08:31 AM EST on Tuesday, March 30, 2004

HOW UNFORTUNATE it is to have Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard professor, betray his lofty academic credentials to espouse his personal biases, using facts contrary to evidence, suppositions used by white supremacists and fictionalizing historical accounts.

As The Miami Herald put it, "Racists in America must be having a field day. At long last they have found a world-renowned intellectual to rationalize their resentment against America's rapidly growing Hispanic community."

Huntington gained attention in 1993 with the essay "The Clash of Civilizations," in which -- after the demise of communism in the old Soviet bloc -- he identified Islam as the potential force for future conflict, based on cultural differences. He followed that essay in 1996 with a book with the same name but of limited interest.

Five years later, after Sept. 11, 2001, the book was revived and became a best-seller.

As a prelude to his newest book (scheduled for May), Huntington wrote another essay, published in the March-April issue of Foreign Policy: "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity." Here he identifies the enemy, not of the world but of the United States, as Mexican immigrants and their subsequent U.S.-born generations.

He asserts that Mexicans and other Latinos:

Reject the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream.

Have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves.

Refuse to surrender their ancestral language in the way that historically other immigrant groups have done.

Are making a reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwestern United States.

Huntington discloses the cause of his bias against Mexican-Americans with these words: "Mexican-Americans no longer think of themselves as members of a small minority who must accommodate the dominant group and adopt its culture." In other words, we Mexican-Americans are no longer subservient; our people are proud to acknowledge their ancestral heritage and are either relearning Spanish or freely using it as their second language.

According to Huntington, the Anglo-Protestant culture's key elements include the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, the work ethic, dissenting-Protestant values of individualism, and the belief that humans have the ability and duty to try to create a heaven on earth. So he sees Mexican-Americans as 'culturally inferior' and the speaking of Spanish as a "language disability."

According to Huntington, Anglo-Protestants created the United States, then let others come in. Proviso: Forget your personal ancestral history, surrender your culture and language, and adopt the Anglo-Protestant culture. Ignoring historical facts and contributions from different groups, Huntington seems to believe that this was done smoothly, without internal conflict.

He ignores that in those early days German competed with English as the national language. English won, and German (and other foreign languages) was forbidden to be taught -- defying teachers went to jail.

He asserts that Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, German, Russian and other immigrants adapted to their new surroundings by quickly assimilating, and (get this) did not live in ethnic enclaves. He also supposes that blacks joined the mainstream with the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, and that harmony reigns.

Yet Latinos, he says, refuse to adapt. And they refuse to be educated, to stop using Spanish, or to abandon their culture. They live in enclaves; just look at what the Cubans have done to Miami!

In 1999 James Crawford wrote, in Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice, "Contrary to myth, immigrant children were more likely to sink than swim in English-language classrooms. In 1908, just 13 percent of such students who were enrolled in New York City schools at age 12 went on to high school, as compared with 32 percent of white children whose parents were native born."

Huntington does not consider that, like the European immigrants, the Mexican immigrants are proceeding through the same path in language and educational acquisition. The newcomer adults suffer the consequences of non-English and limited education opportunity; the second generation improves; and subsequent generations continue to improve.

In Huntington's own words, "Just 11.6 percent spoke only Spanish or more Spanish than English, 25.6 percent spoke both languages equally, 32.7 percent more English than Spanish, and 30.1 percent only English. In the same study, more than 90 percent of the U.S.-born people of Mexican origin spoke English fluently. Nonetheless, in 1999, some 753,505 presumably second-generation students in Southern California schools who spoke Spanish at home were not proficient in English."

He does not consider the failure of the educational system. Rather, he places the blame on the students.

He contradicts his premises, showing that in a study of U.S.-born second-generation Mexican-Americans, 11.6 percent spoke only Spanish or more Spanish than English; 25.6 percent spoke both languages equally; and 62.8 percent spoke more English than Spanish or only English. Another study Huntington points out indicates that more than 90 percent of Mexican-Americans spoke English fluently.

Mr. Huntington, the bogeyman under your bed is not Mexican. It's your own mind.

Patrick Osio Jr. is editor of www.HispanicVista.com. Readers may send him e-mail at posiojraol.com.