Many years ago, I read an interview in which the now-disgraced Assembly Speaker, Scott Jensen, gave advice for those aspiring to politics. He said that one of the most important advantages for a politician was to be a third generation Wisconsin resident. He spoke both practically and approvingly: what he felt was necessary, and what he believed was right and proper. (Whatever he felt and believed, it did not keep him from abuse of his office, betrayal of the public trust, and a criminal conviction.)
Jensen was wrong to believe that long-term family history was right and proper for a politician. We have that advantage, but what does it say to our Mexican neighbors? Even if citizens, it says that they should wait nearly a century before playing a political role in our community. The three generations are of no advantage, because we have been here for that long, and still we have made a mess of the city. When Jensen — and those among us like him — asks others to wait, they really ask to be able to continue to make a mess of things for another hundred years.
I did not realize, in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, that we were to be a people of hereditary succession, of ethnic entitlement. There has never been an hereditary elite that did not decline with each generation, and grow duller and more dissipated with each link in the family chain.
Look around: we are no exception. We insist on principal honor for ourselves, and bend rules to award ourselves the best prizes, while the community deteriorates.
(Go to a school program, and see that some of the best awards go to the academically-mediocre children of our long-standing townspeople, and ask yourself whether their parents really believe their children worthy. Why do they? Is it because the parents delude themselves into believing that their children are talented because they’re prize-winners, or because they don’t care about talent, but expect being an entrenched townsperson’s child is worthiness enough?)
Many Mexican-Americans live here, and our economy would collapse without them. (There are some of us who think we’d be fine following their departure, but I will address that error in another post. For now, a brief reply: those who believe that our city could prosper without its Mexican-American workforce are either ignorant or self-deluded.) All Whitewater depends on their labor, but many in Whitewater also resent their presence.
When we take the best for ourselves, to the imperious exclusion of others, we take from an ever staler, ever smaller pie.