THE
RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICA:
Most Americans rest secure in the thought that such a dissolution can't happen here. So when President Clinton took time to warn that there was "one, only one, America" on the eve of the African-American Million Man March on Washington, it may have been the first time for many that the issue had even been raised. Yet for many others, mainly in the American national minority communities, the notion that America's pluralist reality might eventually lead to significant constitutional-legal and even territorial change has been around for some time.
William Merwin's futurist fiction speculates on what might happen in the U.S. by the year 2016 AD if America's dominant Anglo-American population proved unwilling or unable to successfully assimilate its African-American and Hispanic national minorities. If the three major ethnic groups in America became enmeshed in nationalist orientations, could America break apart like the former Soviet Union, with autonomous ethnic territories or even new nations emerging?
Merwin uses the fictional device of a blockage in U.S. access to Middle Eastern oil as the catalyst for the ultimate economic crisis in minority communities which engenders significant mass movements for self-determination. However whether the catalyst is oil -- or the rollback of affirmative action and the Republican blueprint for America? -- the visionary, even breathtaking, aspect of Merwin's book is its grip on the latent possibilities of American ethno-nationalist/liberationist tendencies as they might work themselves out on the vast canvas of the American body politic. Merwin's fictional depiction of the personalities and evolving policies of the African-American, Hispanic and Anglo-American leaderships, locked in a dialectic of events that propels majority and minorities toward a new politico-legal configuration for America, makes truly fascinating reading.
"Like George Orwell's 1984, this book does not predict; it warns. Either we integrate all of the people into one nation or we shall Balkanize like Eastern Europe."
Richard D. Lamm, Ctr. for Public Policy, University of Denver,
and former governor, State of Colorado
WILLIAM MERWIN is a journalist specializing in government and
education.
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