[On June 26th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]
[NB. This
was one of my earliest blog posts, and I’ve decided to repeat it roughly as is,
other than adding hyperlinks. Frankly, I wish more had changed between late
2010 and mid-2023.]
I’ve written elsewhere
in this space about Emma Lazarus’ impressive sentiments on immigration, as
expressed in her sonnet “The New Colossus”; as I wrote there, while she might
seem superficially to be simply echoing national ideals about our welcoming
nature and melting pot society, I would argue that her emphasis on accepting
the “wretched refuse” of other nations puts her ideas in explicit contrast to
many of our national anti-immigration narratives and arguments, such as those
being articulated in her own era to bolster support for laws like the Chinese
Exclusion Act. That is, many such anti-immigration voices have tried to portray
themselves as generally in favor of immigration, but opposed in this particular
case, when it comes to this particular group, because of the undesirable nature
of those who are arriving. The most succinct example of this phenomenon was
articulated, not surprisingly, by Lou Dobbs, who once claimed on his CNN show
that he isn’t xenophobic, he just doesn’t like other nations dumping their
trash on us.
Similarly, many anti-immigrant
arguments depend on one version or another of the sentiment that it’s different
this time, with this group—that prior generations and communities of immigrants
have worked to assimilate, to learn English, to become part of our society, and
so on, but that this particular group is not willing to do so, is instead
seeking to change our nation to become more like them. Exemplifying such
arguments is another text with which I have already
grappled in this space, Pat Buchanan’s abhorrent post-Virginia Tech piece,
where Buchanan writes of the thirty-six million Asian American immigrants who
have arrived—invaded, is his word—since the 1965 Immigration Act that “almost
all [came] from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any
Western country.” Since Pat is writing about my in-laws and my [now ex-]wife
(and half of my boys to boot), it goes without saying that I have one or two
problems with this assertion; but leaving aside any personal connections,
perhaps the biggest problem with these “it’s different this time, with this
group” arguments is that they’ve been made, erroneously, in opposition to various
immigrant arrivals and groups for at least two hundred fifty years of American
history.
Those making this argument might
be deeply ignorant of our history, but they can take solace in the fact that
one of the first Americans to make the same ignorant argument was also one of
our smartest and most talented national icons. In the midst of his 1751
socio-historical study “Observations
Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc,” Ben
Franklin wondered why his state of Pennsylvania, “founded by the English, [should] become a colony of
aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our
Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than
they can acquire our complexion.” Anyone who wrote as voluminously as Franklin
was bound to be wrong plenty of the time (and I’m not trying to use an
individual such instance to downplay his amazing life and successes, nor his
generally forward-thinking and tolerant nature), but what’s striking about this
moment in retrospect is less the inaccuracy of his prediction and more the
silliness of it, and of how much even a visionary like Franklin can become the
worst angel of his nature through the influence of xenophobic fears (or maybe
just a dislike of bratwurst).
Call me an
idealist, but it seems to me that if those making arguments like these about
Asian or Hispanic American immigrants could see Franklin’s text and recognize
that silliness, it might make them second-guess a bit their own certainty about
this time and this particular group and how in their case we had better be
afraid of what kind of America they might produce. At the very least, Franklin’s case can remind
us that we have always been this kind
of America, a mixed and multi-national and multi-lingual one, driven by the
worst kinds of fears yet also, as Lazarus reminds us, the best kinds of hopes. Next
German-American history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?
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