Posted on 03/03/2004 3:00:30 PM PST by MegaSilver
Re Andres Oppenheimer's Feb. 26 column, Racists will love new 'Hispanic threat' book, about Samuel Huntington's forthcoming work Who We Are: I have worked in public relations for some time now, predominantly in marketing to U.S. Hispanics. Much of my job is to do research about what makes Hispanics tick and how best to reach them. Given my expertise, Huntington's book sounds offensive, with dangerous rhetoric.
This country is founded on the basis that all people are welcome and encouraged to assimilate. The variety has created a fascinating mix of cultures, where much can be gained from the experiences of others. What would Miami be like had all of our mayors been non-Hispanic whites? What would the California governor's race have been like without an Austrian and a Mexican as the front-runners?
We thrive in a society that constantly redefines itself. Had we as a country always thought the old way to be best, we would still be living with slavery and women not being allowed to vote. I take comfort in that the group that will soon be eliminated from the United States is not the Hispanic element, but rather the small group of backward-thinking people to which Huntington appears to belong.
MICHAEL VALDES-FAULI, Coral Gables
Oppenheimer says that ''many immigrants don't speak English, but their children eventually do.'' But he misses several points. Over the last 150 years, America has welcomed people from many nations, especially from Western Europe. These people established enclaves where old-country customs and language were practiced. The salient difference between German, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants, to name a few, is that when they went into the greater community they knew that English was required.
That's not the case here. I have gone into major department stores in Miami where sales personnel addressed me in Spanish. Despite Oppenheimer's allegations, English is the second language for this entire community. Often it is expected that we speak Spanish. At Florida International University, Spanish is the language of choice in a publicly funded school. Don't bother applying for a job there if you are not bilingual.
As for loyalty to the United States, I know young U.S.-born Hispanics who proudly announce their primary loyalty to the their parents' country of origin.
FREDERICK BERGER, Hollywood
That's not the case here, where the conservative viewpoint clearly advantages the liberal. Perhaps that says something about the left's utter ignorance of our immigration problem.
This country is founded on the basis that all people are welcome and encouraged to assimilate
This is key. Assimilation is now treated with disdain.
E Plurubus Unum, are now just some funny words on our coins.
On a side note, I have never understood why the Cuban exile community never made more of an effort to make their anti-commie anti-Castro case IN ENGLISH!
I remember the frustration with my friends in school and how they could not understand why Castro was such a bad guy. They never heard the case made in english. The Cubans were just "those people always screaming on the radio"
All people are not welcome or invited which is why we have immigration laws and quotas. The US simply can not accommodate immigrants in unlimited numbers, there are 6 billion people in the world.
Which is what they are NOT doing.
There are very few "Anglos" in Miami/Broward/Palm Beach counties these days. You have the largest concentration of Jews in the country, Latins of every race and social class and the blacks. The only people who vote Republican are the Cubans, but they are outnumbered down there.
Miami (like New York) has alot of first generation immigrants and also attracts upper class Latinos who are here for financial reasons and don't even take citizenship. Miami and New York are "internationalized" and never will be "middle america."
I think it depends on the individual. My mother came here from Ireland, worked hard to get rid of her brogue and completely assimilated. My husband came here from Castro's Cuba and fell in love with America and Americans. He went to school to learn perfect English. He bought property in upstate, rural New York. No Cubans around for 300 miles, or more. We now live here and folks around here love him. Yet his daughter, who was born in New York City and now lives in Miami, is more Cuban than American. Once, she said in her father's presence, "We Cubans ....". My husband slammed the table and said "You are an American - you were born in America - what's this crap about "We Cubans!". When immigrants assimilate they can offer much to America. When they don't, they add nothing to America.
Prior to WWII, most Italians lived in segregated enclaves away from the rest of America and Italians is still spoken by some old folks here in Brooklyn. What occurred was that since Italy was on the "wrong side" in WWII, many Italian Americans had to go out of there way to prove they were American and that's where the attitude you speak of was born.
On my father's side of the family, many of the old folks still refer to themselves as "Polish" when asked their nationality. His grandmother lived in a Polish speaking enclave in Newark and never really learned English while living here.
There are many people in South Florida who refer to themselves as "Jewish" (in the cultural as well as the religious sense), what is wrong with referring to oneself as Cuban or Irish, as many Americans do.
Remember the "we all must assimilate and sing yankee doodle dandee" was an invention of the WWII era. It wasn't like that before then and won't be like that ever again.
As far as assimilation is concerned, it usually takes at least three generations, from immigrant to "ethnic American" to merely American. Intermarriage is the key to true assimilation, which is why the Jewish people (and many blacks) fear it for the loss of their culture.
http://www.rpatrick.com/USA/americanism/
Teddy Roosevelt's view on hyphenated-Americans
... There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic. (FReeper note to John Kerry: you should pay attention to what Teddy meant by that last sentence)
Teddy was on the money - and I say that as a proud American who is also completely proud of and familiar with my Hispanic ancestry... and will always be so. Especially today, and not as much as tomorrow.
Hyphenated-Americanism today is a paean to multiculturalism, ergo an artifice with a socialist/hegelian/moral-equivalence/political correctness which is absolute bullshit, which is anti-American, and which I reject. And I ain't talkin' bout the references among folks who get along, where phrases like "gettin' your Irish up", or "he's working like a black man in a cotton field" might pop up in conversation... i'm talking about people who hide their dislike for America behind their hyphenation, who think that Europeans are somehow better than us, etc. These are the ones Teddy warned against.
Growing up in New York City, I was a Puerto Rican - because everybody grew up defining you by what made your group distinctive (group politics, haven't we seen that artifice before??? well, I lived it). That distinction fell away when I enlisted in the Navy, serving 3 years overseas in Europe... and soon discovered that not many Europeans knew where Puerto Rico was (talk about us Americans being ignorant of geography, this happened 25 years ago... the Europeans didn't impress me then, and they don't now) - and viewed me as an American.
Came the time when I realized how my earlier years (teens) identity was defined more by others than by myself. As I matured and taught myself the things about my country that I was not taught in school (public education, another socialist inroad into and against America - I'm the one that got away...) I realized who I was and what I was... and it wasn't what the person'd'jour said (or treated me like...) I was. An American. Proudly. Thankfully. And if someone's got a problem with that, F$%k 'im.
CGVet58
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.