Small talk: why the melting-pot ideal must not melt

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INGRID SISCHY: So Camille, this conversation will be running in a special issue we're calling "Falling in Love With America, All Over Again." What do those words make you think of?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: For me America has been the great land of opportunity. I am the product of an Italian-American immigrant family. My mother and all four of my grandparents were born in Italy, so the experience of America is still very fresh and new for me. I have not become callous and jaded by America, even though I am highly critical of decisions made by the various administrations, both Democrat and Republican. I'm still a great believer in the American ideal of the melting pot and of a still undiscovered land where you can become anything. I have constantly said that there would be no way I would have become so outspoken a thinker and writer if I had been born anywhere else. The fog of convention and decorum still hangs very heavily abroad, even in supposedly liberal, secular Europe. So I'm delighted to be an American, and like Andy Warhol, my idol, I'm still madly in love with the imagery of American popular culture, which I think is the greatest product of modern art.

IS: Some people would say that because of what's happened over the past decade in this country--particularly since 2001, and the fear of strangers that the calamity engendered--the whole melting-pot idea has itself melted.

CP: I do feel that we're approaching a dangerous firestorm of xenophobia and isolationism and even ethno-racism in the U.S.

IS: That's a good word for it.

CP: It's a way to describe current fears about a dissolution of American culture in the face of surging Hispanic culture--the result of so many millions of Hispanics having moved, not just along the Southwestern border, but everywhere in the United States, seeking work. As a result I'm seeing a replay of the kinds of hatreds that led to violence during the successive waves of immigration in the United States beginning in the 1840s, when the Irish came here because of the Potato Famine, and which instigated all sorts of anti-Catholic hysteria and riots and even led to Catholic churches being burned down in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Many recent immigrants tend to think of the Irish as being part of the foundation of American culture, but in point of fact, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment here perceived working-class Irish as a vulgar, uncivilized intrusion. And then afterward, of course, with the enormous waves of immigrants coming from Italy, Poland, and Russia, and with the Jews seeking shelter from the pogroms in the 1870s, '80s, and '90s, things became even tougher. The ethnic lines were drawn very harshly in that period. In the early 20th century, too, there was such controversy over immigration that, finally, entry was effectively closed off to certain ethnic groups. After the 1920s, the U.S. essentially slowed European immigration to a trickle. WASP ladies walking down the street in south Philadelphia during World War I complained about seeing nothing but Italian signs in store windows--they viewed it as a serious threat to the very survival of American culture. I think we're experiencing that panic again.

I don't fear the balkanization of America the way I know many current commentators do. In his new book [State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America] Pat Buchanan claims that Hispanic immigration spells the end of American culture and that it's going to swallow up the country. He says that people are withdrawing into enclaves and that this presents just as powerful a threat from within as terrorism is a threat from without. The immigrant issue is going to be huge in next year's election. It's driving popular opinion beneath the radar of the major media, which are concentrated in multicultural cities and don't really understand the bitter drama that's actually going on.

IS: And yet America is built on this whole foundation of immigration.

CP: But the point is that America did actually remain relatively homogeneous ethnically and culturally for 200 years, from the early-17th century well into the 19th century. Furthermore, foundationally, our Constitution and our principles of law and government are derived from the British model. As a result it produces a weird schizophrenia in American culture.

IS: We can't say we're homogeneous, though. America has certainly been the most multiracial country.

CP: Well, that is certainly my view. But every time the notion of America's unique political identity is appealed to, every time people invoke the intent of the "Founders" in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, it's important to remember that those central documents predated the major waves of immigration. As a result you have a perpetual split in the culture. Conservatives appeal to tradition and to the moral past, which is why they view the Constitution as a kind of sacred text that should not be tampered with, and why they think the president should appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court--to uphold the Founders' original intent. Democrats and progressives, on the other hand, look to the future and believe in reform. They view the Constitution as a living document that needs to be revised in accordance with changing times and circumstances.