What Tom Brokaw Got Wrong About Assimilation
During a recent appearance on Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw, the renowned television journalist, offered a number of observations about immigration that have proved intensely controversial. In the course of a panel discussion on the politics of immigration and why voters in states where immigrants are relatively rare are so deeply concerned about immigrant inflows, Brokaw attributed Republican misgivings about Latin American immigration to concerns about “the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.” Pointedly, he spoke of people who’d said to him, “Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies.”
Speaking extemporaneously is always fraught with peril; I’m sure I’ve been less than precise when doing the same thing. But Brokaw’s remarks, and the furious reaction
