We are NOT a nation of immigrants

[RavenSky]

I guess we should stop calling America a 'melting pot' too. It's clearly not a pot.

 

[Deepak]

I guess we should stop calling America a 'melting pot' too. It's clearly not a pot.

Depends on which part you're talking about...

 

[bilby]

I guess we should stop calling America a 'melting pot' too. It's clearly not a pot.

Depends on which part you're talking about...

Colorado?

 

[Deepak]

Depends on which part you're talking about...

Colorado?

I was going to say Oklahoma, but yours is better

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

We hear the phrase "We are a nation of immigrants", constantly and it is false.

Currently about 13% of the population is foreign born and can rightfully be called 'immigrant' see data from Brookings

Since this number is about the same as the AA population in the US, it makes about as much sense to say "We are a nation of immigrants" as it would be to say "We are a nation of blacks".

What we are is a nation of citizens.

If you claim it means "we are descended from immigrants", that is an empty platitude which can apply to all persons at all times.

Re: "We are a nation of immigrants."

Here's part of the definition of "of":

preposition
...
2.
(used to indicate derivation, origin, or source):
a man of good family; the plays of Shakespeare; ...
4.
(used to indicate material, component parts, substance, or contents):
a dress of silk; an apartment of three rooms; a book of poems; a package of cheese.

I've highlighted two ways in which the word "of" is used out of many. You are assuming that it means #4 and not #2--derivation. You've also snipped the sentence out of any context so as to justify your interpretation. Typically, when politicians are using such sentence they provide historical context. The phrase seems to have first been used by JFK who wrote a pamphlet A Nation of Immigrants, that was made posthumously into a book, and it is now alluded to by this sentence typically by Democrats. JFK's book was about the history of the US--how we're descended largely from immigrants.

So, yes, that's what it means. Surely, you already knew the meaning of the phrase. It's not really an empty platitude. It's about how many citizens, likely the vast majority, have been impacted by their ancestors' immigrations and the solidarity (empathy) one could feel with the same kinds of issues facing immigrants today.

Your thread is super FAIL. If you wanted to succeed at it, you probably should have skipped the obtuse pretense of literalism and gone right for the part you already understood. Then, you could have followed your attempted deconstruction with how we're most often applying this "we're a nation of immigrants" to the Hispanic populations, but the Hispanic populations by-and-large have some Native American ancestry.

You hear this rhetoric in nearly all political discourse even on the right, which is supposed to be super 'natavist'. Why is it so antithetical to state "we are NOT a nation of immigrants"?

Probably because for a lot of people it'd be hypocritical to deny immigrants into the country solely on the basis of "purity." But it isn't really a phrase used by the far right--the xenophobes and racists just by mainstream Republicans (sometimes).

 

[Malintent]

My ancestors came here in 1604. They also came here in 1920. They fought in every war 'cept the Spanish American one.

My ancestors came here in the early 1900s. The only war they fought in was WWII where my grandfather's unit captured an Italian whore house and ... fortified their position.

I love old war stories.. older the better...

My great, great, great.... great Uncle fought in the Civil War (North). He kept a diary, and the family has it... faded and barely readable due to lack of professional preservation efforts. In it, he wrote often about the bond between him and his war horse. There is a bookmark on a page where he writes about an ambush he fell into during a recon mission with the Calvary. His horse was shot while he was evading and heading back to his camp. The horse later died. The bookmark was made of woven horse hair. We suspect it was from the tail or mane of his beloved horse that he fashioned into that bookmark.

 

[Speakpigeon]

From what I am reading, nobody here is an immigrant but rather just likes calling themselves one....

I am not an immigrant nor is anybody in my family.

Why is it that 87% of people in the US are native born and still cling to this mythos that they are immigrants?

America itself is a recent creation, at least compared to Britain and European countries generaly, which is probably the background reference for Americans of European descent. Massive immigration has been defining America for a long time. It's a major aspect of the American culture whereas the Brits, the French, the German, the Italians, the Spanish people all look back to many centuries of European history to define themselves. As a French person, I see as significant to my cultural identify that Julius Ceasar should have conquered Gaul twenty-one centuries ago. Today, Native Americans I think make less than 1% of the population and most Americans of European descent see themselves as culturally issued for the European civilisation.

Of course you're not an immigrant if you were born in America but your culture, the American culture, it still impregnated with the history of immigration.

I think you're just very, and needlessly, literally minded, and always have been on this forum as far as I can remember. Meaning you don't really try to understand what people say. You just like to stick ever so close to the labels. Communication must be hard work to you.
EB

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

My ancestors came here in the early 1900s. The only war they fought in was WWII where my grandfather's unit captured an Italian whore house and ... fortified their position.

I love old war stories.. older the better...

My great, great, great.... great Uncle fought in the Civil War (North). ...

What a jerk. Didn't he know that ALL FREEDOM MATTERS, not just BLACK FREEDOM?

 

[Malintent]

From what I am reading, nobody here is an immigrant but rather just likes calling themselves one....

I am not an immigrant nor is anybody in my family.

Why is it that 87% of people in the US are native born and still cling to this mythos that they are immigrants?

Is this seriously some kind of complex concept which you have difficulty understanding? It's about as straightforward a point as can be made. Our ancestors immigrated over to the Americas in an attempt to build a better life for themselves (or to build a better life for the slave holders who bought them, as the case may be) and the current generation of immigrants (current can refer to any period in the past couple hundred years) are doing the exact same thing. It's a response to anti-immigration rhetoric that immigration is a net negative to the nation and needs to be curtailed. It's an attempt to reframe the argument by noting that there isn't a difference between those born here and those moving here aside which generation of their family it was that did the moving here so there shouldn't be any wedges put between the two groups.

By this argument one would gather, then, that we are all (all humans on Earth) African Americans (every 'modern' human came from Africa) ... to deny that is to perpetuate racism in America.

I deny being an "African Immigrant", not in an attempt to perpetuate racism, but to avoid useless labels that apply to every living being that serve no purpose.

 

[Malintent]

I love old war stories.. older the better...

My great, great, great.... great Uncle fought in the Civil War (North). ...

What a jerk. Didn't he know that ALL FREEDOM MATTERS, not just BLACK FREEDOM?

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. The Civil war was no more about black people's rights as it was about state versus federal rights to set laws. It was an industrial war.. a war to preserve the cotton industry. Hemp was as much an 'enemy' of the South as the notion of having to raise wages of their workers (from next to nothing to a 'living wage' at the time). Ship building was one of the most lucrative and prevalent industries at that time as well... and ships needed MILES of (then) cotton fiber rope. The development of (Hemp) a lighter weight, cheaper, stronger, more renewable resource for making a superior rope was a major threat to the cotton industry.

In retrospect, the US Civil War motivations were not very much different than the Gulf war motivations... then it was Cotton, and 'today' it was Oil.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Is this seriously some kind of complex concept which you have difficulty understanding? It's about as straightforward a point as can be made. Our ancestors immigrated over to the Americas in an attempt to build a better life for themselves (or to build a better life for the slave holders who bought them, as the case may be) and the current generation of immigrants (current can refer to any period in the past couple hundred years) are doing the exact same thing. It's a response to anti-immigration rhetoric that immigration is a net negative to the nation and needs to be curtailed. It's an attempt to reframe the argument by noting that there isn't a difference between those born here and those moving here aside which generation of their family it was that did the moving here so there shouldn't be any wedges put between the two groups.

By this argument one would gather, then, that we are all (all humans on Earth) African Americans (every 'modern' human came from Africa) ... to deny that is to perpetuate racism in America.

I deny being an "African Immigrant", not in an attempt to perpetuate racism, but to avoid useless labels that apply to every living being that serve no purpose.

But that response only makes sense if you read the statement "We are a nation of immigrants" in a completely context-free manner. It was originally said, and still completely used, as a response to anti-immigration rhetoric which was trying to drive a wedge between current residents and new ones. It's telling them that they should consider their wedge invalid because if they go back a few generations, their family would be on the other side of that wedge. It's a response to the useless labels that you're complaining about.

Of course it's the case that if you take a phrase who's meaning is almost entirely dependent on the context in which it's made and remove that context, the phrase loses a lot of its meaning and can be picked apart due to that lack of meaning as a result. However, that's really nothing more than a strawman argument because the people who actually use the phrase are never using it in the context-free manner that you're picking apart.

 

[Tristan Scott]

What a jerk. Didn't he know that ALL FREEDOM MATTERS, not just BLACK FREEDOM?

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. The Civil war was no more about black people's rights as it was about state versus federal rights to set laws. It was an industrial war.. a war to preserve the cotton industry. Hemp was as much an 'enemy' of the South as the notion of having to raise wages of their workers (from next to nothing to a 'living wage' at the time). Ship building was one of the most lucrative and prevalent industries at that time as well... and ships needed MILES of (then) cotton fiber rope. The development of (Hemp) a lighter weight, cheaper, stronger, more renewable resource for making a superior rope was a major threat to the cotton industry.

In retrospect, the US Civil War motivations were not very much different than the Gulf war motivations... then it was Cotton, and 'today' it was Oil.

Not to continue the derail, but the fact remains, if not for slavery the civil war would never have been fought.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What a jerk. Didn't he know that ALL FREEDOM MATTERS, not just BLACK FREEDOM?

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. The Civil war was no more about black people's rights as it was about state versus federal rights to set laws. It was an industrial war.. a war to preserve the cotton industry. Hemp was as much an 'enemy' of the South as the notion of having to raise wages of their workers (from next to nothing to a 'living wage' at the time). Ship building was one of the most lucrative and prevalent industries at that time as well... and ships needed MILES of (then) cotton fiber rope. The development of (Hemp) a lighter weight, cheaper, stronger, more renewable resource for making a superior rope was a major threat to the cotton industry.

In retrospect, the US Civil War motivations were not very much different than the Gulf war motivations... then it was Cotton, and 'today' it was Oil.

Well, the people in the Slave Holding States may have an issue with your ignoring the plain and straightforward reasons they gave for starting the war.

 

[Malintent]

Of course you're not an immigrant if you were born in America but your culture, the American culture, it still impregnated with the history of immigration.

So then if "Cultural Appropriation" is a 'thing' we avoid, then there either is no such thing as American culture (because we are all immigrants with our immigrant culture intact), or the existence of any distinct American culture is an ethical problem, representing the appropriation of various cultures.

I reject that at face value. Somewhere you need to draw a crosshatch in the timeline and say - "...and here is where America became a distinct culture of Americans". I am of the opinion that line can be drawn hundreds of years ago.. .around the time of the third generation of people born here (that had no living relatives from their Motherland left here).

 

[Speakpigeon]

Of course you're not an immigrant if you were born in America but your culture, the American culture, it still impregnated with the history of immigration.

So then if "Cultural Appropriation" is a 'thing' we avoid, then there either is no such thing as American culture (because we are all immigrants with our immigrant culture intact), or the existence of any distinct American culture is an ethical problem, representing the appropriation of various cultures.

Or people are reading too much into the cross-over between cultures. For one thing, cultural appropriation cannot possibly not happen and cannot be avoided altogether. Second, American culture is characterised by its history of a high level of immigration as distinct from the cross-overs between the various immigrant cultures. You would still have this idea of a nation of immigrants if America was 99 percent British descendants with only the one percent of Native Americans. Thirdly, this idea that cultural appropriation is an ethical problem fails to discriminate between the many different behaviours leading to cultural cross-overs. Some behaviours may be best avoided but not all should and not all will.

I reject that at face value. Somewhere you need to draw a crosshatch in the timeline and say - "...and here is where America became a distinct culture of Americans". I am of the opinion that line can be drawn hundreds of years ago.. .around the time of the third generation of people born here (that had no living relatives from their Motherland left here).

America is definitely a distinct culture, characterised by a historically high level of more or less recent immigration.

Your suggestion is also tantamount to excluding from the "American culture" just those people who happened to arrive after your cut-off date. Just on your saying so?
EB

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What a jerk. Didn't he know that ALL FREEDOM MATTERS, not just BLACK FREEDOM?

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. The Civil war was no more about black people's rights as it was about state versus federal rights to set laws. It was an industrial war.. a war to preserve the cotton industry. Hemp was as much an 'enemy' of the South as the notion of having to raise wages of their workers (from next to nothing to a 'living wage' at the time). Ship building was one of the most lucrative and prevalent industries at that time as well... and ships needed MILES of (then) cotton fiber rope. The development of (Hemp) a lighter weight, cheaper, stronger, more renewable resource for making a superior rope was a major threat to the cotton industry.

In retrospect, the US Civil War motivations were not very much different than the Gulf war motivations... then it was Cotton, and 'today' it was Oil.

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. It was actually about slavery and historians today agree on that.

Don't feel bad, one of my ancestors joined the Maine volunteer army to fight the slave holding states, too. Fucking damn SJW's.

 

[Malintent]

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. The Civil war was no more about black people's rights as it was about state versus federal rights to set laws. It was an industrial war.. a war to preserve the cotton industry. Hemp was as much an 'enemy' of the South as the notion of having to raise wages of their workers (from next to nothing to a 'living wage' at the time). Ship building was one of the most lucrative and prevalent industries at that time as well... and ships needed MILES of (then) cotton fiber rope. The development of (Hemp) a lighter weight, cheaper, stronger, more renewable resource for making a superior rope was a major threat to the cotton industry.

In retrospect, the US Civil War motivations were not very much different than the Gulf war motivations... then it was Cotton, and 'today' it was Oil.

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. It was actually about slavery and historians today agree on that.

Don't feel bad, one of my ancestors joined the Maine volunteer army to fight the slave holding states, too. Fucking damn SJW's.

The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world

There were multiple issues, but the idea that it was about "equal rights for all humans" is revisionist bullshit. Follow the money... it was about the impact of the disruption of the status quo. long after the civil war was over, the question on whether black people were to be classified as "humans" for which rights existed, continued on for quite some time.

did Lincoln grant rights to property, privilege, and the democratic process to black people? No. he didn't. He just made them 'not-property'
If the north wanted slaves to be freed, it was not because they felt they were human beings with equal rights to white people... it was to disrupt the economic stranglehold that the south had over the northern territory ports.

 

[Malintent]

So then if "Cultural Appropriation" is a 'thing' we avoid, then there either is no such thing as American culture (because we are all immigrants with our immigrant culture intact), or the existence of any distinct American culture is an ethical problem, representing the appropriation of various cultures.

Or people are reading too much into the cross-over between cultures. For one thing, cultural appropriation cannot possibly not happen and cannot be avoided altogether. Second, American culture is characterised by its history of a high level of immigration as distinct from the cross-overs between the various immigrant cultures. You would still have this idea of a nation of immigrants if America was 99 percent British descendants with only the one percent of Native Americans. Thirdly, this idea that cultural appropriation is an ethical problem fails to discriminate between the many different behaviours leading to cultural cross-overs. Some behaviours may be best avoided but not all should and not all will.

I reject that at face value. Somewhere you need to draw a crosshatch in the timeline and say - "...and here is where America became a distinct culture of Americans". I am of the opinion that line can be drawn hundreds of years ago.. .around the time of the third generation of people born here (that had no living relatives from their Motherland left here).

America is definitely a distinct culture, characterised by a historically high level of more or less recent immigration.

Your suggestion is also tantamount to excluding from the "American culture" just those people who happened to arrive after your cut-off date. Just on your saying so?
EB

I do not mean to imply that 'after the cut off date' you are an immigrant, and not a "real" American. I can see how that was interpreted.
Let me rephrase... ANY person who was born here, and has no living relatives here that were not born here, are not 'immigrants' in the sense of the word in this context ("America is a nation of immigrants", that is).

There was a time in American history where there was a mass exodus of Europeans into America... at that time, we certainly were a nation of immigrants.. but that time is over... you might as well say that we are a nation of slave owners... a relic of the distant past.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

There were multiple issues, but the idea that it was about "equal rights for all humans" is revisionist bullshit. Follow the money... it was about the impact of the disruption of the status quo. long after the civil war was over, the question on whether black people were to be classified as "humans" for which rights existed, continued on for quite some time.

did Lincoln grant rights to property, privilege, and the democratic process to black people? No. he didn't. He just made them 'not-property'
If the north wanted slaves to be freed, it was not because they felt they were human beings with equal rights to white people... it was to disrupt the economic stranglehold that the south had over the northern territory ports.

OK, your revisionist white-washing of history aside, who was it that referred to the Confederacy as "The Slave Holding States"? Was it:

A) A derogatory term made up by the Northerners to demonize their opponent
B) What the Southern States called themselves while clearly and specifically describing slavery as the issue that was causing them to secede from the US

 

[Tristan Scott]

Funny how this notion still perpetuates. It was actually about slavery and historians today agree on that.

Don't feel bad, one of my ancestors joined the Maine volunteer army to fight the slave holding states, too. Fucking damn SJW's.

The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world

There were multiple issues, but the idea that it was about "equal rights for all humans" is revisionist bullshit. Follow the money... it was about the impact of the disruption of the status quo. long after the civil war was over, the question on whether black people were to be classified as "humans" for which rights existed, continued on for quite some time.

did Lincoln grant rights to property, privilege, and the democratic process to black people? No. he didn't. He just made them 'not-property'
If the north wanted slaves to be freed, it was not because they felt they were human beings with equal rights to white people... it was to disrupt the economic stranglehold that the south had over the northern territory ports.

All of the issues you are referring to, economics of the South, States Rights, all of them come back to slavery. The south's economy was almost entirely agrarian, and dependent on slave labor. The South wanted to retain their sovereign right to slavery. The argument that the civil war was about anything but slavery is utter revisionist bullshit.

As to Lincoln securing rights for black people, he was barely able to secure their freedom from slavery.