not moronic; it makes a lot of sense. We need to find a kind of national identity, national mission, conception of the nation-state, that builds in commitments of international solidarity.
So the kind of citizenship that I am talking about, this hybrid citizenship, implies a support for, say, dual citizenship, multiple citizenships, a legal basis to live and vote in more than one country, maybe even more than two. That is critical. Coming up with political mechanisms to facilitate this kind of trans-nationality is critical to satisfying the demands of the international scene and also of individuals.
So those are some basic concepts. Now, of course, you are living in the
One is that many countries are growing more diverse. That is what the stakes are. There are big stakes in this discussion. The stakes are that many countries are growing more diverse and they don't have a history of dealing with diversity. They don't have a legal system that deals with diversity. They don't have a cultural system that deals with diversity well.
Why are countries growing more diverse? One reason is that there is a sort of demographic time bomb going off. In the next 100 years, if
So this whole mind set from the 1970's on that they were going to be buried in a sea of immigrants and that there were going to be all these unemployed, just the opposite is happening now. We are seeing the beginnings of a recognition on the part of the European Union that their past immigration policies have failed, or at least are not appropriate, and that they need to refreshen and diversify their populations.
A country like Singapore, which is in some ways a laboratory for different parts of Asia, has already seen that to participate fully in the knowledge economy, they have to attract talent from all over the world, and they need to do it even if it destabilizes the diversity balance they have in their country between Chinese, Malays, and South Indians.
So let's just look at a few kind of extraordinary situations. One is
They have the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD. Now, of course, there are only four people employed there -- no. It is about 300,000 people and it is a little laboratory. They have an unemployment rate of about 2 percent. Effectively, it means that jobs go begging. They have had to start importing labor on a large scale relative to their size. They realize that their prosperity through trade is now dependent upon their ability to keep bringing in people.
But they have no experience with this type of hybridity I am talking about or even a more traditional multiculturalism. In Iceland, if you wanted to get permanent residence -- they have no immigration law -- the Parliament holds a debate about every single person who would like to become an Icelandic citizen and then they vote whether they want you or not.
In addition to that, you have to change your name to an Icelandic name, which is something that is now subject to question. Is that really fair? But in
This is an astonishing turnabout that Ireland, the fastest growing country in the OECD, four or five years in a row, had eight to 10 percent growth, gets 40 percent of all U.S. or multinational investment into Western Europe, this country is growing like crazy. It needs more people.
The President of Ireland recently visited
Now,
In
A country like Estonia in the Baltic Republic is confronting this in a different way. When they became independent when the Soviet Union broke up 10 years ago, they stripped essentially all Russians of their citizenship, all ethnic Russians. Now they are trying to get into the E.U. They need to start looking at diversity, not just to deal with Russians, but also to deal with other European citizens that may have the right to move to Estonia when Estonia gets into the European Union.
So Estonia cannot be what its founders thought it was, which is a state that exists for Estonians. It has to exist on a broader basis. So, in a variety of countries, this is a pressing issue.
I think the basic concepts that I talk about clarify what some of the debate is about this issue, and I look forward to the other speakers raising questions about some of my formulations and your own questions. It was a pleasure to be able to talk with you and thank you for having me.
(Applause.)
MR. LINDSEY: We have two distinguished commentators to discuss the book this afternoon. The first is Peter Skerry.
Peter Skerry is a nonresident Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution where he focuses on racial and ethnic politics and social policy, immigration, government statistics, and the U.S. census. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Claremont-McKenna College. He is the author of many books and articles, including, most recently, "Counting on the Census: Race, Group Identity and the Invasion of Politics," published this year by the Brookings Institution.
He got his undergraduate degree from Tufts and his doctorate from Harvard. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Skerry.
(Applause.)
PETER SKERRY, SENIOR FELLOW, GOVERNMENT STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
MR. SKERRY: Thank you, Brink. It is a pleasure to be here. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to comment on Greg Zachary's extremely provocative and, as I think his remarks indicated to you, extremely subtle analysis.
I hope when I use that word, Greg, it doesn't jinx your book. I know trade publishers don't like to hear about subtle analyses, but your book is, in the best sense of the word, an extremely nuanced treatment of a difficult and evolving set of questions.
Let me tell you some of the ways in which Greg's book, I think, sets forward some very forthright issues with some clarity and honesty that is much needed, and then raise some questions about whether maybe he pays enough attention to those same points he makes in his analysis and conclusions, which I guess is what my fundamentally sympathetic criticism of his book would be -- that he doesn't quite follow through as much as I think he ought to.
As he has already indicated to you, his analysis does not partake of the trendy nostrum that borders are imaginary creations, therefore we should do away with them. He looks squarely at the changing and eroding, perhaps, nature of the nation-state, and certainly the changing nature of the nation-state, but does not pronounce it dead or archaic. Indeed, as he explained very well, quite to the contrary.
I think even more importantly from my perspective, he hits dead on the important relationship not only about diversity and the nature of diversity in the contemporary world, as well as specifically in the United States and the implications of that, but he highlights the concomitant aspect of diversity, which, to my mind, no one has focused on. He talks about conflict, and that diversity is accompanied by conflict, whether we are talking in the United States or globally. I think this is absolutely critical. We all do say we like diversity today, but very few of us own up to at least that consequence of it, which isn't necessarily an argument against diversity, but clearly it's something we have to deal with.
In the same vein, in a way that I consider extremely honest and forthright, Greg examines one specific aspect of conflict attendant upon diversity in the United States. And that is between black Americans and immigrants. I commend to you a few pages on Utica, New York, which is not a situation specifically that I am aware of, although generally I am aware of, where he lays out in wonderful, albeit brief, detail, the kinds of conflicts that are going on throughout the United States between immigrants and the one group that I think, as well as I think the one group that Greg pinpoints, as a real loser in the diversity and changes that we are going through nationally and internationally today and should give us all great pause about what those changes are doing to us, the direction they are going, and what we can do in response.
In the same vein, Greg cites the work of the Chicago historian, William McNeil, who, despite Greg's ministrations at an interview he reports on, insists that you guys got it wrong, you journalists, you government officials, you policy wonks, you can't control these processes; they are beyond your control. I think this is Greg's response: Yes, that may be the case, but we have to manage them in some way. We have to cope with them.
And I think that that is probably the case. Certainly if we bring this down to a concrete policy arena that I am most familiar with, immigration, it isn't clear to me. It daunts me how we control these fluxes, these flows of population. But it is clear to me that we have to figure out ways at least of managing these flows. And I think Greg is right on about that.
Now let me raise some more skeptical questions about his analysis. He talks about assimilation. Specifically -- and I think, again, try as I will to be critical here, I keep sending him plaudits -- he talks about assimilation and, again, I think somewhat uniquely among analysts, sees that it generates new problems. I think this is part of his concept of hybridity, that assimilation, as I would put it and have put it in my own terms, assimilation generates its own discontents.
For example, he talks about cultural separatists and makes the rather compelling and again rare point that cultural separatists, despite what they may say and despite how they are perceived, very often don't really want to separate from the given society in which they are based. They want to renegotiate the terms of trade internally, as it were. They are trying to take over new positions or create new institutions, but they are not seeking to secede from the dominant mainstream. I think that is an important point.
But I think I would push these arguments further. Because I think the fact of the matter is that these kinds of discontents -- and indeed to come back to the theme of conflict that I mentioned before that Greg does highlight -- is even more troublesome than he does acknowledge.
I think that in contemporary -- certainly in American social and political dynamics -- that we are more and more averse to conflict in the United States. I think our politics, strangely enough, while in some partisan dimensions we are more and more prepared to go at it, when it comes to racial and ethnic conflict, I think our discourse, to use a term from the academy, is increasingly bowdlerized. We don't want to own up to the conflicts here. That is why I give Greg such credit for facing up to the conflicts between immigrants and blacks.
In a strange set of dynamics, it seems to me, that one consequence of the kind of post-civil rights/affirmative action political culture that we are in is that it is assumed that maybe there are conflicts between non-minorities and minorities. But when we look at the situation between minorities, between immigrants and black Americans, that kind of conflict we don't want to acknowledge. It is verboten. It is off the charts. So we are averse to it in that sense. And I think it makes it that much harder for us to deal with and face up to what we really have to grapple with here.
In the same way, I would suggest that time has gotten greatly discounted in the processes that we are dealing with. I think this probably is a function of globalization and changes in our means of communication.
But sometimes it seems as though as soon as immigrants arrive here, not only are they making demands upon American society, as in some way, shape or form they well should, but the demands they make, the claims they make in terms of racial discrimination claims, they barely have a chance to arrive before those claims get registered. They cross the border and they are making claims against American society that they have suffered some fundamental historical grievance before, in fact, I think we have had time to work out the terms of agreement. So time has gotten so discounted that, again, we can't quite deal with these conflicts, I think, as well as we should, and we haven't figured out how to counteract these tendencies.
Finally, Greg talks about, in the context of dealing with the implications of diversity, how we are more preoccupied with equality among groups these days. I think he puts this forward as a means of suggesting that this is a kind of helpful response to the implications of diversity. We don't tolerate differences among groups that we might have tolerated in the past.
While I take his meaning and I am inclined to agree with it, I would also suggest that it is also the case that the push for equality, in fact, creates lots of other tensions and exacerbates these kinds of conflicts that I have been talking about. I most obviously and most specifically have in mind of course, affirmative action, which he touches upon in his analysis and makes quite clear, I think, in a very subtle way, what the problem is with affirmative action.
There are echoes of this in his own remarks. Let me just read one short sentence here. He says, on page 112 of his book, that, "The challenge for governments is to protect recognized minority groups, but not in ways that make it impossible for group identities to shift ground in order to better reflect group numbers. Communal identities are no less flexible than individual ones."
That is a sentiment I couldn't agree with more, yet what I would ask and pose to Greg Zachary is: Are we capable of this kind of middle-range policy response to these kinds of problems? And I think this is probably the overriding question I would ask throughout.
Are we capable as a society of the adequate kinds of responses to manage diversity and, in this case, to manage group relations in the sense in which he outlines in his passage, especially on the one hand when we have immigrant and minority advocates pushing and pushing as hard as ever for their notion of group benefits and indeed group rights; but also I would say, on the other hand, when we have their opponents and those who would criticize such advocates who push just as hard for notions of individual rights, that the United States is a regime of individual rights?
I assume here at the Cato Institute we have lots of such individuals. And I would submit that in their own ways both are rather wrong-headed. Both ignore a rich history of ethnic politics and group relations in our past from which we can learn and draw upon and that I think is consonant with Greg's own perspective in the passage that I articulated, but which I fear is woefully out of reach now by our political dynamics and institutions.
So, on that somewhat pessimistic note, I will turn the podium over to
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. LINDSEY: Our second commentator is Tyler Cowen, who is currently Professor of Economics at
He received his doctorate from Harvard in 1987. He is the author of a number of interesting books that track some of the issues that Greg has written about, including "In Praise of Commercial Culture" and "What Price Fame?" both published by the Harvard University Press, and "Exploring the Economics of Culture." He is also currently finishing up a book on the interaction between globalization and cultural diversity.
Ladies and gentlemen, Tyler Cowen.
(Applause.)
MR. COWEN: I thought the book was excellent. It was well-written. It was persuasive. It makes a clear point. As the other commentator has indicated, it is, above all, subtle. When I picked up the book and started to read it, I feared that certain common mistakes or conceptual shortcomings might be in the book, as we find in many books about globalization. And I couldn't find any of them. I thought really the analysis was quite refined and very deep.
In my role as commentator, let me talk about some extensions; and let me push on what I think are some of the difficult points in doing an analysis of this kind. I do not intend any particular criticisms of the book. These are in part simply some difficulties that have come up in my own work, as well. And I think they are the frontier questions for any analysis of mongrelization or hybridity.
I really have three main points or questions. The first is: What really is mongrelization or hybridity? I think this is a very important point. If we look at economics, we find the countries that trade together the most tend to be countries that are like each other. So the United States and Canada are like each other by global standards and they trade together a lot. Even if you adjust for distance, countries that are like each other trade together. There is very strong evidence there.
Let's go back to the question: What is mongrelization? Let's take a typical example. We have a software engineer who was born in India and moves to Reston, Virginia, and works for a high-tech firm out near Dulles Airport. This works. It is a wonderful success. Everyone is better off. Is this indeed mongrelization?
MR. COWEN: -- it's a story about an Indian coming to America, and they are different countries and there are different people and different cuisines, and that is mongrelization. But there is another way of telling the story, and that is to say the story is about the triumph of sameness.
If it is the case that like countries trade together, it is also the case that perhaps like peoples trade together. And maybe what has happened is that the world has changed so that the person in India who ends up moving to Reston, for various reasons, is actually quite a bit a lot like Americans in Northern Virginia. And that is why they moved to Reston and that is why the thing works.
So the other way of telling the story is a triumph of sameness story rather than a triumph of difference. Which is the right way of telling the story? I don't know. I think we still need to do more work on defining exactly what we mean by diversity and what we mean by mongrelization.
It has often been the case in the past that diversity or mongrelization has referred either to geography or it has referred to ethnicity. But perhaps we are entering a world where the people who have a lot in common with each other, they live in different parts. So when I go to Tokyo I do in fact feel more at home than when I go to rural Alabama. So maybe the real mongrelization would be if people from rural Alabama came up and worked in Reston rather than when it is people from Japan or India. I don't know.
The second thing I wondered about is whether there might not be a partially pessimistic strand in the author's analysis. I am not sure if he would affirm or deny this. And this also gets back to the question of, what is mongrelization?
It seems to me that any country we look at, even if it pretends to be a mono-culture, we can read as a mongrel hybrid. So take the case of Germany, Turks aside, ethnic Russians aside and so on, just take the so-called Germans. Once upon a time, those so-called Germans did not think of themselves as Germans. They were not a single country. The differences within what we now call Germany were vast. They were brought together and became Germany through some historical process. So we could say that insofar as Germany pretends to be a mono-culture, this is in fact a myth, and Germany is a hybrid as well. But it is a hybrid where the mixing took place in the past.
Now, if we think the countries that look like mono-cultures are not going to do as well, in essence, what we are saying is that the benefits of mixing decay over time, because virtually everyone is a mix. So if the benefits of mixing decay over time, I take this to be a kind of partial pessimism on behalf of the author; that it is not enough to be mixed, you have to keep on mixing.
It also raises the question of, do we define hybridity or mongrelization in terms of a stock or a flow? The stock is how many different parts you have in your history. The flow is how many different parts you have coming into your history now. I take the author to be saying that what matters more is the flow rather than the stock.
This leads to another interesting form of potential pessimism. That is, if it is the flow that matters and everyone in the world follows this formula of becoming hybrid, of becoming mongrels, then in a sense the flow might slow down because we don't have different parts to draw upon. And one of the nice things about the mono-culture, so to speak, is whatever their failings, they are different from the mixed countries.
So there are two alternative visions here, and I found evidence for both in the text. One is to view the hybrid cultures and the more mono-cultures as sort of competing forms, and then to claim, we should be more like the hybrids and less like the mono-cultures.
Another way to view the contrast is to view the hybrid cultures and the mono-cultures as making each other stronger and somehow being complements. I found both strands in the book and at some point I would be curious to hear the author's thoughts on that.
My final comment or question has to do with when hybridity or mongrelization misfires. I think this is one of the critical questions. Again, I commend the author's subtlety here. I am not convinced by all of the answers that are offered. I see at least two things that the author says.
One is a point where, close to the end of the book, he mentions, although he does not emphasize, that perhaps it is only the richer countries that can bear all this hybridity. Again, he doesn't push this line very hard, so I am not sure I am criticizing him here, but I am not sure I was convinced by that hypothesis either.
If we go back in time, we find many successful hybrids: many of the Greek city-states, the Dutch trading republic in the 17th Century, and so on. By absolute standards, compared to the modern world, these places were quite poor in most ways and they weren't nearly as wealthy, say, as modern Brazil. Yet, modern Brazil does not replicate all of the successes that those places had. So I suspect it is not the absolute level of wealth.
Now, there is another hypothesis one finds in the book. And that goes something as follows: The countries that succeed at being hybrid are those that have good stories or good myths or good histories about what it means to be hybrid. I am sympathetic with this point of view, but there are additional complications that pop up.
One is the Iceland example. Let's say that there are countries that have national myths that they are not hybrids and they like these national myths. If they are keeping out foreigners and making them all learn Icelandic and take Icelandic names, they must somehow like being Icelandic, as they understand it, and living with other Icelanders.
So what is the author saying here? Is the author saying that the Icelanders ought to have some other preference? Is it a kind of paternalistic argument? Or is it an argument that the Icelanders simply don't understand how good hybrids are and what fun it is to be a mongrel? And even by the Icelanders own preferences, they would be better off if they became more mongrel.
Finally, again, there are two ways we can tell stories about people's myths or people's histories. One is a normative version, to say: Here are some people with myths. These myths don't work so well -- maybe in Iceland or in Germany. And these people ought to have different myths. That is one approach.
The second approach is to take a more explanatory approach and say, well, here are some myths in Iceland or Germany, and here is why they are the way they are. It might be nice if they were somehow better, but in fact they are not going to be very easy to change. And the question is not whether these people should have better myths, but (a) whether they should become more hybrid, given the myths they have, and (b) what is it that causes the good myths as opposed to the bad myths?
Anyway, to sum up, I enjoyed the work very much. To me, the measure of a good book is not just what is in the book, but what kind of thoughts it stimulates. And on that mark, as well, I think here we have a book very much worth reading.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. LINDSEY: Before opening up the floor to questions, I would like to give Greg a couple of minutes to respond to points that the commentators made.
Greg.
MR. ZACHARY: I want to thank Tyler and Peter for reading the work and for being so sympathetic in their comments. It stimulated a lot of interesting things for me. I am grateful they took the time and I am appreciative of the spirit with which they expressed it.
I will just take really a few minutes to respond to a couple of things. Peter Skerry, as I expected would, has hit upon two areas that I have a great deal of anxiety about myself and had some hard decisions to make in the presentation of the book.
One is that yes, conflict is at the core of diverse societies, and successful diverse societies must manage conflict creatively and productively. Now, this does mean that sometimes they won't. And the question that Peter raises, I think is, is the American society gaining more capacity to deal with conflict or are we less capable of dealing with conflict than we used to be?
If he is right that we are less capable of dealing with conflict, then the social norms that I am proposing are going to perhaps cause conflict that would get out of control. I think that is an open question. His concern that we haven't figured out how to counteract some of the tendencies that seem to indicate that we are less able to deal with conflict is one that we need to think a lot about.
The other point is about group rights. Is it a mechanism to assist us in dealing with conflict? I think this is a difficult area. But I would just say that, again, he is right that badly executed, badly presented group rights claims don't help. So that they must be presented very carefully for them to be effective.
The more philosophical questions that Professor Cowen raises are very interesting to me. And I think he is right that they can be viewed from different perspectives. I think that difference is important to focus on, because sameness gets taken for granted. I think that the challenges then all fall into this area of how do we create a zone of safety for difference.
The notion about hybrid versus mono-cultures, it is true, I agree, that if all countries took this hybrid approach it could cease becoming an advantage then. I do think that if they all did, we would end up with greater diversity, not less, because this hybrid approach implies greater fragmentation. I think, while it is true that many of the countries that claim to have purity have mongrel backgrounds, it doesn't mean that they could easily mongrelize themselves now after centuries of a different style.
This question about rich countries, are they more capable of handling diversity than poor ones, I think the answer is a qualified yes. I propose in the book a kind of demographic transition theory for diversity that, at a certain point in the material development, there are much greater capacities to deal with this. In any case, I think that rich countries have to be the role model for poor countries on this question. We can't ask West African countries or India to take extraordinary steps to accommodate diversity if in our own wealthy countries, with more advantages, we are not able to ensure safety for difference.
Finally, this point about national myths is very, very interesting to me. And unbeknownst to you who have been doing much more important things, there is a whole giant scholarship around national myths. I am saying that people can and should re-engineer them. They should realize that these national myths that exist are actually constantly bolstered by state action and that states can take different actions to support them.
It is paternalistic. I do think that there is an element of social engineering in it. In the United States, the responsibility for this social engineering is quite fragmented and diffused. In a place like Singapore, it is very clear who is doing it. But I think somebody has got to do it, collectively or individually.
Again, thank you. It was a great pleasure to hear them both discuss it and to have a chance to hear your questions in the time that remains.
MR. LINDSEY: Okay, it's time now for Q&A. I am going to take the moderator's privilege and take the first question, but then I will open up the floor. And if you will just raise your hands, I will call on you and then one of our Cato interns will come down with a mike so that everyone can hear you. Just give your name and your affiliation and address your question to one or more of the panelists.
My question for you, Greg, is about the reaction to your book. I take it from your affiliation with the magazine, "In These Times," that you hail from the left side of the political spectrum. Although both economic and cultural anti-globalization claims adherence from both sides of the political spectrum -- we had Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader running for President this year on an anti-globalization platform -- nonetheless, my sense is that on the right side, anti-globalization remains a minority view, whereas on the left side it is becoming an orthodoxy. So I am wondering how you, from this side of the spectrum, have had your analysis received and whether there has been resistance and whether you have found successful ways in overcoming that resistance.
MR. ZACHARY: Well, it's hard to, on my own, assess what the reaction is. Like most authors, I am just glad there is any reaction, you know.
But I would say, among people that are critical of this approach, one is that you hear a claim that it is elitist to talk about trans-nationality, that it is really only very privileged people, highly educated people, that have the opportunities to partake in more than a couple of societies or nations or cultures. So that they, as populists or as proponents of the underdog or the global poor, they really can't take this seriously. So what if five or eight hundred million or a billion people become transnationals? The rest of the world is mired in something else.
Now, what I tried to point out is that this kind of trans-nationality is often experienced by poor people. Because if you look at the character of mobility and immigration, many poor people do migrate for labor reasons or other reasons. The other thing that comes up is that people today who are critical of globalization often are also frustrated with capitalism, and neo-liberal capitalism in particular, so that they want discussions about trans-nationality to become discussions about the failures of neo-liberal capitalism.
And maybe I am naive, I am beginning to think that I probably am, but I think that whether we had state capitalism, whether we had pure socialism, or neo-liberal capitalism, these same issues of identity and social psychology are going to rear up. I mean, the Soviet Union had a 50- or 70-year experience of promoting multiple cultural identities within a Soviet regime. And while it was hypocritical, it was also a complete failure. So that socialist countries, the record we saw, was that they were deaf to this in a way that many capitalist countries are. So I am concerned that a lot of critics just don't take seriously enough these social and cultural factors.
Unfortunately, the left seems more hung up with the financial architecture and the IMF and the World Bank than conservatives do at this point.
MR. LINDSEY: We have a question from the floor, right here.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Mark Krikorian, from the Center for Immigration Studies.
Greg, I wanted to touch on a point that you had addressed, and Professor Cowen had also. This was the issue of rich versus poor countries. It seems to me that the distinction maybe here is modern versus pre-modern, or developing countries. In other words, it is not so much that Brazil is wealthier; it is that it is on a lower level of economic and cultural and social development than developed countries.
The problem you are highlighting, is it conceivable at least that it is a phenomenon of developed countries and it is a sign, perhaps, of declining cultural self-confidence and even decadence, to use a loaded term? And a couple of examples sprung to mind. For instance, there are mosques being built in Rome; there are not and will never be churches being built in Mecca.
Another example you brought up was Estonia, and that brought to mind something. The comparison between Estonia and Algeria, I think, was telling. When each threw off its colonial master, Algeria drove out 15 to 20 percent of the population that was not "us," whoever they were. Whereas, Estonia, it is not quite the developed world but it is sort of an associate member of the developed world, was not, for a variety of reasons but not solely because of Russia's proximity, not prepared and was never going to drive out the large percentage of the population that was Russian.
So, in other words, is the problem you are highlighting really maybe more one of a problem that countries are facing as they decay, even though they are wealthier, whereas dynamic societies, as in Islam or
MR. ZACHARY: Two things: On the first one, yes, there are pockets of diversity or hybridity, say Bombay. Within poor countries or developing countries, there are these pockets. And I think that often they are the big cities.
Your second point, I think you are on to something important, but I would really not frame it the way you do. Let's take the case of Alexandria, or Egypt. There are many Egyptians now who grieve over the decision by Nasser to define Egypt as an Arab country when in fact it never was an Arab country. It was some part of classical civilization. It was highly Europeanized. And all that was sort of papered over. So you have this pan-African identity that Egypt is supposed to be part of.
So, what happens in Alexandria, this highly diverse commercial center, all the non-Arabs get driven out in the course of the 1950's. Well, there is not a lot of freedom or space to discuss this openly in Egypt. But privately, leading people in Egypt are saying, God, this was a big mistake. If we are really going to sustain our growth, we need more of this diversity. How do we get back to that? So that is one thing, how do we get back to that?
Unfortunately, I think that it would be nice, if you are Chinese or an Islamic in Saudi Arabia, for it to be that the kind of openness to new ideas that these rich countries have in the West is a sign of decadence is just the opposite. I mean, it is a sign of strength. It is a sign of supreme self-confidence in their cultural backgrounds. I think it is another debate over that, but I would just say that you are on to something. But I think the frame I would not agree with.
MR. LINDSEY: Yes?
MR. KAHLENBERG: Hi, Rick Kahlenberg from the Century Foundation.
Greg, I think the book is terrific. And I very much like the way you outlined the four types of mixed societies. I would agree with you that the hybrid society is the one that is most attractive to me, as well.
I would like to push a little bit on Peter's point. What are the public policy implications? If one wants to see that type of society, what sort of policies should we be promoting?
MR. ZACHARY: Peter would have a lot better thoughts about that, I think, and I think he's right. But I will just say briefly, and maybe he wants to amplify, that I do think that we've got to get rid of this ethno-racial grid that we've got. I would say that we have to sustain it for African-Americans. In other words, we continue to have to have preferences and programs that benefit African-Americans and we have to do that even as many black Americans get the space to question the nature of blackness.
For the first time possibly -- I mean, certainly for the first time since the 1950's -- blacks once again can start to talk about the gradations of color, the gradations of blackness, the varieties of blackness that used to be a common staple of the inner black American debate. Once again, this is coming to the surface. We cannot allow traditional civil rights groups to hijack that discussion and bottle it up. That is the first thing. Yet, we still have to support preferences for African-Americans.
The other groups, I am sorry to say, Hispanic-Americans, when you deconstruct the category, you cannot show any reason for -- you don't meet the tests of preference, of historic discrimination. And I think it is the same for Asian-Americans.
Increasingly, members of these pan-ethnic groups are discontented with these ethno-racial grids, and they will increasingly rebel. I think in the end they will be the people toppling it.
MR. SKERRY: Okay, maybe I will chime in here. It is a big question, Rick. Let me just sort of reiterate the point I made at the podium, because I am not sure it got through, but maybe if it gets through I will regret that it did. Because even in his remarks in response to Tyler and me, but with regard to my comment, Greg focused, as he just did now, on the critique of the hard notion of affirmative action and the civil rights establishment.
I would agree with that. But, for whatever reasons, I am here at Cato today, and I felt the need to press the other side of the ledger, because it does seem to me that it takes two to engage in this dance. And I find myself more and more hearing political consultants, say in California, calling me up and wanting to know, how do I reach out to Hispanics without pandering to them. By which they mean, after a brief conversation, it is quite clear they mean, how do I reach out to Hispanics without reaching out to them as Hispanics? To which my response is: Well, you can't do that.
They seem genuinely befuddled by that, because they seem genuinely unaware that while we are a regime of individual rights, we do have a rich and I think basically a positive history of dealing with groups short of group rights. So I think that is important to try to carve out that middle ground. But this is tricky terrain.
And just to take issue with what Greg just said, preferences for Hispanics, in his book he talks about Hispanics as a kind of concocted category. It is a concocted category, but as I am sure he will acknowledge when I poke him, all these categories are concocted. And when it comes to ethnicity in the United States, we should be tolerant of that. Whether we should be tolerant about preferences or rigid group benefits for a concocted category is yet again another question. I would say be tolerant of Hispanics, qua Hispanics, but be critical of their claims for group benefits and group rights.
MR. ZACHARY: That is all I just said. Because, again, if pan-Asians think there is validity in grouping together Koreans and Filipinos and Vietnamese and Chinese, and the varieties of Chinese, that is fine. That is a freedom issue, if that is how they want to represent themselves.
But it is a separate matter if the state is going to intervene and endorse that and then put benefits on it. So I think I agree with you on that.
MR. COWEN: On that question, I would just suggest freer immigration in most or all of the countries in the world as a start.
MR. LINDSEY: Yes?
MR. LYNCH: Ned Lynch, with the
The question is somewhat interesting. I am interested in exploring a little further, though, the limitations that our rule of law and our legal focus in American politics tends to put on this flexibility that both of you seem to seek in that regard. Civil rights laws were written in 1964 with regard to the preferences and quotas, and the ability to change those laws is nowhere near as flexible as the changing atmosphere around the issues would seem to be.
So how do you budge political institutions that seem to have ossified while the society itself has become more flexible or hybrid?
MR. ZACHARY: This echoes, I think, Peter's concern. It is that it is quite possible. The so-called American genius was that these flexible arrangements were continually made. And Europeans living in Europe, as I am, they continually marvel over the ad hoc nature of American society. And they themselves say, "Oh, we can't do that. You Americans can do it, but we can't."
I gave an example of this
It is true that the
MR. LINDSEY: Yes, Dan?
MR. GRISWOLD: I am Dan Griswold, with the Cato Institute.
Probably no area of the world set its face against globalization more than the Islamic world on the cultural front, resisting not only immigration, but the cultural influences. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the consequences of that, both for that part of the world and other parts of the world that have tried to keep out the influence of globalization. What sort of advantages and what sort of costs, maybe more importantly, are they going to pay for that?
MR. ZACHARY: I do focus a lot on the costs, because I think the benefits other people are more expert on, the people who are expert on that society. But one thing is clear. We have a flow of talented people around the world that is unprecedented. This flow is getting bigger. Critical labor shortages and needs for talent in Western Europe, combined with the continuing need for talent in Canada and North America and Australia, means that there is going to be a continual sucking out of talent.
For countries like the Islamic world, the difficulty becomes how do you retain your talented people if you are not providing an environment where they can participate with other talented people from around the world. The hybridization of the professions and of science and of the elite occupations has accelerated, and you now have a situation where if somebody is excellent in a line of work, they feel they need that sort of global exchange.
So that is biggest risk I see, that they will lose the elite basis or technocratic basis to run their society. They won't be able to keep those folks. Then that will sort of worsen their isolation, though. So they may not realize that they are paying this cost for a long time.
MR. LINDSEY: Yes?
MR. SWELAM: My name is Ashraf Swelam. I am First Secretary at the Embassy of Egypt. Bringing Egypt as an example, I just want to make one comment and put forward one question actually.
The comment is about what you said about people in
MR. ZACHARY: I will certainly talk about it much more carefully now, though, now that I know you are here. I am sure I have much to qualify.
(Laughter.)
MR. SWELAM: Yes, because I think for a country like Egypt, where you have actually more than one culture at play at the same time, being associated with the Arab world is not a function of a decision taken by leadership, especially if you are talking about a country which has been speaking Arabic for 14 centuries before Nasser took office. In this sense, I cannot see the Arab people of Egypt not associating themselves with the Arab world one way or the other.
In another way, and I think the comment made by Mr. Cowen here about the timing is very important. Because if you have tomorrow, for example, a decision taken by the Arab League, I think what you are saying is a little bit of an outcome of the frustration of what is going in Egypt and the Arab world and Occupied Territories and all this. So if you have tomorrow a decision by the Arab League, for example, that would reflect very, very much on the attitude that you would get from the people in Egypt about being associated as an Arab.
I think that was a very long comment, but anyway, I just want to ask a question. There are a lot of writers who wrote about globalization, keeping themselves strictly to the economic arena, and you are talking about culture. I wonder where the concept such as democracy, governance, human rights would fit into this picture, and how would the United States actually be more accepting and approving that there are probably in other parts of the world slightly different understandings to these same concepts? Thank you.
MR. ZACHARY: Because I want to respond to the comment about Egypt, maybe you two guys will respond to his actual question, all right, so it is just not me.
What I am saying is not that Egypt isn't an Arab country. It is that the benefits of being Arab-plus, of having a more frank recognition of the additional traditions, the other traditions in Egyptian history and in current Egyptian society. The other thing is, and I don't want to be misunderstood, that the rise of nationalism in Egypt and decisions Nasser made, made historical sense at the time. Europeans had a sway and an entree in Egyptian business and society that was unsustainable. It was unfair. But even given that, today I think that Egypt would, and some Egyptians I think privately think this, that it would benefit from drawing on more cultural and social sources than simply the narrowly defined Arab/Islam cultural source.
On your larger question, that in some sense is whole other book. It is a big debate. But I would just say that absolutely different parts of the world or different countries, different societies can have different conceptions of justice, democracy, freedom, individualism, communalism, so that I don't try to present a notion that there is a one-size-fits-all; in fact, I try to say the opposite.
MR. LINDSEY: Yes?
MR. MILLIKAN: Al Millikan, Washington Independent Writers.
I just wanted to ask anyone, to what extent, where communism has reigned for any significant period of time, do you see this as a corrupting influence and a hindrance to globalization, where capitalism has been attacked historically, educationally, in practice, where atheism has been promoted, where other religions have been persecuted, where human rights have been suppressed? How hard is this for communist nations that have gone past communism, how hard is that to deal with in globalization?
MR. ZACHARY: Well, one issue facing post-communist countries is that since they are not wedded to their past identities -- in fact since many of them completely want to wipe those out -- they are actually freer to engage in this journey of flexible identity and reconstructing national myths. So, in that sense, they have a head start. They are not burdened by past sort of mono-cultural, narrow notions of what it means to be a Byelorussian or what does it mean to be a Ukrainian.
But, of course, there are a lot of deficits that they also have. And I think what we see in the post-communist countries is these many other deficits make it very difficult for them to see anything but their elites hybridized.
MR. LINDSEY: Yes?
MR. MANBEL: Hi, I am Tom Manbel. I am a poet and an entrepreneur.
Like my friend over here, I have a comment and a question. And I should preface it by saying I have not yet read your book, but I certainly intend to.
My comment would be I don't understand how anyone can imagine that globalization -- or it doesn't have to be globalization -- nationalism, which is just an earlier form of the same, fails to wipe out differences, which is what we should be talking about instead of diversity. The issue is not diversity; it is difference.
You have only to look at France, to move a few hundred miles from Germany, to see a country that even as late as the late 19th Century, there were 14 spoken languages, to see a country in which a set of myths did not arise organically within the country. It was imposed. You have lost Provencal literature. You have lost those languages. You have lost French controle, whatever was ever in there. You have lost just a huge amount.
And that is only to say that when you have a gain, you also have a loss. It seems jejune to be complaining that people point that out, whether in ads in The New York Times or anywhere else, as if you had any social tendency, whether globalization or fragmentation, that did not have its losses that went along with its gains. That is my comment.
My question is, what is the role of entropy in your ideas? In other words, maybe a way to say that is what is the ideal society that you see? You pointed out four kinds of societies and you gave examples of three of them. When you came to your fourth, your example was Tiger Woods. Describe a world that you actually like in that regard.
MR. ZACHARY: Well, clearly, in the book I talk at length about what hybrid societies are and also I have a separate chapter on hybrid leadership, which is how one would promote hybridity within a society. So countries that I look at, obviously the United States and Canada are different types of hybrid societies, but of course they are in process. There are counter forces in them. Singapore, I think, is a very interesting one from a kind of authoritarian orientation.
I think that, interestingly, France is hybridizing from below. It is not hybridizing so much from external influences, but openness and the notions of globalization have unlocked demands on the part of local regions that are astonishing. Suddenly, 100 years after the French Government thought this process of nationalization was finished, dozens of French groups or regions are springing up and saying they have different languages, they want these languages recognized, and they have different interests than the French States. And giving the Island of Corsica an Assembly is just a prologue to many other local assemblies that the French Government is going to openly have to give.
The idea that even eradicated languages or eradicated cultures can't be revived is not clear. Because, in England, Cornish has been revived. I don't think anybody ever spoke Cornish -- I am not sure -- but now there are about 10,000 that claim to speak it.
In the French case, the end game might be a society that hybridizes out of its past. These resources that Mr. Lindsey talked about in the beginning, drawing on resources aren't just living resources; they could be dead resources, "dead," or past resources, historic resources. And France might end up finding that it is through this sort of hybridization locally that it really changes and not globally. So I have thought a lot about what you are bringing up.
MR. COWEN: Just in terms of an example other than Tiger Woods, the most successful hybrid society I know in the world is the one I live in; and that is Northern Virginia. I would lower my property taxes a bit, but in terms of the hybrid model working, it is right across the River. That is what I would point to.
MR. LINDSEY: I would say I have had many critical adjectives thrown at me, but this is the first time I have ever been called jejune and I am very excited about that.
(Laughter.)
MR. LINDSEY: My point wasn't that globalization's critics don't have a point when they say that certain differences in the world are vanishing. Of course they are. My point was the interesting one that here is a movement that is typically selling itself to the world as an antipoverty movement; that in fact when it chooses its targets to put in a full-page ad in The New York Times it chooses indicators of affluence, which I think is an interesting and telling indication of what is really going on in the anti-globalization movement.
Yes?
MALE VOICE: Do you believe that compulsory racial classification, which is very shocking to outsiders here -- and I live in this society; and for my children, for example, it is impossible -- given the grid, the historically absurd grid, don't you think that, number one, that is absurd?
Number two, why in the world do you want to continue forever preferential treatment for Negro Africans? Isn't that an admission that they can't make it on their own? What is your basis?
MR. ZACHARY: The first one about the classifications, I think that is contested now. I happen to live in Berkeley, California. This is obviously a very liberal city. For the first time, they are letting parents check "mixed race." This is another category, of course, another classification. It shows that there is frustration.
All I am saying is that many people are frustrated with these boxes they have to check. I think the first impulse might be to create more boxes and new ones, rather than get rid of them, because, after all, that is what they are comfortable with. That is what people are used to.
The second thing about affirmative action and black Americans is just how we have to gauge the damage done from immigration to some segments of African-Americans. That is the first thing. Because we allowed legally into the United States 1 million people a year for 20 years. There was no referendum on this. There was no vote. It happened.
We did it presumably because it is benefiting America. Well, it is benefiting maybe most of America, but some Americans it doesn't benefit. And maybe if we are going to continue this kind of openness to immigration we ought to compensate segments of the society that are being damaged by it. That is not a strange notion. We have done that with trade, for instance. Why not with immigration?
MALE VOICE: Why on a racial basis?
MR. SKERRY: I will take the questions in reverse order, but start with that one. On a racial basis because the grievance was visited on a racial basis. That would be the answer. That is not an argument, in my view, for group rights necessarily, but it might well be and probably is an argument for some sort of group acknowledgement or group benefits or some sort of recognition to the group that they have suffered a grievance that no other group has.
Your first point about compulsory racial classification, I will presume to make a point given what you said, that you are not an American by birth, I guess, and