Samuel Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington is a political scientist known for his book The Clash of Civilizations and his controversial work on Latino immigration to the United States in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. Huntington argues that the increase of Latino immigrants to the United States of America, primarily concentrated in the American Southwest, poses a future problem. He points to the increase of isolated cultural and linguistic Latino enclaves in major metropolises such as Los Angeles and Miami as indicative of a future trend towards bilingualism and the erosion of Anglo-Protestant values in the United States, values that are the core of the American cultural ethos. Although these values are readily identified with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans (WASPs), Huntington states that these values are not limited solely to this racial group, but rather are capable of being dispersed throughout all racial groups in the United States. Huntington sees the mass refusal of linguistic and cultural assimilation among Latino-Americans (one out of many so-called hyphenated groups in the United States) leading to a culturally bifurcated Anglo-Hispanic society with two national languages, even going so far as to state that parts of the United States may agitate for secession or being ceded back to Mexico.

References

Huntington, Samuel P. “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy (2004): 30-45.