Posted by:
Tevai
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Date: March 24, 2019 03:40PM
I have been on both sides of this (both regionally, and in different countries).
Worldwide (more or less), it depends on who the [relatively] "power"/controlling/resource-rich/"connected" group is.
If you (presumably: a white American male) move to Hong Kong or Congo or Mongolia to start a new business and a new life, you're likely to not only be personally lonely, but immensely cut off from important practical knowledge of "the way things are done [here]," and how to work through things you don't understand, or perhaps don't even know exist (even though, if you don't do it "as it is done," the results can be draconian both financially as well as legally).
Having a local or a regional "Friends of America" group of some kind available is IMMENSELY helpful: people who literally "speak YOUR language," laugh at the same things YOU laugh at, understand the same things you do, and aren't going to faint with disbelieving disgust if you point at them with your left hand or show the sole of your foot as you sit.
Groups like these aren't just social groups, they are instructional groups. (I am thinking of the unknown-to-me American woman in the hotel elevator when I was in Bogota who pointed to my ears (I had small, cheap, K-Mart hoops in my pierced ears) and literally ORDERED me: "Get those out of your ears right now!!!!" [She was right. She saved me from very possibly getting torn ears as a thief, running in the opposite direction, grabbed for my earrings on the possibility that they MIGHT be worth "something."]
When in a culture which is foreign to you, being able to "ask an American" is invaluable.
The same is true in reverse. There is a reason why there are groups for different kinds of Asians, or Slavs, or Europeans, or Pacific Islanders in the United States.
In this country, there used to be similar groups for white people (probably our literal blood ancestors), depending on whether they were Irish, or Scots-Irish, or Scots or Welsh, or other kinds of Europeans (Catholics OR Protestants, Italians or Germans or Poles or Ukranians). There are only remnants of these left now, because there is no longer any real need for them.
The power balance from the original WASPs shifted long ago. JFK *was* elected President of the United States of America, and there is no more "in" position to be attained in the USA than the US presidency, and no one cares anymore if you are Irish by blood, or if your ancestors came from "this" or "that" area of the British Isles--though once upon a time in our post-1492 history, this was an identity which either enabled, or limited, everyone's individual potentials in major, and lifetime, ways.
The answer to your question is more encompassing than racism, though racism can play a major part in it.
It is also not a specifically American problem. I am thinking about Israel here, and how Jews worldwide (of all races, including extremely black Africans, Indians from the subcontinent, and Chinese from China, Sephardim and Mizrachim and Ashkenazim) are in the process of creating a fully-integrated nation--and how GREAT it is to be able to find a born/raised American who you can ask, in colloquial American English, how to pay your utilities bill--and you can actually fully understand their answer!
The reason why it would not be acceptable to have a "white American" Chamber of Commerce, as you describe it, is that there is no reason: white Americans ARE, in the most important ways, the power structure of this country, and a specifically "white" group like this would be highlighting race in a society where our national goal is to highlight our shared American (multi-racial and multi-ethnic) identity.
But there are still plenty of reasons for Jamaican-Americans, or Nepalese-Americans, or Philippine-Americans, or Iranian-Americans to have their own organizations, and this will last until (exactly as happened with our Irish ancestors) they are fully "melted" into the American melting pot and become, simply, generic "Americans" like everyone else.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 08:07PM by Tevai.