An End To Hyphenated Americans
In my view, the parade of ethnicity that occurred in the eighties, with the gilding of the statue of liberty and the Iacocca ascendancy was a step backward for America. The idea that generations after immigration, Americans are supposed to continue to identify with a long-lost heritage is a balkanizing influence that will bear a bitter harvest.
Assimilation was certainly a hurdle set before new Americans and the WASP orthodoxy certainly enforced admission with their 'blue-blood' standards for inclusion. I think the hyphenation phenomenon was largely a reaction to this exclusion and an assertion of power gained initially in Northeastern cities and from thence into the heartland of America.
The concept of 'whiteness' is certainly a superset of WASPism. I argue that this was done to expand the franchise while still maintaining division and now the entire country has fallen into this clever device. Of course race is an overlay on these 'white divisions' and the hyphenation phenomenon, I argue, leaves slave progeny still excluded from amongst them. African-American is a cruel joke owing to the minute legacy (little beyond genetic) retained by that grouping.
The illegal immigration issue worsens the prospects for a united country because the standards of English literacy, familiarity with the country's (nominal) history and an oath of allegiance are absent. This has/is/will create a further balkanization.
The question arises then, what is a non-hyphenated American?
WASPs were the first aristocracy in America and to a great extent predominate the 'old money' class today. They have adopted many other European descended peoples who have immigrated, but within their own circles, until recently, have remained amongst themselves. Within a few more generations however, families like the Kennedy's, the Iococcas and other white-ethnics will be (albeit grudgingly) admitted to the 'old-money' club (as seen during the 'gilded liberty' period) and perhaps the slave progeny afterwards. Of course, this is not in order of antiquity in the country, but it does appear that progress is being made on all fronts.
Certainly descendants of American chattel slaves have an established presence in the US and their antiquity is beyond question in most cases. With family histories that extend for centuries their place in American history and culture includes them in any legitimate definition of 'American'. It is also true that their artificially limited participation has hampered the extent to which they have occupied all levels of societal impact. This has only impoverished our nation and it appears that, however slowly, the range of contributions they are invited to make has broadened in recent history ... very recent history.
The newer phenomenon are Asian, East-Indian and Hispanic assimilation and to no small extent they have penetrated the society rapidly. This is due, I argue, to the nature of the immigration patterns enforced. Specifically, in the case of Asia and East Indian, these groups come to America already highly educated and in many cases with significant family networks still intact from their nations of origin. This is a very different type of immigration than slave capture, field labor, or other huddled masses.
Is it unreasonable to require that new societal members relinquish the culture of their origins? Should we enforce the primacy of the culture that is already in existence? The English-Only movement has certainly crystallized these questions in at least one package: language. In an attempt be accommodating, the US in my opinion has prolonged/invited further balkanization.
The melting pot phenomenon will continue as a matter of course and I do not argue that it should be opposed. However, certain minimal standards of 'sameness' should be encouraged. Race should NOT be included amongst them. Neither should height, hair length, ear shape or the national origin of one's ancestors.
For once and for all, let us be AMERICAN, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
copyright 2005 Callmethefixer
posted by Anonymous at 8/13/2005 07:28:00 PM
3 Comments:
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"Hyphenated Americanism" Speech - Excerpts
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, October 12, 1915, in a speech before the Knights of Columbus
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.
Americanization
The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population - no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is to not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.
We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?
One America
All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind."
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