Why don't we buy into the melting pot
Why don't we buy into the melting pot
Perhaps ringing especially true in an election year, one in which we are debating some of our core beliefs as a nation, I found Evan Handler’s essay for Huffington Post called “My Wife Is an Immigrant” deserving of some attention. Jumping off that title point, one I happen to share with him as I am the husband of a Canadian, he dives into a really interesting look at Americans and their identity. Good points made and well worth the time in light of a country not exactly reasonable when it comes to immigration discussions.
A chunk: Why is it that the most aggressively self-satisfied citizenry - who'll tell you everything that's "best" about the United States, even though they've never visited anywhere else - never identify themselves as belonging to the place they're so proud of? Except when they're overseas, that is. Put them on any other soil and they'll bray it to the heavens. "Oh, no. I'm AMERICAN," they yell. "Can you believe it honey? He thought I was from CANADA!!! HA HA HA HA HA." But here at home, they're German. Because their last name is Schmidt.
Why don't we buy into the melting pot? Who says?
I've read the My Wife is an Immigrant article you referred. The first question that immediately comes to mind is if all that is good and better and best in Europe, hygenically, emotionally, economically, why is she here?
I, too, am married to an immigrant. An immigrant from Haiti. I was proud to be at her citizenship ceremony 4 years ago. After 30 years in the United States and because of 9/11, my wife decided it was time to become a citizen. She wanted to feel secure here as she could not in Haiti or in Spain, where she studied for three years. And horror!, she wanted to vote in the Presidential Election of 2004 and then vote for George W. Bush.
I am the grandson of Eastern European immigrants like the writer of the piece previously mentioned. It took quite some time to figure out where my grandparents came from too. I realized they didn't know because whoever governed them kept changing from Polish, to Ukrainian, to Austrian to Hungary to Russia. He might want to read his history to find out exactly where his grandparents came from. I narrowed my search to Galicia, Poland or was it The Ukraine, or Russia or Austria or Hungary? At any given time in Europe, pick one, you could easily be wrong as you could be right.
I could never understand why my grandparents, educated landowners and farmers that they were, would want to come to such a country such as America. A country that only offered opportunity, stability and a country they could genuinely feel they could become part of.
As for education, they stressed education as the best way to integrate, assimilate, merge or just plain melt into the American lifestyle, contribute to society, earn their own way, fight for their country which my father, his brothers, my mother's brothers, ALL fought in WWII.
Although my mother and father spoke fluent Ukrainian with each other and my grandparents, we, my brothers and all our cousins and I were encouraged to speak only English so we could assimilate, merge, adjust or just plain melt into the pot that was called America.
I'm at all sure what the article's point was other than we, in America, don't use bidets.
Hey, if I go out an buy a bidet would I become European?? Nah, I think my granparents would roll over in their graves.
His remains, The Rebel