Minorities

On the Crow Indian Reservation this month, U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), led a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, addressing the severe lack of federal funds and management for the Indian Health Service. IHS officials, including acting chief medical officer Dr. Charles North, and tribal members testified to the shortage of qualified health professionals, closure of health facilities and cancellation of programs midway through the fiscal year.

A bipartisan collection of senators primarily from… more

Hidden away, secreted in the dusty stacks of the Machiavellian Library, is the definitive how-to guide, Winning Through Ethnic Manipulation. Observing the immigration and affirmative-action policies favored by the current administration, it’s one book that I am sure George W. Bush -- or at least Karl Rove -- has read.

Start with the chapter entitled “Divide and Conquer,” which instructs power-practitioners to dream up racial hierarchies aimed at keeping potentially powerful groups divided -- too busy fighting over crumbs on the… more

Have you ever wondered why phrases such as "sectarian violence," "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" are heard so often around the world -- but not in the United States?

Why do people in so many other countries systematically slaughter their countrymen? And why is America a happy exception?

There are "killing fields" around the world, in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. But not here. One reason we are no longer cursed with civil strife is that Martin Luther King Jr. helped lift… more

Can Oprah get Obama elected president? It’s possible. After all, everything -- and everyone -- else the Queen of Television touches turns to gold.

Oprah Winfrey has given her in-studio blessing to her various courtiers -- Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, Nate Berkus, Bob Greene -- and now all of them have gone on to great success in the larger world. So maybe, too, for Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), a past guest on her show who announced his candidacy for the White… more

When Jonathan Hu was going to high school in suburban Southern California, he rarely heard anyone speaking Chinese. But striding through campus on his way to class at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Hu hears Mandarin all the time, in plazas, cafeterias, classrooms, study halls, dorms and fast-food outlets. It is part of the soundtrack at this iconic university, along with Cantonese, English, Spanish and, of course, the perpetual jackhammers from the perpetual construction projects spurred by the perpetual… more

Sometimes one entity has to die for another to be born.

In the Balkans alone, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire enabled the creation of ethnic-national territories, but it was close to a century later that the Yugoslav federation violently dissolved and Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia finally emerged as modern nation-states. As for the Ottoman’s eastern realm, it is said that if Arabs had drawn the maps after World War I, Iraq would never have existed anyway. But undoing… more

If Uncle Sam has been dividing us up by race for decades now, why should we surprised that the reality TV show Survivor is doing the same thing? And could there be a double standard -- that is, it’s good when the government apportions by race, but bad when the private sector does so?

Reality TV, like all popular culture, reflects the larger society. So, if we want a color-blind society, the government should stop being so litigiously color-conscious.

Once upon… more

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been curious about the Shiite Muslims. But I figured, why go to Lebanon, Iraq or Iran to find them -- when I can go to Queens?

There are plenty of Shiites -- more properly, Shia -- right here; they have a history and politics that we need to know.

In the minds of most Americans, the Shia came on the world stage the hard way. The Iranians are mostly Shia; in the late ‘70s, their Shia… more

The lesson of the Muhammad cartoon controversy is: Multiculturalism between nations is inevitable, but multiculturalism within nations is disastrous.

Protests, many of them violent, have erupted across the world--including Europe, Australia and New Zealand--after the appearance of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad in unflattering ways.

It's time for all of us to recognize that different cultures have different values. For the West, broadly speaking, the highest value is freedom, including freedom of religious expression. But for the Muslim… more

Last September's tragedy in New Orleans revealed, in the starkest manner, the soft underbelly of America's cities. After all the 1990s rhetoric insisting that "Cities are back!" we got a glimpse behind the facades of a major urban center and tourist mecca which revealed many utterly dependent and disorganized residents, looking more like Third Worlders than denizens of a modern metropolis. In the process, the urban liberalism that has dominated city administration for the last generation was unmasked.