ON DEFINING OURSELVES THIS 4th OF JULY

BACK TO THE FUTURE

This New York Times op=ed piece by Kenneth C. Davis struck home for me this fourth of July.  Here's a relevant excerpt (image source):

"Scratch the surface of the current immigration debate and beneath the posturing lies a dirty secret. Anti-immigrant sentiment is older than America itself.

Born before the nation, this abiding fear of the “huddled masses” emerged in the early republic and gathered steam into the 19th and 20th centuries, when nativist political parties, exclusionary laws and the Ku Klux Klan swept the land.

As we celebrate another Fourth of July, this picture of American intolerance clashes sharply with tidy schoolbook images of the great melting pot.

Why has the land of “all men are created equal” forged countless ghettoes and intricate networks of social exclusion? Why the signs reading “No Irish Need Apply”?

And why has each new generation of immigrants had to face down a rich glossary of now unmentionable epithets? Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching."

Schoolbook images of "great melting pot" indeed, not to mention Mickey Mouse around the globe.

The author of this piece, is also the author of “Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned".  I had to Amazon the book after reading his op-ed piece.

He starts out the editorial with the following observation:

A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

This sentiment did not emerge from the rancorous debate over the immigration bill defeated last week in the Senate. It was not the lament of some guest of Lou Dobbs or a Republican candidate intent on wooing bedrock conservative votes. Guess again.

Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”

It's a good thing to be reminded of our history, so soon after the hugely controversial immigration bill failed to pass on the eve of our 231st birthday.

A Mexican financial site reported this week that Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican billionaire of Lebanese descent, surpassed Bill Gates for the mantle of "Richest Man on Earth", by their updated calculations of the Forbes list.  This is due largely to a sharp rise in Mr. Helu's ownership stake in Latin  America's largest cell phone operator America Movil.

Again, it happened on the eve of our July 4th celebration.

We'd better get used to sharing that "trophy" of the "world's richest man/woman", in much the same way as we share the glory of the "America's Cup" yacht races with other countries.

Especially as we move into the 21st century in earnest, we need to start getting used to the idea that the richest citizens on the planet may no longer be Americans.

In a world of 6 billion people, where at least 2 billion are ferociously working to re-define the "American Dream" on their own terms, we need to re-remember what's truly special about America.

  In a post on immigration last October, I said:

So as we, as Americans, think about our long-term, sovereign well-being, we need to give thought to "the Coming Crunch" of large nations competing for more immigration over time than less.

The biggest fortunes both as individuals and as nations, in this new century as in the last, are going to come from the economic wealth generated by large pools of rapidly growing middle-class families, buying gobs of software, cell phones, Mickey Mouse, and so many goods and services. 

And as I also said in that earlier post,

"To cut to the chase, the nations that have the biggest pools of productive, middle-class people that share common aspirations of a better life for themselves and their children, AND a commitment to Globalization, win. 

And unless something goes seriously awry, there will be a lot more countries that share this formula in a few years than today."

All the nations currently aspiring to be tomorrow's economic super-powers also share the fear of foreigners, be they developed or developing nations.

It's not that we Americans are immune to feeling that foreigners are not welcome, or they're not "like us". 

That condition pervades our DNA just as it does for the Japanese, the Chinese, the French, the Germans, or the Europeans.

What's truly special about America though, is that we can still build a nation that is UNIQUE in the way it assimilates people from hundreds of different places and cultures, into the wealthiest nation on the planet.  This DESPITE having some same anti-immigration urges as any other nation on earth.

It's what gives me the most optimism for us this fourth of July.

Happy Birthday, US of A.

P.S. 

I'm off to see Ratatouille, the story of an American rat becoming the head chef in a French gourmet restaurant in Paris. 

This latest Disney/Pixar blockbuster is being brought to us by the same company that made another rodent, Mickey Mouse, a global icon of America for middle class famillies around the world. 

We've gone from being a mighty mouse to a rat.

Talk about ironies this fourth of July in the new century.

Have a great fourth,everybody.

Comments

[sebastien (ny)]

Michael,
This is a great post that resonates to my heart. let me share my immigrant experience with you. I am actually a native of France, and got an excellent education from the best universities in my country. However, coming from the lower class, I had the feeling that Europe no longer offered great opportunities for those starting from scratch. i have been living in the usa for almost a year now with a green card, and I do see a difference between the USA and the rest of the world: open mindedness, thriving business community, chance for everyone to build their own american dream. As much as France is an awesome country when it comes to art and traditions, there is a magic recipe here that is not easily reproducible elsewhere. Carlos Slim Helu might be filthy rich, but is he respected by his countrymen in the same way we in the usa we admire Gates and Buffet ? I doubt. The gap between these new billionaires and the lower classes of their country is abysmal. In Russia, it even backfired and gave Putin a reason to take over the oil resources controlled by the private sector in the wake of the 90's privatizations.
As for the American debate about immigration, I believe that the renewed fear for everything coming from abroad is a by-product of 9/11 (and of the insane rhetoric used by some politicians in its aftermath). I don't see any seeds of racism like in other parts of the world.

[Ward]

Is there any other country in the world that has avoided xenophobia? Are we so horrid or are we always upset with our inability to find some unatainable ideal?