Reason, common sense and intelligence. It’s now or never.
Barack Obama’s victory last week triggered an immediate accounting ofdebts to be paid off in constructing his new administration. There werethose who speculated that Obama would be building a White House staffof loyal old Chicago hands. Others foresaw a bevy of Clintonistas. Andstill others had a vision of a kind of Kennedy redux that wags quicklydubbed “Obamalot.”
After all, Caroline Kennedy had emerged from her shell of shyness tohead Obama’s vice-presidential search team, after joining her Uncle Tedon a national barnstorming tour with Obama in the days leading up toSuper Tuesday. Her exertion not only signaled her enthusiasm for Obama,but also her willingness to be a greater presence in public life: Somenow envision her as a possible UN ambassador.
Her cousin, RobertF. Kennedy Jr., has spent decades developing credibility as a globalenvironmental activist, and some people close to the Kennedy familyfeel he, too, is ready to emerge on the national stage, having overcomea troubled youth. They see him as a possible Environmental ProtectionAgency chief.
There is no question that Obama owes a debt to the Kennedys – but itmay be far greater than he or they realize. Yes, Senator Edward M.Kennedy offered a crucial early endorsement, comparing the Obama of2008 to the Jack Kennedy of 1960. And certainly Caroline and others inthe Kennedy family worked hard on the campaign trail. But the greatestKennedy legacy to Obama isn’t Ted or Caroline or Bobby Jr., but ratherthe Immigration Act of 1965, which created the diverse country that isalready being called Obama’s America.
That act is rarelymentioned when recounting the high points of 1960s liberalism, but itsimpact arguably rivals the Voting Rights Act, the creation of Medicare,or other legislative landmarks of the era. It transformed a nation 85percent white in 1965 into one that’s one-third minority today, and ontrack for a nonwhite majority by 2042.
Before the act,immigration visas were apportioned based on the demographic breakdownthat existed at the time of the 1920 Census – meaning that there werefew if any limits on immigrants from Western and Northern Europe, butstrict quotas on those from elsewhere.
The belief that the UnitedStates should remain a nation of European lineage was openly discussedwhen immigration laws were revisited in 1952. The resulting bill, theMcCarran-Walter Act, was notorious for giving the State Department theright to exclude visitors for ideological reasons, meaning that a raftof left-wing artists and writers – including Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,British novelist Graham Greene – and scores of others were deniedvisas. But it also had the effect of maintaining the 1920s-era notionof the United States as a white nation. (Congress imposed the bill overPresident Truman’s veto.)
A decade later, attitudes werechanging, and President Kennedy proposed a new immigration structurethat would no longer be based on national origins. After Kennedy’sassassination, his brother Ted took up the fight, pushing the Johnsonadministration to go even further than it wanted in evening the playingfield. Though Lyndon Johnson, in signing the bill, tried to reassureopponents that it wouldn’t do much to change the balance ofimmigration, its impact was dramatic.
(above) A grateful people…
In the 1950s, 53 percent ofall immigrants were Europeans and just 6 percent were Asians; by the1990s, just 16 percent were Europeans and 31 percent were Asians. Thepercentages of Latino and African immigrants also jumped significantly.
SimonRosenberg, president of the liberal think tank NDN, formerly the NewDemocrat Network, calls the Immigration Act of 1965 “the most importantpiece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of,” and said it “setAmerica on a very different demographic course than the previous 300years.”
(above) New ‘Americans.’ Thanks Ted.
By adding so many Asians, Latinos, and Africanimmigrants, Rosenberg says, the act changed the racial narrative inAmerica from one of oppression – the white-black divide dating toslavery – to one of diversity. That change was strongly echoed in theObama campaign, which emphasized the candidate’s mixed-race backgroundas making him representative of a new generation of Americans.
Thatgeneration has its roots in the Immigration Act of 1965, and the acthad its roots in the Kennedys. Obamalot may be the modern reflection ofJFK’s New Frontier, after all.
Peter S. Canellos is theGlobe’s Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weeklyanalysis of events in the capital and beyond. He can be reached at canellos@globe.com