The dominant social/ethnic class starts feeling very insecure when it finds itself slipping into a minority status, when its core values are questioned, and when its economic, cultural and political supremacy are threatened. It understands its time of hegemony is slipping away, and it will strike back in an effort to restore it. It needs villains and it needs scapegoats, which demagogues are always eager to provide. And it refuses to accept that these changes may be the result of their own misguided and self-serving policies. They prefer to blame it all on absurd conspiracies and sinister plots.

It happened to the redskins when the palefaces moved in, to the Mexicans of the American Southwest when the gringos took over their country, and to old California when the forty-niners arrived. It happened to the old Yankees when they started importing Eastern and Southern Europeans to work in their factories. It also happened to the Confederacy when the Union won the Civil War and to the Germans when they lost WWI. In their case, they had no invading cultures, so they had to invent them: the blacks and the Jews.

Its happening again in this country. And when you try to point out to these folks that this is just a historical process that has happened, with variations, many times before, they refuse to accept it. They refuse to accept it because they see themselves as special, exceptional and (dare I say it?) superior. They are the REAL Americans. "Those OTHER people do not belong here, in MY country."

They can't see it, but if you're one of those OTHER people, its as plain as day. And its my country too.