I'm heartened by the fact that the United States is a nation of immigrants and there just aren't any truly ethnic prejudices we can employ anymore. I mean yeah - muslims are teh terrorz and stuff but Islam is a lot more heterogeneous than, say, Hutus. Even when we try to be racist pricks we fumble it compared to lots of the world. Japanese internment was a blotch on history but I honestly believe that we simply don't have the latent capacity for racism and ultra-nationalism the way Europe and Asia do. I suspect that if we did, Trump would be acting a lot more racist than he does.
I don't know if I buy that. On the one hand, a few guys I grew up with joined the Klan and an ex girlfriend joined a National Anarchist group. We have racists as nasty as anyone's, I have known them and I have wondered "where did that come from?" On the other, we don't have parties like Golden Dawn or the British/French National Fronts that threaten to win or actually win elections, so either they're more marginal or the two-party system does some good along with the bad. But I wonder if they'll stay marginal if we have Trump being an openly racist presidential candidate.Even when we try to be racist pricks we fumble it compared to lots of the world.