Replies

The Jersey City of my grandparents was an Italian Ghetto where one did not need to know English if they didn't want to. My grandparents did not know English until the went to public school and had to act as interpreters for their parents. The same was true of my father's family in Newark, who attended Polish language parochial schools, but learned English out on the street or through movies.

We must be careful before we idealize the past. It was World War II that assimilated the European ethnics, and made them realize they were Americans. Then came the red scare of post-WWII in which to be "foreign" was to be suspect. The "everyone wants to be American" concept is largely a product of postwar America.

In any event, it doesn't matter, every child of Colombian, Cuban, Cambodian, and Korean immigrants I have met speaks English better than their parent's language.

Well, Jersey City was a bit place and my family wasn't from the Italian area, so we probably have two very different windows on two pasts that existed right next to each other. Different ethnicities reacted quite differently and even the same ethnicities reacted quite differently depending on where they were from and why they came to the United States. Let's just say that Protestant opposition to Catholic immigration gave Protestants a reason to think of themselves as "Americans" and Catholics a reason to huddle together in ethnic enclaves and I am aware, via some specific anecdotes from my father, that the different Catholic ethnicities in Jersey City did discourage mixing. Of course that's why the whole idea of that whites were unified by a common culture from the Revolutionary War era and never practiced discrimination between white ethnicities is so absurd. But at least some of those who were descriminated against viewed assimilation (or "passing") as their way to escape persecution just as others escaped persecution by huddling in ethnic enclaves.

I'm fully aware that there as Hispanics, Asians, and others who are assimilating quite well into American society and wants to be American and I'm more than happy to have that sort of immigrant enter the United States. Regardless of where it started or how well it worked in the past in the United States, the "Melting Pot" was an admirable goal and far more sustainable than the multicultural ideals being preached by many academics. I'm by no means anti-immigration. I'm anti-multiculturalism to, the extent that many multiculturalists want to take it, and think America needs a single official language. If the people of India can understand the benefits of using English as an official language, despite it being almost nobody's native language in India, why can't Americans grasp the same benefits.

My grandfather, who is now in his mid 90s, came over to Jersey City from Eastern Europe when he was a young boy. If he'd stayed in Russia, his town would have been overrun within a week of Operation Barbarossa starting and he and his family would have been killed. Here, he raised a family and did very well for himself, growing up speaking English and working with all types of people.

You'd expect him to be as grateful to be an American as I am, given this record, but when I talked about it with him a few months ago he sounded like he was still a guest in this country and he didn't particularly feel like an American. Identifying with America, thinking about what it stands for etc. just wasn't relevant to him. Of course, he isn't Russian either, nor is he religious. He just is.