Who we are: Suheir Hammad answers Samuel Huntington, whose controversial new book blames Latino immigration for causing an American identity crisis.

Samuel P. Huntington's new book, Who Are We? could also be called The Hispanic Panic, or Adios Amigos, or even Selena was no Marilyn. A decade after promising the Clash of Civilizations, Mr. Huntington is back, to remind us of the purity, honor and democratic foundation of the Anglo-Protestant values that he believes lie at the center (not the heart) of America's Manifest Destiny. Yes, people still think this way. Mr. Huntington's focus has shifted from "Islam's bloody borders" to the deluge of legal and illegal Mexican immigration into the northern land known as the United States of America.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The book appeared on bookstore shelves and caused a flurry of academic discussions as pictures leaked from Abu Ghraib of American troops humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war and civilians. Um ... is this the Christian honor we are supposed to hold dear? I kept reading his text, and to the reactions from his peers and foes alike, and returning to these images. And as I was figuring out how to respond to his question, the author and activist Gloria Anzaldua died. Rather than feed into Huntington's hype, I decided to remind myself of who we are by re-reading Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

"Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them." I first read Anzaldua's words as a young poet deconstructing her own internal boundaries. Anzaldua's words resonated profoundly. Yes! That's it. As a Palestinian, I knew intimately that borders, and even nations, are manufactured by those with the most influence and force. As an American, I hadn't learned the particular and bloody history of the acquisition of southwestern and Pacific Coast America (certainly not in American history classes in grade and high school or even college). I should have taken more Latin American history courses. But, wait, why wouldn't this information be part of U.S. history? Because, as Anzaldua writes ...

"The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it." Oh. Sounds familiar. Sounds recent. It sounds like Mr. Huntington hadn't read Anzaldua's work. Otherwise, his own would be informed with a parallel history to the one he and those he represents (please don't get it twisted and think it's ever about one person) believe to be the sole legitimate American narrative. "Who are we?" he asks.

We are not what you would like for us to be, us Americans. Someone broadcasted the myth that this nation was founded on the secular humanist beliefs of the French Revolution. We, immigrants, migrants and refugees alike, believed the hype. Enslaved Africans had no say. Native people had no recourse, no international court to address their grievances. Do I really need to use this space to remind Huntington to read Howard Zinn? And Anzaldua. And James Baldwin, June Jordan. Even now, Sherman Alexie and Chrystos offer insights into native cultures through fiction and poetry. Who are we? We are the strongest military power the world has ever known. We are an over-medicated nation of near sex addicts who eat too much, and what we do eat isn't of the earth. We are a nation whose wealth was built on stolen land and stolen labor. Who we are is the planet's worst nightmare, given our gas guzzling ways and indiscriminate use of water. We are a nation that watched a presidential bid get bamboozled, and then we went back to our cable-induced sleep. We are the photographs of American soldiers torturing Iraqis, as Susan Sontag wrote in the New York Times Magazine.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

All those things make up what it means to be an American, and reflect the way many in the world feel about our citizenship. What we haven't been able to project to our fellow human beings is who else we are. The descendants of the most horrific enslavement trade we have knowledge of. We are the natives who have not forsaken cultural wisdom. The immigrants who insist they can be proper citizens without having to dress like the MTV VJ's. The Muslim girls who refuse to shed their hijab, despite the stares that turn to threats that turn to violence. The mestizas who have learned to live with all the different blood lines in their veins. The poor white people who are sacrificed at the altar of capitalism, because race as a biological fact is a relatively new idea, and still not as strong a pull as that of money. We are Americans who know there is always a bloody side to any "noble story," because we have always been there to collect bodies and stories. We have simply always known white folks could not possibly be morally superior. And some of us come from the lands the Crusaders invaded. We know a different side of Christianity, a side that did not develop in Jesus' birthplace, Palestine, but in Europe. An ugly side.

So, I think I'll keep my mixed up, multicultural (this is not a bad word), bastardized, poly-religious, integrated and even miscegenated American identity, thank you anyway. And maybe someone should send a Selena mix-tape to Mr. Huntington, along with the names of the Chicano soldiers who are dying in Iraq. Dead brown bodies are declared American, while their living kin are denied basic human rights in America. And as Anzaldua wrote, "This land was Mexican once/ was Indian always/ and is./ And will be again."

Suheir Hammad is an award-winning poet who has recently written the forward to Word: On Being a (Woman) Writer, edited by Jocelyn Burrell. More information on her can be found at www.suheirhammad.com.