Ethnic Nationalism vs. Civic Nationalism

Virginia Tech Candlelight Vigil

(Image from Wikipedia)

Kyonggi University professor Kim Gi-bong has written a generally insightful article, "Bright, dark sides of civic nationalism in the U.S.," published in yesterday's Korea Herald (May 7, 2007).

Kim begins by observing that "[t]he way Americans responded to the massacre perpetrated at Virginia Tech on April 16 was quite different from the way average Koreans did." As did the rest of us observing the differing reactions, Kim notes that Koreans not only "focused on the fact that the murderer was a Korean" and felt sorrow for Americans, they even felt "a collective sense of shame and guilt." Moreover, says Kim, in their reflections on the killings, Koreans hope that Americans will "put it behind them as soon as possible."

By contrast, Kim points out, Americans regarded the shootings "as a social problem unique to them," i.e., as the expression of a systemic problem in a society that allowed someone so deeply disturbed as Seung-hui Cho "to buy a weapon with no difficulty." Although Koreans would like for Americans to put the shootings behind them, "Americans show an attitude of wishing to have it serve as an occasion to remedy the structural problems of their society by remembering it."

Moreover, one way in which Americans chose to remember the shootings was most surprising of all to Koreans:

[Americans] put a total of 33 memorial granite stones, including one for the murderer, in an oval shape on the center lawn of the Virginia Tech campus. Later, the stone for the murderer was taken away, but letters forgiving what he did and showing compassion for what he suffered were placed where his stone was. The university held a memorial service one week after the case. The bell was tolled 33 times and 33 white balloons were sent into the sky. They appeared to remember the murderer as a victim.

"How," Kim asks concerning the American response, "do they have such a mature sense of citizenship?"

Kim gives some reasonable suggestions for this fact. American society, he argues, "came to have its unique civic nationalism in the form of a secularized political religion as a result of combination of Christian love and forgiveness mixed with patriotism." Combined with this are some Enlightenment principles (though Kim doesn't identify them as such) that stem from the foundational period of the American republic:

As the phrase E pluribus unum ("one from many") included in the Great Seal of the United States shows, it is a community comprised of immigrants from all over the world. The [American] people's greatness lies in the attitude recognizing even such a murderer as Cho Seung-hui as part of them. The source of such greatness is their willingness to keep universal values of humans, such as life, liberty and happiness.

Although Kim doesn't use the expression "ethnic nationalism," that is the sort of nationalist response that Koreans were expecting because it characterizes Korean nationalism. But Americans are not a people of a single ethnicity. Americans' "civic nationalism" surprised and mystified Koreans because that was not how they would have reacted.

Kim, however, finds a limit to American civic nationalism, a "dark side" that can be seen by contrasting the response to Cho's shootings with the response to the 9/11 terror:

At the time of 9/11, Americans did not regard the terrorists as victims because the terrorists were not part of their society. The limitation that the American civic nationalism has is that only American compatriots are eligible for their love and forgiveness.

This different response, Kim suggests, should lead "Americans to have self-reflection concerning their mental barriers with regard to nationalism."

On this point, I think that Kim is mistaken. The 9/11 terror was an unprovoked act of war and thus elicited a response according to the logic of war. Since the terrorists had lived among Americans, all the while plotting the horrifying attack, Americans were first and foremost fearful about the possibility of further attacks by an Islamist enemy. That fear, I think, accounts for the great anger toward Muslims in the wake of 9/11. Yet even so, hostile acts toward individual Muslims were rare and always roundly condemned by most Americans.

Be that as it may, Kim offers a 'solution' to the 'limits' of America's civic nationalism:

[T]o have the "soft power" with which they can spread ... universal values throughout the world, ... Americans should form a salad dish that contains multi-ethnic peoples and cultures as they are, rather than a melting pot mixing them into one. That must be the manifest destiny given to Americans in the era of globalization.

I'm not sure of precisely what Kim is suggesting here, but if he's thinking in terms of a radical multiculturalism, then his suggestion, if acted upon, would have precisely the opposite effect than what he expects. Americans do already accept multiethnicity and even a degree of cultural variety within America. Call it moderate multiculturalism. A radical multiculturalism, however, would lead to a fragmented America in which a multitude of ethnic nationalisms would compete. Imagine, in that case, a very different 'American' response to the Cho shootings.

Moreover, it is not correct -- as Kim claims -- that for Americans, "only American compatriots are eligible for their love and forgiveness."

After all, Americans did forgive the Japanese.