Posts Tagged ‘immigrants’
Formula for a New America
I know we spend our time here with the absurd and ironic. We are snarky and irreverent. But this time it’s about new years and resolutions, so we are going to take this one time to stop and be serious – just for a moment.
Like everyone else, for this new year – this election year – I want a New America. Or maybe I just want to fix the old one. But I have realized we can’t do that until we take care of one thing: we need to become America first. We live here and we give ourselves the moniker, but few of us are real Americans. Wait. Let me explain – I’m not talking about flag-flying patriotism. I’m talking about the basis for this nation.
We were founded by peoples fleeing from religious and government oppression. We came to a land where no one was native. (The ‘Native Americans’ bear a misnomer – they immigrated across the Bering Strait. Though they did it first, they are still immigrants.) Once here, we found ourselves in groups – protestants, ‘natives’, Europeans – and we fought like dogs to each protect our group.
The irony is that it wasn’t just our founding fathers who have felt this isolation and persecution. The ‘Great American Melting Pot’ does not melt things smoothly or quickly. In the 1800s, it was common to see signs that read “No Irish”. In the 1900s the signs read “No Blacks”. Today the signs read “No Mexicans” or “No Gays”. Have we learned nothing?
