Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #226: The dual national dilemma with political scientist José Marichal

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Marichal, a Cuban-American professor of political science at California Lutheran University, joins to talk about recognition, mis-recognition, identity, and some of the deeper themes underneath the Mexican-American dual national's choice about which national soccer team to play for. No hard conclusions drawn, just some new (for me, Belz) ways to think about the issue.Reading list:David Ochoa’s path to Mexico:https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/david-ochoa-mexico-national-team-soccerAraujo QA with the Athletic: https://theathletic.com/2869439/2021/10/05/qa-julian-araujo-on-why-he-chose-to-represent-mexico-instead-of-the-usmnt/Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”:https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1417/Taylor%252C%2520Politics%2520of%2520Recognition.pdfNationalism paper:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327129541_NationalismThe Hispanic Challenge, Samuel Huntingtonhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/28/the-hispanic-challenge/Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriotism”http://www.ling.uqam.ca/atonet/soc8245/Appiah.%20Cosmopolitanism%20compatriots.pdfsupport Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedjoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XU buy our merch: https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/drop us a question at this link and we’ll try to answer it: https://forms.gle/vEatDVE6wsMzekep8 Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velasquez in Iowa. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Today we're going to take a look at the dual national dilemma from a different angle. I've got a political scientist, Jose Marischal, joining me. He teaches at California Lutheran University and he studies social media, how it affects the discourse, how the discourse affects the formation of political identity and even human identity. He is the author of the book, Facebook Democracy, published in 2000. And he's on the case when it comes to understanding the ways big tech is really changing our lives. But he's also a soccer fan. And he's Cuban-American. And he's given a lot of thought to dual nationalism, which is obviously a subject of interest for this podcast. Jose, thank you for being here. Yeah, no, it's my pleasure.

Thank you. First of all, I guess I should just ask you this. How are you feeling about the U.S. men's national team right now? I'm feeling okay, right? You know, sometimes you go on Twitter and, you know, you just sort of soak in the collective angst about, we lost to, you know, we lost to Panama or we tied Jamaica. You know, yeah, that's true, right? It's because of the talent that we have that I think people get so upset. But you got to realize we're like doing this with like an under 23 team, you know?

In some instances, it's like an under 20 team. So there's going to be growing pains. And to be in a good position with such a young team is not bad, especially like considering. the way it was four years ago. Yeah, it's good to get that step back view for me because I'm so, I can get pretty deep in the weeds. And, yeah, that's true. What you say is all true.

I mean, not that it's not totally frustrating. Like, sometimes, like, why did Greerhalter call this guy and not this guy in? Or, you know, certainly things you get upset about. Yeah, the 23rd and 24th spots in the roster are where the most of the energy is, I think, with the upsetness. So to the topic at hand, let me just try to set the stage a little bit from a soccer point of view. Many of the most talented young male soccer players in this country are Mexican-American. The youth national teams reflect this, but the senior men's national team, with a couple exceptions, does not.

And in recent months, two born and raised Americans, David Ochoa and Juliana Raho both chose to play for the Mexico national team. That was after several years of playing for the USA on youth national teams and even getting some senior team call-ups. On the other hand, we have Ricardo Pepe, of course, the 18-year-old striker from El Paso, who chose the USA and is the de facto starting number nine. So that's good. But we are going to have to get used to this dilemma for a while, aren't we? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, I mean, first I have to, like, acknowledge that, that when I'm thinking about this stuff,

it's really more like, I can't leave my day job as a political scientist, right? when I'm doing when I'm engaging my fandom. And so, and so for some people, I might be like, don't mess up my, my, my support by interjecting politics

and two of the head of theories into it. Because everybody's individual. And every, every individual, I don't know, who in a Rojo, I don't know, David Ochoa.

I don't, I mean, I read, just like you did, what he wrote in Pals, tribune, which is a really thoughtful, a thoughtful article.

Um, but it's really me trying to work through, like, why, why was I so bothered? Why, why was I so, bother when like she know especially Julian Arajo and he made that decision why did it bother me not because

of him because I mean he's got to do you know all love to him he's got to do but but why did it sort of affect me and really like in a way that like when I went on social media people didn't seem to have the same reaction that I had and so part of like you know maybe what got this conversation go between you and me is me trying to think through like why why is this bothersome to me yeah tell me how your reaction differed from the reaction you saw on social media or whatever. Well, if you looked on social media, right, people were, and I think this is a testament to, like, maybe like the U.S. soccer or Twitter fandom, but there wasn't a lot of, like, anger, right?

There was, there was, the way it would be rationalized to be like, oh, this is just like a, this is just like a rational decision. He's not going to get playing time for us, so he'll go, you know, he'll get better, more playing time there. That's why he's doing it, right? It was kind of like around this, like, instrumentality, this idea that, like, Like, well, the player is picking which national team they want to play for based on which do they have a better chance to play for Team X over Team Y, right? Which definitely explains a whole lot of national team decisions.

I mean, if you remember back to the Klinsman era, right, like all the Germanians, right? Like Philian Johnson and Chandler and Germain Jones, come out, and almost all of those cases, those guys were picking the United States because they weren't going to get anywhere near the German national team. Right. Right. Right. So, so I think it was overwhelmingly, and it was surprising to me, it's like there wasn't more of this like, there wasn't the sort of the consternation that I had about, oh man, what does this mean for like American national community? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I have a scientist. I have the same, I mean, I'm not a political scientist, but I have the same thought a lot of times when I, when I see that. I want it to be, I want America to live up to its ideals, and I want that to be reflected in the national team.

And when players who grew up here choose to play for Mexico, even though there's all kinds of good reasons for it, it's still, it bugs me a little bit. It does. And I mean, I can certainly understand. I mean, like, one of the, you know, joys of speaking fluent Spanish is being able to go over to, like, Jorge Ramos or Vaso deo after, like, Mexico loses a game, or even wins a game. And just listen, it's all. soccer all the time, right? It's everything. Like, if you listen to like Spanish language,

you know, ESPN, that's all they talk about. Maybe like they throw boxing in like an hour and a half into the end of the radio show for like five minutes. But it's all football. It's all Mexican national team. It's all it's all legal Mekis, right? It's everything. And so I could imagine if I was a kid, you know, on the borderlands, dual national, you know, I have a Mexican identity, I have an American identity, that there would be a lot of family. family bowl, right? Because for that side of me, it's everything. In the United States, it's like, yeah, it's, you know, we got football, we got basketball, we got baby, we got everything. This is, for me, right for like sports, sports industry in this country, it's incidental. It's nothing, right?

It's, yeah. So I get that. I mean, I understand that, but I, but like you, I still have this like, oh, man, you know, what does it mean for the political community that I want to be in? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about those documents. the Players Tribune article from Ochoa and then ARAO, particularly ARAHO's interview with Felipe Cardenas from the athletic. What struck you from those pieces? Anything? Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I mean, I think reading David Ochoa's piece is kind of the thing that got my head, you know, going through some of the stuff. Because one of the things he says in that article that was like really, and I'll try to paraphrase it, or something along the lines of like, no matter how hard I try, I'll never feel fully American. And, you know, it's like, well, whoa, okay. Why would, why would you never feel fully American? And individuals can, you know, I mean, this could be an individual decision. When you read his article, it certainly seems like a lot of it was like a young guy kind of struggling with, you know, he said he's struggling with depression and kind of struggling with identity like we all

do, right? So I don't want to blow this up into like some big, like, whatever he decides has some large significance about all people in his situation. But it does get you thinking, like, well, why doesn't he feel fully American? What is it about his experience and how much of his experience is about him and how much of it is about some larger collective issue that we need to look at or address? Yeah, because he says right after that, nor will I ever be fully Mexican. So it's about where I feel more comfortable. But it's understandable that he wouldn't feel fully Mexican.

He was born and raised in the United States. Yeah, yeah. It's the fact that he doesn't feel, he's. thinks he will never feel fully American that is yeah for me at least like wait why it opens up that question right of like well who is fully American and what does it mean to be fully American and the minute you start asking that question this is my jam right this is like you know multiculturalism citizenship theory I'm like oh boy here we go right so so yeah I'm sure thinking about okay well what are what are different conceptions of citizenship one conception of citizenship is ethno-national

And a lot of most of the world have an ethno-national sense of identity, right? I mean, if you're French, there's a very specific, clear sense of what it means to be French, and it is rooted in peoplehood, right? In a voc, right, a people that are tied by shared traditions, ancestry. The United States is in some ways supposed to be a reaction to that. It's a reaction, again, sort of tradition, and it's rooted in sort of this idea of being of a creedal nationalism, that it's a nationalism around a set of beliefs, a civic nationalism, you know, rule of law, hard work, right?

You know, individualism, the sort of the fundamental rights of the individual and the belief that, you know, like Kat said, a human being is an end and not a means, right? So they're an end in themselves. And so that idea, like every, you don't have to, it doesn't know what ethnicity you are. As long as you believe in this, like you, it's up to you, kind of determine yourself and through your effort and your hard work, you can sort of build a life of meaning is something that binds Americans together across ethnicities. Not that America is a perfect, you know, exemplar of that, or not that America always lives up to that, but that's,

that sort of the imagined American ideal, right? It doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter where you're from, that's, you know, that you can become American, right? Yeah. That's the idea on the right. Does ethno-nationalism kind of creep in to America, American life in a, you know, and obviously in a very, it'll be very damaging to the extent that it does. But like, is it there?

Is that what he's thinking about? I mean, I don't know what he's thinking about, right? I mean, I don't want to presume to know what he's thinking. But obviously, like, you know, we're always intention. Right? Because there's always, it's a big country, little 300 plus more than people in this country. So you're going to have a lot of different opinions. And of course, there are elements that do see the country more in these ethno-nationalist terms. I don't think that's a majority. I think it's a minority perspective. But, you know, it's more subtle, right? So when somebody says they don't feel American, you know, he's talking about he grew up in Oxnard. I'm very close to Oxnard.

I've been to Oxnard a lot. So it's a farm worker. There's a lot of farm workers in that community. It's a very sort of first generation. I mean, there's a lot of people who've been to multiple generations, but it's, you know, sort of a new immigrant population. And I can relate to that. I grew up in a community that was very first generation. and everybody spoke Spanish.

So it could be just part of that, right? I mean, if you grow up in a community where everybody's speaking English, you might have a completely different experience. So that might be particular to him, that he grew up in a particular neighborhood where everything was Spanish, everyone spoke Spanish, the football was all about Mexico, Li I'makis or Mexican national team. So I can completely understand that.

Well, let me jump to that foreign policy magazine. piece that you sent me. It was from 2009. I think it was Samuel Huntington who wrote it. And I mean, that's not that long ago, really. It's actually 2004 that he wrote it. I think I'm out of a reprint. It's by famous political scientists. This guy, Samuel Huntington, he was at Harvard. It's a brilliant political scientist, but he wrote a book that was kind of influential back in the 90s called The Clash of Civilizations. And the idea was like, you know, that the West, the United States has a particular culture that is rooted in, you know, Protestant work ethic, rule of law, city on a, you know, wind-foot city on a hill, all these these sort of notions of like a deep commitment to religiosity that is that is filtered through capitalism and hard work and industry.

And that that culture, that is a distinct culture and that it is under threat by other cultures. Right? Like the, like Islam. In his book, he's talking about Islam. And so then he writes a book, I mean, today's, from today's perspective, it's deeply offensive, I understand, right? Yeah. But from today's vantage, but like then a few years later, he writes about Mexico. And he says, well, you know, this immigration does a Hispanic challenge because you have, you know, all these people coming in from a country whose, whose culture is very different and they're incommensurate. They're not compatible. They won't be able to mix and clash with one another. Right. You know, I teach, I use it because it's kind of a good punching bag, right? Because the reality is that, you know, there's culture, people, culture's not fixed, right? I, I, my parents are from Cuba. That's a very distinct culture. People evolve and people adapt parts of the culture that they find, the culture that they inherit that they find useful, and they leap behind parts of the culture that, of their parents,

that they don't find useful. So I think Huntington gets, in my opinion, I think, Huntington gets this idea wrong because he thinks cultures are fixed, that you can't somehow transcend, right? But it does serve as kind of the backdrop for this sense of like, America is this and this is a long-standing question. If you ever go into the United States, how much of the culture that you come from do you have to leave behind and how much do you have to adopt the values of the new culture that you inherit and what are those values, right? Right. Yeah, I guess it's, it just struck me, you know, if we're talking about like, and this is all speculative,

but if we're talking about like David Ochoa reacting to something that he perceives in American culture that doesn't view him as fully American, you know, which seems like it's in play. That Huntington piece is a good example of what he might be perceiving, you know, from a, from like a top flight political scientist at like the best university in America. America saying this less than 20 years ago about how, you know, like Mexican immigrants aren't ever going to be compatible with the United States of America that I didn't realize that I had never seen that piece before he sent it to me. But that does seem like, you know, if that was like so much of something acceptable to say just 17 years ago. Yeah.

You know, how much of that sort of persists in our country, that idea. And is that that that, like, part of what he's reacting to, you know? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I mean, you know, nationalism is a sort of a fraught term, right? It's a fraught concept because for a lot of people, it gets wrapped up with this idea of exclusion. Like, I'm going to define my sense of what it, of my nation based on these virtues and these attributes, some of which are descriptive, some of which, like, people can't change.

I'm going to say, this is what it means to be an American and you're not it and you're not, you're not welcome. And so people, you know, kind of rightly recoil from that notion of nationalism. But on another level, nationalism is important to people because it gives people a meaning. It gives people a purpose. It gives people this identity that is valuable. And so when you start talking about nationalism, you're really getting into some people's core senses of who they are. Right. And who they are is defined by who they think their name.

nation is. So, you know, when you, you know, when I'm thinking about like different people and how they react to that, it's like if, if there is a collective definition that some people have about what nation is and it means a lot to them and they want to defend it. So it might mean like speaking English and acting a certain way and looking a certain way and eating certain foods or whatever. Yeah, then I could see my, where people might say, yeah, I don't see myself in that. And if nobody ever has to say it to them directly. Right. They're like, well, I don't see myself in that, then this identity isn't for me, right? I have to sort of adopt, or it's only partially for me, right? Yeah. But nationalism is like contested. It's not that

there is a, an Americanist. There isn't a way to be American. There's an A sense of America. There's all throughout the whole history of the American system, there, there's a contest between like, what does America mean, right? What does it mean to be America, right? Is it completely inclusive or is it no? It's really based on these sort of European, you know, Anglo-European concepts and you draw a really bright line around what what Americanness looks like and what Americanness is, right? And so it's a, that contest is kind of what, you know, drew me to thinking about this question in terms of like, yeah, when I, when I follow a national team, like, why does anybody follow a national team, right?

It's one of the rare opportunities that we get to be in the national community with each other in sort of a transcendent way in which we get to experience immense joy or immense suffering. I always think of like, do you remember when Landon Donovan scored against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup? Oh, yeah, of course. And there was a video. Somebody put a video on YouTube of all the bars all over the country at the moment that he scored, right?

Oh, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, I was like, you know, five minutes of like elation. I remember I was in like a bar in Manhattan and it was like amazing. You're just like high-fiving perfect strangers and we do this in sport, but there's nothing like, I think there's something deeper about doing it at a national level, doing it on something that's, that you're not just connected to the Lakers or to the Yankees, which is a high level. It's a lot of the same transcendence, but it's not connected to nation.

in a way that U.S. soccer is, or, you know, world, world soccer. It's this what makes world soccer unique. There's nothing like it. Maybe the Olympics, but even the Olympics is rare and about individuals. It's not about a collective team that is representing the nation every four years, and everybody sort of, it's one place where people developed a sense of collective identity. We're a we, right, for that, for those two hours, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was, I should say that singing the national anthem in Cincinnati, which was like a robust congregational voice was was really, really wonderful. It was quite an experience.

And for a lot of people, it's like a safe place to be nationalistic. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's like, you know, you may not want it. Like for some people, it's like, it's like nationalism is so core of their identity that they're, that they'll, they have a giant flag in their front yard, right? but for other people, like, they don't want to signal, they don't want to signal that some people feel like nationalism is about exclusion.

So I don't want to signal that exclusion. So there's a lot of people who kind of walk around not being nationalistic because it communicates, right, different things and different people. But this is a really safe price to like, yeah, you know, go go nation, go country, right? Yeah. Yeah. But then that gets you to like, okay, well, who, it, If that's true, then what is it that I'm getting all jazzed up about?

What is my political community? Who's in my political community? Who's a member of the political community? And if I looked at it this way. Well, okay, if David Ochoa says, it goes of Mexico, if Juliana Rahal goes of Mexico, if puppy had gone to Mexico, if Jonathan Gomez goes of Mexico, if like, if two people, you know, one person is their choice.

Two people is like, okay, maybe something's happening. Five, six, seven, eight. Now you got to, now something's going on here. Right. Right. And it would be, then it would be like, oh, man. Right. I don't know that I don't know that I would feel as, it wouldn't be as a lading. It wouldn't feel as awesome to be part of a national team where lots of people didn't feel lots of Americans, even if they're Mexican Americans, lots of Americans didn't feel that sense of connection.

Exactly. Enough of a connection to a country. Yeah. It would diminish for me. That's just me. I don't want to do. I don't, I'm not going to be as excited to do the nationalism if like, if, you know, 90% of the Mexican American players choose to play for Mexico. It's just not going to feel the same. I'm just repeating what you said, but I really agree with that. And it's conceivable. Like I always, you know, you've got to be careful with your thinking here. It could very well be. It could be the environment that's created among the international team, right?

Or it could be other things. It could be that, you know, Hulina Raha really wants to honor his parents. And his parents are huge Mexico fans. And so, or Jonathan Gomez wants to do that. Or when Jonathan Gonzalez did that. Jonathan Gonzalez, yeah. Lovely kid. And his parents seem like lovely.

people. Yeah. Right. I mean, like, I can, I, I have no ill will at all, right? At all. I mean, like, if this is, I get it, right? Like, I mean, if my, if I were from a country where Mexico where soccer was everything and my parents were huge fans, I'd want to, I could see that, right?

I mean, I could still be American and, and, and, but play for the team. But it's, yeah, but then there's this part of me that's like, oh, man. But, yeah, I want a national team that looks like what I think, America is. Yeah. Totally. At its best. On a good day.

Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, Ricardo, Ricardo Peppie's choice, that's why his choice is just so, oh, I'm so grateful for that because it does, at least it makes it so that it's not three in a row,

you know? And, yeah, yeah. He plays a high profile position, too, so that I think that helps a lot as well. And he's good. Yeah, that helps too. I mean, you know, so much pressure to put an 18-year-old kid, right?

I'm a little worried about that, but, but, um, three goals and three assists in 400 minutes. Not too, not too shabby. Not bad at all. Not bad at all. Yeah. And I mean, again, a lot of this is in my head because these young guys, these are young guys. And they may be making, they're making decisions that are good for them and that are important for them. And look, I don't, I don't want to discount the possibility because, you know, I don't want to be naive and say,

a lot of times maybe people choose national teams because their agent says, hey, you know, you're going to get more playing time or you're going to get more, your better chances to move to Europe if you go here. You know, there's always, there are instrumental reasons. So there could be a million reasons that have nothing to do with nationalism. But from my own bias and my own head as a child of immigrants, it does sort of bring me joy, a higher level of joy to see a more diverse, pluralistic national team of people from different parts of world because that's what I think America is. And so if you suit up a bunch of guys who are like, you know, from different parts of the world,

a different experience, you know, different ancestry, different parts of the world, different experiences and they're coming together around this idea of what America is, then, yeah, then it certainly makes it more fun, right? It feels like that's something the entire nation could really get behind in a way that's powerful. Yeah. But maybe I'm idealistic about it. No, I mean, I don't want to, obviously, there's a danger of kind of overselling.

It's like, well, just because you get a couple guys, just because you get a diverse team doesn't mean that there isn't racism, inequality. There isn't, there aren't larger structural issues that the society needs to deal with an address. Of course, yeah. Those don't go away. And so just because a national team doesn't make those things go away, but it does, it's symbolic. It sounds like a symbol to people. about how like, well, look, here's a, here's a, here's a, here's a thing you can get behind it, represent a certain kind of America or a certain perspective on America that, that really

welcomes pluralism and different and diversity. And it's, and that's something that I think most people, regardless of your politics, most people get behind on the right or the left. Yeah. Very, I would think a very small percentage are not behind that idea. They might not even be soccer fans. I'm not sure. Yeah, they're probably not. I mean, there's a whole other thing about how, like, why do people become soccer fans? I mean, some of it is about the aesthetics of the game.

But some of it is about, especially if you got into it when I got into it, there's like an indie. It was like liking REM in 1980 version, but, you know, quality to it, you know, when I got into it. And even now, it's like, it's sort of like, it's sort of like an indie thing. it's sort of like an alt. It's alt sports a little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

Alt sports in the U.S., but, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean in the U.S., yeah. Right. Well, let's talk about the concept of recognition because that's what got this whole conversation started. I saw you tweeting about Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher. Yeah. And I wonder, maybe you could explain to us what the, you know,

the concept of recognition is as he describes it. And then what do you think this has to do with? this whole other conversation what happened. Sure. Sure, sure. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, Charles Taylor is phenomenal philosopher. He's kind of a, he's kind of doing a sort of a genealogy of like identity over

history. Yeah. And not to get, I'm not trying to get too involved with this, but what he's kind of trying to say, he's trying to critique modernity. And he's kind of trying to critique especially modernity in the West, kind of this individualistic, society in which people try to seek out an authentic self. They try to seek out and try to live based on who they personally think they should be.

And he says, well, beforehand, before modernity, before the Enlightenment, people didn't really think of themselves as kind of these individuated selves that had to figure out, who am I, what is my purpose in life? Those were already handed to you, right, beforehand. You lived in a world that was sort of God-centered and roles. centered, you know, like you were either a serf or a lord, right? And modernity, the enlightenment kind of opens that up. It says no individuals can self-governed, they can find identity for themselves. And so he says, he deeply takes deep issue with this idea that we

can on our own find an authentic self. And he says it's because identity is dialogic. And what that means is that like we figure out who we are by being in relationship with each other. Right. Yeah. So in modern society, the way that we identify who am I is by partly or a large part. I mean, Charlie would say in very large part by looking around and saying, what do other people say I am? Right. Even if we believe, oh, no, I'm an authentic self and I do what I want.

I want to care what people think. He takes deep issue with that. He's like, well, we can't escape that sense that our identity has to be in relation to something in relation to others around us. Right. And so if that's the case, right, then he says, one of the things that liberals, liberalism, not Nancy Pelosi liberal, but classical John Locke, liberalism. What liberalism misses is that in societies, we're not all equal.

I mean, we're procedural, we're legally equal, but we're not all equal because we're not all recognized in the same way. Right. Right. Certain people are misrecognized in society. They're not seen for their totality. And what does that mean to be seen for your totality? It means that the society around you recognizes your culture is valuable. It recognizes your history, your people, your, your, the whole totality of yourselfhood

recognizes you as a valuable person with dignity. He says that the transition from premodom to modern society is one that from honor to dignity. So a pre-modern society is one in which what really, you don't really have a meaning of your own individual, of life, you have a role, and to play out your role honorably is the purpose of life. In modern society, you don't have the same honor because you get to determine for yourself. You're an independent end in and of yourself trying to figure out your meaning of life. What matters there is dignity. Do the people around you?

Do you have personal dignity and do the people around you signal that you are a person who deserves dignity? So if you live in a society where you're not seen or you're seen incorrectly, people see you as, you know, deficient or at risk or less than or not quite, you know, measuring up to the societal standard, Taylor rightly says that creates harm, that creates pain, that creates suffering, right? Yeah. Again, I don't know, you know, the experience of any, you know, dual national player, I don't like, but, but, you know, there is. this sense in which, like, well, maybe you may feel that you're from a community that's not seen by the larger society. So you don't feel connected to the larger society. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I'm actually a little comfortable even trying to attach that to people who I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, no, we can't. That's the idea. That's Taylor's idea,

that we're always in relation. We're always dialogic. And I mean, he's coming into perspective of a very deeply Catholic guy who thinks, you know, we've lost something by sort of becoming a secular society. Right. Yeah. And in that part, you know, this is incidental. But the part of misrecognition, I think, is really powerful. And it helps explain why a lot of our politics today, the debate that we have about, well, we're all equal. I don't see race. I don't see, you know, gender.

I don't see, okay, well, for Taylor, that's an issue because if you don't see a person, you don't see race, you don't see a person in their fullness. You don't see their totality, right? Yeah. Because culture, at least in the United States, race has been associated with, culture by force, right? And so to not see a person's culture, it's not see them fully. Yeah, because I guess the way my mind goes with this, and I'm just a white guy, a German-American, mostly from Iowa, so, you know, take it for what it's worth. But like, the way I think about it is whenever one of these dual national decisions is made, there's sort of a cascade on Twitter

of talk about how this is U.S. soccer's fault, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And like U.S. soccer is ignoring Latinos or something like that. Yeah. And I always see that and I think, I don't, I mean, there may be some truth to it, but it's not like obvious right now, you know. There's tons of Mexican-American young men in the youth national teams. They get called up all the time.

Players get called up all the time. But so even though we can't say that this is sort of larger, issue of recognition isn't we can't assign it to David Ochoa or Julian Rao. But it, at least for me, it kind of makes more sense than sort of like a specific litigation of like U.S. soccer procedure. It makes more sense to say that there's a, that there is a misrecognition going on. And then the recognition that comes or the potential recognition that would come from playing for the Mexican national team seems, you know, a chance.

Choa talked about being comfortable, more comfortable there or, you know, his heart, and they both talked about their heart was there. You can see that as being a clearer path to recognition than playing for the U.S. I don't know. I don't know, right? Because, I mean, you know, what is interesting, if you read that article, he's like, yeah, I didn't feel very comfortable when he went to Chivas, when he was playing the Chivas.

I didn't feel comfortable because I was the, I was a good angle, right? I was a guy. Yeah. I was a guy who everybody assumed I had. And, I mean, every, I think a lot of you guys who are a lot of listeners, who are dual, you know, hyphenated Americas, as I used to call it, can feel that sense of in-betweenness, right? You're from two different cultures, and so you never fully,

I mean, I feel that a little bit, right? I grew up in a very completely Spanish-speaking community, and I live in a world that is much more English-speaking, and so you always kind of are straddling, and that's sort of just kind of the fate of Dulnish, I mean, it's good and bad, right? I have two worlds, and I can kind of compare them in interesting ways, which is nice. But it's not, yeah, it's not an either or anything about, like, the national team is that could be true.

Right. I don't know. I've heard enough people say that where it's like it certainly could be true. It certainly could be true that U.S. soccer, and I mean, you know, could do a whole different podcast on, dragon on elements of U.S. soccer. Right. But both things could be true or even if it weren't true. Even if, you know, and I think actually that's one of the things that Bill Halter gets credit for is that he's been very good at pursuing dual nationals and trying to give him, generally speaking, right?

I mean, the other thing we could talk about is why did Dest, why did Musa choose a U.S.? And I don't think it was about playing time. I think, you know, Musa might have been about patience. It's like I'm sure the way on his trajectory had a reasonable chance at the England team someday, but not now. Right. And Dest, I don't know. I would imagine he, even as great as the Dutch national team is, I don't have a bunch of Barcelona, you know, defenders on this. I mean, you could have had a reason.

So there's something about, it's more complex than that, right? Well, yeah, I always think of it as clearly, like, very much a problem with Mexican-American population. You know, not, I'm not saying it's the Mexican-American population's problem. I'm saying it's like the U.S. soccer's problem with dual nationals. To the extent it has a problem is not with the ones overseas because we do seem to do a great job of recruiting those. But there's something different about. Yeah. So, okay.

So I think two things can, there's either, there's two ways you can think about it. One way you can think about it is that I think it's something like 62 million, 62 million, like, in the United States, something like about 40 million from Mexico, and 80% of the entire population is citizens. So there's a huge population. But there's a pretty good sizable because of the history of immigration law in the United States. There's a sizable first generation community.

They can be choosing, you know, Mexico because soccer is everything in Mexico. And family is, you know, the connection to family is important. And so if you want to honor your family, you choose Mexico. That could be plausible. I mean, you could see. And like I said, I don't know, David. I don't know who in Arajo. He might feel very American, but be like, yeah, but in terms of this, I really want

to honor my family. Or I think I forever as is the same way, right? He's like, you know, L.A. cared. His parents are, you know, his dad was a huge fan. He wants to honor his dad, right? I mean, I get it, right? I get it. Yeah.

So that could be true, right? That might have something to do with it. And the other piece of it might be like, well, how much, there's a great concept that another Canadian philosopher's got Will Kim Luka talks about in terms of, he calls it citizenization. And he's Canadian, a lot of great theorists about multiculturalism apparently from Canada. But Kim Mugat talks about like, full multiculturalism, multiculturalism that's beyond symbolism about like food and fashion and music is how do you fully integrate people into the social,

political and economic life of the of the nation. So that means political representation. That means, you know, economic entrepreneurship, you know, owning capital, owning wealth, you know, social, incorporating, you know, people into the, into mass culture, right? Into pop culture and into, so you can judge how well a group of people has been incorporated into a society based on looking at those metrics, you know. So you could certainly see it, look at it in a broad, broad sense from that perspective of like how all are different communities in central incorporated into the life? I think there's an evolution. I think more and more, you know, Latinidad or, you know, Mexican Americans are being incorporated into the social, political, economic life for the community.

But it's a process, right? Just like with any immigrant population. It takes time. There's pushback. There's that negotiation about, you know, what does it mean to be American? Do we have to change what it means to be American? Some people are very resistant to that idea of like, do you change what it means to be American? So for me, it's a thought exercise. Anybody who's out there listening is be like, yeah, this guy doesn't always talk about.

These are theories, right? Take them or leave them, right? I mean, I don't purport to know. I'm just sort of, you know, like sort of dumping my brain. I'm on to, you know, onto a podcast because it's the stuff that I think about. Yeah. No, I think it's really useful to probably get other people thinking. And, I mean, obviously we're not.

There are no final conclusions here. I wonder if, you know, at least when it comes to soccer, how much will a truly representative men's national team, you know, the one we were talking about at the top of the show, a few high-profile Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, for instance, how much would that change the equation for like the next few dual nationalists who have to choose? You know, if they see Ricardo Pepey banging in goals at the World Cup. Yeah, man, you know, right?

I don't know. I think this generation is a little is different. Like the generation 18, 19, 20 year olds. I mean, I know I've seen polling that says that there is less of a, there's more of a sort of kind of a cosmopolitan identity, right? among younger people. And so I wonder, like, as time goes on, that it'll just kind of be not a thing. Like, it'll really be, hey, you want to, did you pick Mexico or United States? Cool.

Whatever, right? You know, it just won't, like, you get two or three dual nationals, and it'll, it'll just not, it'll be a non-issue. We won't even, this podcast will go into the dustbin of history. And nobody will, and it just won't be a thing. It won't be, it won't be an issue. It's kind of like saying, oh, does the fact that three German Americans play for the United States? What does that say about German incorporation? Well, nobody's talking about that.

I'm sure they're not having some great hand-wringing in Britain because Eunice Musa's playing for the United States, right? It's kind of like, yeah, we got plenty. Don't worry. There's like five. Take the other. Take the Arsenal striker, too, if you want. Like, you know, it just won't be a thing, right? I have a sense in which the more you get players top.

level Mexican-American players playing for the U.S. national team, that maybe that conversational kind of recede, and it'll just be, I mean, this is a big question for the future, right? Like, what is American identity going to look like in 20, 30, 40 years, especially as you what is what going to look like? American identity, like what it means to be American, especially as the country becomes much more diverse, right? I mean, this is, we've been talking about this for 30 years, but as time goes on, the country just becomes more and more diverse. And the issue of like, well, what does our political community look like? How do we develop a sense of weeness, of togetherness, right?

If we're different people from different places, yeah, that's maybe having several players that choose the United States might be a poor of very small world in that conversation being like, yeah, America's about, you know, a sense of belonging around a certain set of values and a set of ideas. And it'll kind of help define, it'll help provide shaped a conversation in terms of to we move towards a sense of solidarity that's rooted in creed. It is inevitably becoming more diverse. It is inevitably becoming more pluralistic, more.

And this is a very recent last 50 years phenomenon that not just immigration from Latin America, of an immigration from Asia, right? It's significantly higher than it was before 1965. So this question of like, who are we going to be together as people from all over the world, but here it's sharing sort of geographic space together that having a few, you know, having more and more people choose in the United States is just confirmation that, yeah, people can feel Americanist regardless of where you're from. And so it can help continue to shape this conversation that America is really about a set of ideas that anybody can kind of glom onto.

I'm an optimist, but I can't shake the hope that Ricardo Pepey scores a hat trick in the World Cup stage. And it just like changes everything in the whole country. I know that's not going to happen. But yeah. Yeah, I look, right. I mean, the other side of the story is that, you know, we had we had anti-capital anti-Napult. anti-Mason sentiments in the 1850s. It was a whole political party.

The No Nothing Party created, you know, explicitly to root out, you know, based on anti-Catholic sentiments, right? So Germans had their term, right? Benjamin Franklin was scathing things about German immigrants about, you know, that like, you know, they weren't capable. They didn't understand democracy. They didn't have the ability to live in a democratic society, right? I mean, every immigrant group has had their time.

You know, there is an open question about, well, does, are Mexican Americans different than, you know, Portuguese Americans or German Americans in how they're treated and how they're, and there is a longstanding history of discrimination against Mexican Americans, right? So, but there is also this hopeful possibility. And it's a struggle, right? I mean, that's why people struggle, right? You struggle a lot of people, they struggle to expand America, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, explain. expand the promise of it to more and more, to more and more groups of people, right? So the definition will change,

and a question is, yeah, will it change in a way that is expansive and inclusive? And yeah, puppy scoring a hat trick would definitely seal the deal. Totally answer the question. Yeah, it's hard to imagine it, not expanding, right? I mean, isn't that, I mean, that's what's always happened, hasn't it? I'm trying to think of parallels, right? Like sporting parallels.

I think, like, if you look at polling, the idea that we're a nation of immigrants resonates. People that, people do believe that. We're actually, look, I mean, I know, I know horrific treatment of, like, undocumented immigrants, of asylum seekers, and we have deep, deep problems. But also, if you poll people, people are very open to the idea of immigration.

They might, they might differ on, like, they might differ in terms of undocumented immigration and what does that mean and not to hold up the podcast. And I don't even think I want to get into it because I don't. But the idea of like immigration and us and part of the American creed being that we're a peoples of peoples, that's still pretty powerful. Most people back that. Most people are on board of that idea that like, yeah, you come here, you work hard. You know, you work hard. You raise your family.

pulled by the rules, whatever, you know, follow the rule of law. And you are productive, a contributor to society, you are welcome into political community, right? 100%. You know, notwithstanding racial and differences. But, you know, that's part of the creed. You know, your membership is based on your willingness to accept the creed. Yeah. Do you think, well, just a couple more questions.

I think Mexican Americans are uniquely misrecognized in America as compared to other Americans of Latino descent. I mean, you're Cuban American. You know. You guys run Miami, right? No, it's true. It's actually true. But it's different, right? I mean, every immigrant community that has come here has a different reason for coming and a different, the migration flows are different.

So they're not comparable in that way. And Mexico and the United States have this longstanding history. in a history of, you know, a history of war and a history of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, uh, mistreatment, um, uh, of land, you know, land expropriation and, you know, so there's, there's a whole history of love with Mexican, a, and a history of discrimination, especially in places like Texas and California. So, I don't know if it's unique, right? Um, but it certainly is that, it's part of that history.

Now, you know, Cuba and Puerto Rico, and they all have their own unique experiences of the United States, you know, the involvement in the politics of those countries and that's all, you know, all of that is sort of particular. But maybe what makes it unique in terms of with Mexican-American immigration is that you have this longstanding relationship, but the speed and the pace of the flow has really appreciably increased since the changes to the. immigration laws in 1965. So, you know, we're going from isolated small numbers of, you know, Mexican Americans

in different parts of the country, like California, Texas, you know, what have you, to, like, you know, 40 million people out of a country of 350 million. So you have a sizable population, right? And so now the question is like with everybody else, you know, like, how does that community of people see itself? Does it see itself as a coherent community? does it see itself as a community that is a need of representation, political representation, how does it kind of see itself in terms of itself as a community?

And those are different, right? Like, I mean, like, why did African-American community out of necessity and struggle and discrimination began to see itself as a community of people? And so to what extent do, you know, does that, did Mexican Americans increasingly see themselves as a community of people that need political representation, need, you know, yeah, I mean, that's a tough one to answer. Like, I mean, are they uniquely discriminated? Everybody's uniquely.

Everybody has a unique experience as a group of people. But yeah, I think part of it, at least the reason that we're talking about it today is because of the wrongsitting history and because of the size of the flow, just the numbers, right, make it like a more relevant and salient and important issue to think through and address. You know, having said about the article, I should have sent you by a sociologist that responding to Huntington, it's got Doug Massey who talks about like, yeah, look, if you look at a generation, by, you know, by the third generation, 99% of, you know, of Hispanic kids are speaking English, right? by the third generation, almost half of them have like an American identity.

You know, like, I mean, it's the process of incorporation into American is doesn't look that different than other immigrant groups. Right, right. But like the reality is that like, yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, we have this long sentence to it. Well, one of the challenges is, yeah, the indigenity that these two communities are right next to each other, geographically sound like the Irish who came across, you know, across a giant ocean, the world of the United States

are always being replenished, and so there's always these to look. I mean, yeah, Mexican Americans, they incorporate, so the idea of like incorporate being fully incorporated into community, they incorporate it pretty sizable roads too.

Yeah. Just like that reminds me of, you know, some of the, some of the young Mexican American players in the U.S. Youth National Team setup don't speak Spanish that well.

And, and I have some, some internet friends, a Mexican-American guy in Houston and a guy of El Salvadoran descent in L.A. who love to talk about, I mean, they don't love to talk about, but it's a point they make that I don't hear anybody else making that, you know, if you don't know how to speak Spanish well and then you start playing for the Mexican national team, you're going to be in some, you know, you're going to be in some hot water pretty quick if things don't go well, you know. Absolutely. Look, I mean, you know, culture is made in a moment and in the moment, right? So people, a lot of times people will say, well, you know, L.A. is not a Mexican city or an American city. It's a Mexican-American city. You know, it's, it's, it has developed a unique integrated culture that has borrowed pieces of both.

I mean, you can say that about, you know, L.A. is this great? Like, L.A. is it not a Persian, city or an American city. It's a Persian American city or an Armenian American city. It's like it's like it's, you know, if you're Mexican-American from L.A., you're not, like David O'Shaal said, you're not Mexican. You don't feel fully Mexican, you don't feel fully American. You're kind of this hybrid. It's like I grew up Cuban-American. I'm not, it's not Cuba and it's not America in that way. It's a hybrid, you know. It's people kind of make culture in as they live their lives, you know. So, yeah, these kids, if they did go back, they would, they would, they are different.

I mean, you know, my students will say that, you know, if they go visit family in Mexico, and it's, they, they don't feel exactly, they don't feel 100% at home because it's, it's, it's still not 100% of that place, right? I mean, because we, we, we, culture evolves as, as we live, right? Often, and I find it like in my own life, the way that I live evolves in ways that I didn't even choose, you know, I just like, wake up one morning. I'm like, wait, I'm this kind of person now. I didn't even realize I had chosen this.

No, right. At some ways it's circumstantial. I wind up in California with an academic job, and so California, I have to respond to California culture and accept those aspects of it that work for me and modify and adjust to sort of, yeah, find a meaningful way of life in this new environment that I'm in. Yeah. Well, let's close it down here.

I really, thank you for, unless you got anything, you got anything you wish you had said? Sometimes that question annoys people, but sometimes it, it teases out something. No, you know, I mean, I do, there's part of me that's like, boy, I don't, sport is like a distraction from people, right? So sport is supposed to be fun. Like, I hope people don't, you know, it's like, why are you ruining my soccer by talking about all this? I don't want to think all this stuff. And part of me doesn't want to either My part of me is like, yeah, I just want to get

You know, I want to get away from my day job And just watch a game and well at Someone who missed a sitter or anything Yeah But yeah, it really is that There was really like very Sport Sport isn't just sport

Right? I mean like we make choices about the things we like And we're social media to signal to each other About who you are And yeah, being a national team fan or soccer fandom is just another way that we kind of construct our identity, right? Even if it's, even if it's something that we also intrinsically love, but it's also when we communicate it to others, we are communicating identity. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for giving, thanks for giving me some new tools to think about these issues. Yeah, of course, of course. And, you know, good luck with finals and everything. I hope everybody gets good grades. Yeah, mostly. Not too bad. Not too bad. Okay. All right. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Jose.

You're welcome. All right. Take care.