This weekend’s March on Washington 50th anniversary was no sooner over than Gov. Bobby Jindal. R-La., criticized minorities for not assimilating into American culture and said that the major race problem facing modern America is that minorities are too focused on their “separateness.”
In a Politico.com op-ed Sunday, Jindal lamented that minorities place “undue emphasis” on heritage and urged Americans to resist “the politically correct trend of changing the melting pot into a salad bowl” comprised of proudly ethnic identities.
Urging everyone to bring back the melting pot, Jindal went on to say we live in the age of hyphenated Americans: Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Indian-Americans and Native Americans, to name just a few.
Critics have already begun responding, saying that if he had done even cursory research before writing his editorial, Jindal may have discovered some systemic inequities preventing minorities from assimilating to his satisfaction.
Those countering Jindal’s statements say the national black unemployment rate has steadily remained double the white unemployment rate for the past 60 years. In urban areas like Chicago, the poverty rate and median income for black families is also about the same as it was in 1963.
And even segregation, they claim, is rebounding aggressively. Since 2001, “white flight” has increased and urban schools and neighborhoods have become increasingly re-segregated and research shows this re-segregation intensifies poverty and violence in minority neighborhoods, trapping black families in an endless cycle.
For more on this story, go to:
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/08/25/2523431/jindal-race-assimilate/