Victor Davis Hanson: “America’s successful melting pot should not be replaced with discredited salad-bowl separatism.” … Of course, it goes without saying (or maybe it doesn’t) that this is also the problem with white identity politics. …
Victor Davis Hanson: “America’s successful melting pot should not be replaced with discredited salad-bowl separatism.” … Of course, it goes without saying (or maybe it doesn’t) that this is also the problem with white identity politics. …
I think the American melting pot takes a long time to absorb even most of the European non-British ethnic groups. Most did come with the intention of becoming Americanized and leaving the “Old Country” behind. Commit to learning English, at least by the 2nd generation. The history of their adoption was often 50 or 75 years. Think the Irish Catholic and their rocky experiences (rise of the “No Nothings” in the mid-1800s in reaction to them), the Italians with their subset of Sicilian mobsters, East Europeans with their collection of ethnic traditions (Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians, etc.). Yeah, even northern Europeans took awhile to fully adopt to the New Country. In the “Old Country” Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, hated each other’s guts. Fought wars. It took a generation or two in the New Country to decide that was all pretty stupid & then got along with each other. And learned English. My background is German and Austrian. My great-grandparents, grandparents talked German up until WWI, when the “English speakers” burned the German textbooks in their parochial schools. Learn English like everyone else!
I think the northern East Asians – Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, et al – have integrated into American culture as fast as, maybe faster than northern Europeans. (At least my limited experience with them suggest that.) Ditto the Asian Indians, Vietnamese, Philipinos.
The leftists have gone out of their way to promote immigrants retaining their native languages, customs, and insisting on cultural sensitivity to their “diversity” – been doing that for decades. Never mind the problems countries like Canada have had with their large French-speaking minority over the years. (Public institutions all have both English and French I guess.) In some states we now have not just Spanish, but other languages on official forms/documents.
Boy – ran on too long – should make a point! We’ve had long pauses between surges of immigrant waves. Restricted immigration a lot in the 1920s up until the mid-1960s with the Ted Kennedy-sponsored opening to much higher percentages of Hispanics and Asians. I don’t think the current anti-immigrant feelings are much different than the anti-Irish, anti-Chinese in the mid-1800s. (Gold rush, building the railroads, working in the new factories.)