Mariama Diallo
To
face the fact that our aliens are already strong enough to take a share in the
direction of their own destiny, and that the strong cultural movements
represented by the foreign press, schools, and colonies are a challenge to our
facile attempts, is not, however, to admit the failure of Americanization. It
is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an
investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean. It is to ask ourselves
whether our ideal has been broad or narrow--whether perhaps the time has not
come to assert a higher ideal than the "melting-pot" Surely we cannot
be certain of our spiritual democracy when, claiming to melt the nations within
us to a comprehension of our free and democratic institutions, we fly into
panic at the first sign of their own will and tendency. We act as if we wanted
Americanization to take place only on our own terms, and not by the consent of
the governed. All our elaborate machinery of settlement and school and union,
of social and political naturalization, however, will move with friction just
in so far as it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence
that America shall be what the immigrant will have a hand in making it, and not
what a ruling class, descendant of those British stocks which were the first
permanent immigrants, decide that America shall be made. This is the condition
which confronts us, and which demands a clear and general readjustment of our
attitude and our ideal.
This
paragraph forces us to rethink what Americanization is. The early immigrants
(Anglo Saxon) thought of Americanization as assimilation and many social
institutions were created to support that ideal. In contrast, the experience
and reality of new immigrants in the United States has shown that
Americanization does not necessarily mean assimilation. This due mainly due to
a more diverse group of immigrants that are now coming in the United States. The
fact that the majority if not all the early migrants in America were Christians
made it easier to define it then.
With
today’s diverse immigrants, the social and political development of the last
few decades, Americanization has actually become an ideal; the ideal of freedom
and the right to be whoever you want within the limit of the constitution which
guarantees those freedoms. New immigrants are able to keep their cultures and
traditions while respecting the constitution that afford them that right and
pledging to the flag. It is this diversity and the ingenuity of the
constitution written by our founding fathers that makes America the greatest
country and democracy in the world.
