National Identity

I was just reading a post on my brother-in-law Nate's blog about what it means to be Chinese. Apparently, some mainlanders don't feel Hong Kong residents act truly Chinese, and yet the people of Hong Kong retain some holidays and traditional practices that were wiped out in most of China by the Cultural Revolution. So who is really "Chinese," and what does that term even mean these days?

Nate's questions reminded me of a similar debate going on in our own dear country. I studied history (primarily American) for my master's degree, and few things get me on a soapbox faster these days than someone complaining that immigrants in the good old days were far more willing to "Americanize" than those coming today. For the record, anyone who says that the European immigrants of yesteryear arrived eager to eat hot dogs, play baseball, and shoot off fireworks on July 4th doesn't know diddly about this country's history.

In the 1840s, American political cartoons depicted Irish and German immigrants as drunken gorillas, and natives worried these newcomers were dragging the country swiftly downhill by clinging to their old, un-American ways. Fifty years later those immigrants were as much a part of the American fabric as the British and Scots, but by golly those newly arrived Italians, Poles, and other "undesirables" that were flooding into the country were making all the old folks edgy. Each new ethnic group congregated in their own neighborhood, ate ethnic foods, spoke their native language, and many of them didn't even plan to stay in the U.S.; they were just working to send money back to their relatives, and many planned to moved back to the Old Country after a while.

Sounds kind of familiar doesn't it? The same story could be told about Japanese immigrants, Chinese immigrants, and on and on. As the years rolled by, these immigrants or their descendants were absorbed into American society until a last name like O'Neill or Caruso was the only clue to a person's pre-immigration heritage. Old traditions were either forgotten or absorbed into American culture until we forgot they were once "new." The Pilgrims never cooked spaghetti or tacos, but I'll bet your mom did. Those things have become as American as hamburgers (which weren't even invented here) or fortune cookies (which were - in San Francisco, if I remember right).

That's why I'm not too concerned when some people predict that today's immigrants will never become "American." True, some of them may never master English or trade old traditions for new; many of their European predecessors didn't, either. But their kids did. And their grandkids and great-grandkids often barely knew where they came from, much less spoke their ancestors language. I know of several Latino immigrants who wish they COULD get their children to speak Spanish. The trouble is that the TV speaks English, the movie screen speaks English, and their friends at school speak it, too. The proof of whether immigrant groups will "Americanize" is in the future generations.

And when it comes down to it, what does it really mean to be "American?" Does an American like fried chicken and NASCAR, or salad and yoga? Do Americans prefer to play baseball, soccer, Uno, or World of Warcraft on the internet? We know what to expect from an Italian or Mexican restaurant, but what does an American restaurant serve? What kind of accent does an American have?

There is no simple answer to these questions, so since America is such a diverse place, who is to say that a little more diversity is un-American, anyway?