On Aug 14, 7:45=A0pm, hp...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> On Aug 14, 4:26=A0pm, john fernbach <fernbach1...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > Sad to say, the Sierra Club and other LIBERAL environmental groups
> > have not yet signed up to demonize dark-skinned Spanish speaking
> > immigrants to the US and continue to focus their efforts on such
> > BORING topics as wetlands preservation, global climate change, toxic
> > chemical pollution and endangered species.
>
> > What is the matter with these people, that they're not willing to
> > engage in anti-immigrant frenzy just because it might lead them into
> > political alliances with the Ku Klux Klan?
>
> > Could it be that the liberal environmental groups are so weak, that
> > they think it's a bad idea to alienate the 33% of all Americans who
> > are now re****ted to be nonwhite?
>
> No, they are simply cowards who refuse to recognize that immigration-
> fueled population
> growth will lead to envirnmental degradation. Worst is Carl Pope of
> the Sierra Club who
> accepted a large donation from Dave Geflen, Hollywood mogul, with the
> proviso that the Club
> say nothing about immigration.
>
> mitch
It's still a bad idea for American environmentalists to wade into the
immigration debate,
especially concerning Hispanic immigrants.
They're the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country, and
environmentalists need to have their goodwill. Cor****ate American
pretty much feels the same, which is why instructions on bank ATMs,
telephone answering services etc. increasingly come in Spanish as well
as English.
I'm a white guy, pretty much opposed to both legal and illegal
immigration, also quite concerned about population growth. So I do
think it's essential for the environmental movement to address US and
also global population growth.
Jumping into the debate over Hispanic immigration, though, is stupid.
Especially when it would put the Sierra Club in the company of the
Minutemen and a number of racist groups, including the Virginia Dare
Coalition and the KKK.
Historically, dating from around the 1890s, the American conservation
movement has primarily been white-dominated, and in the early years
some of the leading conservation groups were explicitly racist. In a
nation that -- like it or not -- really is multicultural and
multiracial, that's a weakness.
Already, nearly 1/3 of all US residents are nonwhite, and it's going
to be more than 50% in a few decades. As an old, sometimes racist
white guy, I'm a little nervous about the coming change.
But we're too far down that road as a society to change directions,
not without a really ugly racial mess that would come close to tearing
the nation apart. We're going to have to make a multi-racial and
multi-cultural America work, or we face the collapse of the country.
By way of contrast, if we want to refer to the most famous racist
movement of the 20th century, the German Nazis when they took power
exercised that power in a nation where Jews, both orthododox Jews and
assimilated Jews who had married into Christian families, were a tiny
fraction of the total German population - far less than 5%.
What the Germans did in staging the Holocaust against the Jews (and
against other people, too -- eg gay people, gypsies, etc.) was evil
and immoral, and arguably it hurt the German war machine by forcing so
many talented Jewish scientists to emigrate to the US and Britain.
But numerically, in terms of the fraction of the population being
targeted, the Holocaust wasn't that disruptive to German society. Any
kind of American attempt to wipe out or relocate 30-50% of the US
population -- if you could demagogue enough US whites into agreeing to
it -- would be far more destructive and disruptive to North American
society than the Holocaust was to European society.
It would probably be suicidal, given the stiff challenges to American
international leader****p and economic leader****p are already shaping
up in the world today.
All this is straying a little off the topic of whether US
environmental groups should be speaking out on immigration. But
what's obvious is that US environmental groups should run like hell
from any political positions and alliances that put us in league with
white racists, even on a tem****ary basis.
In the American society of tomorrow, it will essential for the
environmental movement to have made numerous connections and alliances
with different groups of nonwhite US citizens.
To the credit of the Sierra Club, the Club -- at one time a rather
racist organization -- already is attempting to do that, and has been
doing so for many years.
But the Sierra Club is also working to find allies among conservative
white Americans, too -- hunters and fishermen whose states are
threatened by toxic chemical polllution, farmers whose communities are
threatened by nuclear power plants and giant hog farms, etc.
For the sake of American environmentalism, let's hope the Sierra Club
continues to work on this multi-racial, multi-cultural, and basically
bipartisan agenda.
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