Who we are: Suheir Hammad answers Samuel Huntington, whose controversial new book blames Latino immigration for causing an American identity crisis.(To the Point)

Samuel P. Huntington's new book, Who Are We? could also be called The Hispanic Panic, or Adios Amigos, or even Selena was no Marilyn. A decade after promising the Clash of Civilizations, Mr. Huntington is back, to remind us of the purity, honor and democratic foundation of the Anglo-Protestant values that he believes lie at the center (not the heart) of America's Manifest Destiny. Yes, people still think this way. Mr. Huntington's focus has shifted from "Islam's bloody borders" to the deluge of legal and illegal Mexican immigration into the northern land known as the United States of America.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The book appeared on bookstore shelves and caused a flurry of academic discussions as pictures leaked from Abu Ghraib of American troops humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war and civilians. Um ... is this the Christian honor we are supposed to hold dear? I kept reading his text, and to the reactions from his peers and foes alike, and returning to these images. And as I was figuring out how to respond to his question, the author and activist Gloria Anzaldua died. Rather than feed into Huntington's hype, I decided to remind myself of who we are by re-reading Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

"Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them." I first read Anzaldua's words as a young poet deconstructing her own internal boundaries. Anzaldua's words resonated profoundly. Yes! That's it. As a Palestinian, I knew intimately that borders, and even nations, are manufactured by those with the most influence and force. As an American, I hadn't learned the particular and bloody history of the acquisition of southwestern and Pacific Coast America (certainly not in American history classes in grade and high school or even college). I should have taken more Latin American history courses. But, wait, why wouldn't this information be part of U.S. history? Because, as Anzaldua writes ...

"The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it." Oh. Sounds familiar. Sounds recent. It sounds like Mr. Huntington hadn't read Anzaldua's work. Otherwise, his own would be informed with a parallel history to the one he and those he represents (please don't get it twisted and think it's ever about one person) believe to be the sole legitimate American narrative. "Who are we?" he asks.

We are not what you would like for us to be, us Americans. Someone broadcasted the myth that this nation was founded on the secular humanist beliefs of the French Revolution. We, immigrants, migrants and refugees alike, believed the hype. Enslaved Africans had no say. Native people had no recourse, no international ...