Immigrants are us

The United States is the archetypical nation of immigrants and refugees. Even the nomads who came to this area across the Bering Land Bridge some 18,000 years ago, or on ocean-going rafts that bumped into the west coast, came as immigrants looking for greener pastures. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President (1933-1945) of the United States knew this when in 1938 he reminded the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a pretentious upper class organization, that they too were descended from immigrants. The DAR members were not pleased. They had long since made a collective decision that this was just not true. Their ancestors were the true Americans in that they were the originators of the revolution—the seminal act that made the nation the alleged “God-blessed land” it was and always will be. They had little regard for the immigrants and refugees who came later. The DAR ladies saw them as dangerous interlopers out to pollute and pilfer the patrimony of revolutionary heroes. It was a good example of how skewed perception makes its own history. Every subsequent wave of European immigrants to the U.S. created a customized version of this story for themselves. Within one or two generations their children melded into an Americanized Western culture, became fluent in English, and thought of themselves as true Americans. Assimilating into American society also meant assimilating into United States history—which now became their history.

The only groups which were not completely successful in this process were non-European: African Americans, Latins, Asians and actual native Americans as well. The social, economic and political restrictions that flowed from a persistent white American racism limited the ability of non-Europeans to assimilate and created a feared and resented “other” for the Western majority. Non-Western groups were more or less ghettoized into ethnic communities that were much harder to break down and meld with the greater society.

However, as time went by, the situation for these ethnic minorities got ever more complicated. They existed, semi-isolated within a greater culture and a capitalist economy that constantly beckoned to them. In spite of not achieving full assimilation, the memories of their ethnic roots began to fade, as did command of the non-English languages of their grandparents. Their status as hyphenated groups seems to be permanent.

Drawing Strength from One’s Roots

One reaction to this predicament was for minorities to turn the tables and urge the importance of knowing and taking pride in their original ethnic culture and history. For example, for the community of Latin immigrants, the goal would be to discover one’s roots not as an ”American” but rather as an American of Hispanic ethnic heritage.

This predicament and the “going back to one’s roots” solution has been laid out by Arlene Dávila, the founding director of New York University’s Latinx Project. “Latinx” is a term that “signals an openness to gender inclusivity and more tacit recognition of our racial and ethnic diversity.” Dávila notes, in a 15 October 2022 piece, “What My Students Don’t Know About Their Own History” in the New York Times, that many of her Latinx students “receive their first formal introduction into their own ethnic roots—Hispanics who have a part U.S. history—in her university classes and ones across the United States only created in the last 20 years.”

She does not think this is satisfactory. She bases part of her case on demographics. “Latinos, who make up 19 percent of the U.S. population” yet “are vastly underrepresented in academia, newsrooms, publishing, Hollywood films, TV and more.” Dávila believes that “investing in Latinx studies programs” is a necessary step in correcting this problem. Presently, she tells us, “there are fewer than 90 programs providing majors in Latinx studies out of the close to 3,000 institutions of higher learning across the nation.”

One might think that 90 programs is a good foundational number except for the fact that “Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in American universities.” Under the circumstances, she also faults the lack of Hispanic faculty.

Counterpunch