The Hispanic Challenge

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The Hispanic Challenge
By Samuel P. Huntington
March/April 2004
The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two
cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated
into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguisticenclaves—from Los Angeles
to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo- Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States
ignores this challenge at its peril.

America was created by 17th - and 18th - century settlers who were overwhelmingly white, British, and
Protestant. Their values, institutions, and culture provided the foundation for and shaped the development of
the United States in thefollowing centuries. They initially defined America in terms of race, ethnicity,
culture, and religion. Then, in the 18th century, they also had to define America ideologically to justify
independence from their home country, which was also white, British, and Protestant. Thomas Jefferson set
forth this “creed,” as Nobel Prize- winning economist Gunnar Myrdal called it, in the Declaration ofIndependence, and ever since, its principles have been reiterated by statesmen and espoused by the public as
an essential component of U.S. identity.
By the latter years of the 19th century, however, the ethnic component had been broadened to include
Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians, and the United States' religious identity was being redefined more broadly
from Protestant to Christian. WithWorld War II and the assimilation of large numbers of southern and
eastern European immigrants and their offspring into U.S. society, ethnicity virtually disappeared as a
defining component of national identity. So did race, following the achievements of the civil rights
movement and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Americans now see and endorse their country as
multiethnic andmultiracial. As a result, American identity is now defined in terms of culture and creed.
Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element of their national identity. The creed, however, was the
product of the distinct Anglo- Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture include
the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule oflaw, including the
responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the
work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a “city
on a hill.” Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to the United States because of this culture and
the economic opportunities andpolitical liberties it made possible.
Contributions from immigrant cultures modified and enriched the Anglo- Protestant culture of the founding
settlers. The essentials of that founding culture remained the bedrock of U.S. identity, however, at least until
the last decades of the 20th century. Would the United States be the country that it has been and that it
largely remains today if it had beensettled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants but by
French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics ? The answer is clearly no. It would not be the United States; it

would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.
In the final decades of the 20th century, however, the United States' Anglo- Protestant culture and the creed
that it produced came under assault by the popularity in intellectualand political circles of the doctrines of
multiculturalism and diversity; the rise of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender over national
identity; the impact of transnational cultural diasporas; the expanding number of immigrants with dual
nationalities and dual loyalties; and the growing salience for U.S. intellectual, business, and political elites of
cosmopolitan and...