Cosmopolitan America

About a week ago, Rob had an interesting post about cosmopolitan cities in America. Comparing San Francisco to Cincinnati, he wrote

For O'Reilly, San Francisco represents a rejection of America, which is to say a rejection of the set of imaginary traditions that social conservatives hold dear. The hopeful thing, I think, is that fewer people share O'Reilly's vision than he believes; these charts seem to indicate that Americans, on the whole, are pretty tolerant of the cosmopolitan idea. I think that the failure of anti-immigration politics (in spite of the handwringing of folks like Mickey Kaus) to really gain much traction in the last couple of election cycles indicates that more people think about San Francisco in the way I do than the way that O'Reilly does. It makes me optimistic that there's space for a genuinely (almost uniquely) American civic nationalism, even if that nationalism is at deep odds with those who most enthusiastically wrap themselves in the American flag. I'm also hopeful that, in twenty years, Cincinnati will become more like San Francisco than the reverse, and that we'll all be the better for it.

Right, but it's even bigger than that. For the pleasure of people who like Afghani food and hearing different languages on the street, more cosmopolitan cities are great, but the real fear for O'Reilly and ilk is Americans beginning to understand foreign cultures, regardless of where they live.

This brings me to a conversation I had with my Mom the other day. First, a note on her. "Cosmopolitan" is not a word you would use to describe my mother. She had never been outside the country until 2 years ago. She has no interest in travel. She has always found certain Latino men sexy, particularly Julio Iglesias and Rafael Palmeiro. I tried not to explore this fascination too deeply.

Anyway, when Lyrad and I left home, she lost her identity as a mother. She never worked outside the home, mostly for health reasons and also because of our Dad's old-fashioned gender hangups. But she did start getting involved with foreign exchange students. It was perfect; hosting them allowed her to be a Mom, plus she could work on placing these students by turning Lyrad's now unused bedroom into an office.

When I was growing up she was a Democrat but then switched to the Republicans to express her opposition to the gay rights movement in the early 90s. Whether she still feels this way is another thing I don't want to explore. But through being exposed to all these foreign cultures, both her and my Dad, who is a pretty conservative guy, have had their eyes opened pretty wide.

She called me the other day asking what halal was. This is because her program is trying to place Muslim students in rural Oregon. The idea of my Mom needing to understand Islamic dietary laws was mindblowing to me and is a conservative's nightmare. Both her and my Dad are big time Obama supporters and will even vote for Hillary if she is the nominee, although neither can stand her. But they have talked to all these people about how the European socialized health care and have become converts.

But of course most conservative whites have not had their world broadened in this way. Republicans can only hope this continues. Michael Sokolove's story on politics in his home town of Levittown, Pennsylvania illustrates this point well. There are many traditional white working-class Democrats in Levittown who want Hillary to win the presidency but will vote for McCain over Obama, because they just flat out aren't voting for a black man. This is still an isolated white place with old-style working-class concerns. Certainly the Democratic Party needs to work for these voters, but these are also classic Reagan Democrats for whom race matters a lot. They don't want a cosmopolitan America. It threatens their identity as white Americans and what they believe that stands for--hearing English, eating traditional European-based foods, living and working around other whites, and making enough money to buy a new car every couple of years. Sokolove relates this incident:

Steve Woods sat drinking a Coors Light and talking with his buddies. A Philadelphia Phillies spring-training game was on TV, and he glanced up at it every time the audio picked up the crack of the bat. I asked him if the presidential campaign interested him. “Absolutely,” he said. Rapid fire, he told me the issues he cared about: “No. 1, gas prices. It’s killing everybody. No. 2, immigrants. They should go back to Mexico. Three, guns. Everybody should have the right to bear arms. In fact, everyone should have a gun in this day and age.”

I wondered if he was a Republican. “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m a Democrat all the way. I hate Republicans.”

If McCain can tap these votes, he might have a chance to pull this election out.

But in the long run, what Rob and I hope for becomes closer to reality and what O'Reilly and the remnants of the white working class like Steve Woods hold dear is disappearing. For all that people slam on Cincinnati, I have little doubt that it is far more cosmopolitan than it was 20 years ago. The gap between Cincy and San Francisco is narrowing every day. Every time a new Spanish radio station starts broadcasting in Iowa, every time a Vietnamese restaurant opens in Utah, every time the child of South Carolina conservatives makes friends with a Guatemalan or Salvadoran-American at school, the conservatives lose. They know this and it scares the hell out of them.

Cosmopolitanism may be the hope of American society and I am confident that the nation will only get more urbane with each passing year.