JUDGING CHARACTER BY WHAT WE SEE NOT WHAT WE KNOW

We have had a lot of news and comment about Somali cab drivers who won't pick up blind persons with seeing eye dogs. And the constant drumbeat about who is better qualified in school and who is making most of the trouble in public schools is also a topic of extensive comment.

We see comments about this or that group, which comes from seeing what is in front of us rather than an understanding of who the people are.

I do think we have a tendency to look at who is here and assume that means the entire group is defined by those smaller numbers. It certainly was true that the European immigrants of the last 23 million (1880s to 1920s) contrasted in that Jews were not representative of all Jews but Italians were representative of southern Italy.

Now we have Asians and Africans. At some point we will sort that out, too, but it is my unscientific observation that the Hmong immigrants are more representative of the spectrum of their group at home than other Asians who are here might be. The Hmong come in for some unfair comparison criticism as a result.

With American Indians you have the spectrum for sure except that so many were killed or died from European diseases, those who are left may not be as representative as one would hope. It is a population in recovery.

And with Mexicans and Central Americans - this group is highly representative of survivors of either earlier invasions and disease or more recent military actions in their home countries. Who we have here as far as representation is unknown, I think.

With African Americans, we have a preponderance of surviving members from certain areas, not all of Africa, so we should not try to draw broad conclusions. This population has become a truly American group but with a history of brutal killings and diseases suffered that went unchecked. It is a population in recovery.

You might say Africans on the whole represent the world's greatest diversity and American Indians on the whole represent a high degree of relatedness. Both groups have shown tremendous resilience and once allowed to recover their numbers sufficiently (post Civil War and post Great Depression) are now producing many examples of successful individuals who work in every walk of the American power and professional classes.

With Somali and other refugees from East Africa, I think it is hard to know and the taxi, pork handling, dog issues may be more local based on who is here than on Somali attitudes across the U.S. or in Somalia for that matter.

So I am just saying it is hard to talk of minorities and immigrants with a broad brush. We don't know really how representative the groups that live here are or whether they reflect the full population of their homelands.

Mr. Mork speaks of the earlier Europeans to the American continent. It seems clear from the record that those numbers were highly selective at either end of the spectrum from educated professionals to indentured servants. That very imbalance made it relatively easy for the elites to decide on the shape and content of the American government. No storming of the Bastille for them. From that juncture we derive an understanding of accomplished democracy when that was never the fact. It is a process that is yet unfolding.

That's not such a bad idea. We have to keep working on inclusion, day and night. The more the Western European group loses its demographic advantage in the democratic process, the more we will experience the joys of an unstratified society. I look forward to it.