I think that the author of that piece is missing a few things... or, more likely is being willfully blind to them. The reason that ethnic interests are treated differently is becasue they are different. This will all turn however on whether you believe that "whiteness" is privileged in society. I say yes it is. I point to the whiteness of all Presidents, most CEOs, etc. Some people will say that entertainment business is one where ethnicity doesn't matter but, in fact it is one of the best arenas to see how non-white people are made into the "ethnic others", thereby privileging whiteness as "normal". For instance, I have never heard anyone talk about the Cosby show, In Living Colour or Moesha without mentioning that the shows are about black people. Have you ever heard Friends referred to as a show about a bunch of white people? Me either. You can also see this in music with black music, latin music (even when the artist is born in the USA) etc.... never heard Country called "white people music".... well, actually I have called it that... but you know what I mean.
It is also visible in the way we talk about criminality. There are black gangs and asian gangs and the hell's angels.... when have you ever heard them called a white gang? And of course we can see it in jail populations that always contain an overrepresentation of ethnic minorities. Are these people naturally more criminal? No. They are the victims of systemic discrimination which negatively impacts them both pre-crime (creates conditions that lead to criminality like poverty) and post-crime (unequal treatment by police and courts leading to a greater chance, than white suspects, of moving to the next level at each level of dealings with the criminal justice system... that is arrest, charge, trial, conviction). I was actually sitting in court the other day and it was striking. I looked around and the judge was white, the three lawyers were white, the three baillifs were white, the clerks were white... in fact the only non-white people were the accused and his family who had come to watch.... and this, while anecdotal, is not an isolated experience.
If whiteness is privileged, then it makes sense that "ethnic interests" of visible minorities are acceptable and ethnic interests of white people are questionable..... "but you pinko lefties say that race is a social construct" I hear you cry. Yes, it is a social construct but it has a material reality in the way that it is perceived.... hence the discrimination. To say that race is a social construct is not to say people don't have different colour skin or that people don't hold prejudice based on that skin colour. Rather, it is to say that the way that we understand the notion of race in a specific time and place is socially constructed. This is why it makes sense that Italians and Irish were both considered non-white at times in American history but are now considered to be white people. It also explains why a brother and sister born to parents of different "races" can have such completely different experiences growing up. I have a friend whose mother was white and whose father was native. She is very fair and her brother is very dark. She tells stories about walking into a store with him and being treated totally differently... every single time... treated differently by teachers, by people in authority, etc. If race was "real" than the fact that they have the same blood composition should indicate that they would be treated the same.... but they aren't. The tired line remains true that there is much greater diversity within a category (e.g. whiteness) than there is between them (e.g. whiteness and blackness).
Now, there is one more piece to this that I think is important and the author starts to talk about it. He indicates class distinctions within the category of whiteness and suggests that one group of white people is selling out another group of white people. He says that they are taking short term class distinctions over long term racial distinctions.... but doesn't indicate why one is more long term than another.... because he has completely rejected the notion of race being socially constructed based on his scientific proof that there is genetic differentiation between "races".... well, of course two people with different colour skin have different genes... so, what.... rich people have been exploiting poor people forever. Serfdom in Europe was about white people exploiting white people, the early industrial revolution in Europe was about white people exploiting white people... why he suggests that class exploitation between whites is short term is beyond me... and that it is shorter term than race is just silly... especially as people continue to intermarry muddying the waters of racial differentiation even more. When you consider the exploitation of workers of colour, it's kind of like the movie Bullworth says... "white people got a lot more in common with black people than they do with rich people".
Okay, I have rambled enough and don't even know what I have said...
Oh, one last thing... Usually when you invoke an academic's name, it is useful to explain why s/he is being supported or criticized. This author mentions Samuel Huntington and refers to the "obvious validity" of his work without saying why. If you are interested, Huntington is most famous for his thesis about the Clash of Civilizations.... basically just a replacement for the cold war after the fall of the Berlin Wall.... anyway, the obvious validity of his work was very nicely challenged by Edward Said before he died. This is a short piece that he wrote about Huntington's thesis (
http://www.esl.ucsb.edu/people/rightmire/ling2/Ignorance.htm). Only useful if you want.... a little removed from this conversation.
P.S. I should confess that I got a little frustrated with this article and ended up skippping over some of it so if I totally missed the boat and this guy isn't the person that I think he is, please excuse me... I will try to read it again.
Come on you can tell.
