Trans-national America

by Katherine Pena

Assignment Due: 2/20

                           

“We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us, they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of 'giving themselves without reservation' to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land. They invented no new social framework. Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material resources”. By Randolph S. Bourne

In the United States we have many different cultures of foreign-born people called Immigrants, some Mexican, German, Jamaican, and African. Each foreign country and its people have a set of ideologies and way of doing things when it comes to daily life or even politics, this is what i like to call or see as a culture. If we were to call every person whom we may see on the street immigrant then it can be said that every immigrant then comes from the same place and all do the same things, correct? When Randolph says “if distinctions are to be made between us, they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness” he means that we as an immigrant population should be individualized by something other than just being foreign. In reality different immigrant cultures may dress differently like for example most people of Muslim descent dress a certain way and this way we are aware of their “culture”. Some eat different things and customs may differ greatly from American values, accents in language are mostly the biggest indicator of nationality or descent. In some aspects physical features becomes very prominent in some cultures helping individualize us as different types of foreign immigrants.

I personally chose this paragraph because it hits close to home as i am immigrant born and of Immigrant descent.  As many of our ancestors came to America to escape either persecution in their homelands or poverty and the promise of a brighter future in the new world so did my grandparents and my mother. I can attest to the fact that my family migrated to earn with hard work the so called “American Dream”, and not necessarily to become Americanized and leave their old ways or lives behind in our respective country. While growing up i could hear stories of the hardships and war/dictatorship my great grandparents and grandparents were persecuted for and desperate to flee and how they thought long and hard how coming to America would give them the right to run their businesses and make them more profitable without having to pay corrupt officials or pay high taxes to keep the rich richer and the poor just as that. They wanted to just live with freedom, plain and simple freedom to be able to keep their ways but also take advantage of what this country had to offer. I have always kept the traditions and customs that my ancestors had and live in a neighborhood predominantly of people from my country, with our own restaurants, corners delis, supermarkets all owned by us, which only reinforces the fact that we all just want the right to live as we would in our homelands just without the fear or chaos of an old world. We can see this when we visit Chinatown, little Italy etc. where tradition is kept in a new world but community growth is abundant and traditions/custom are very much alive even though we live in America "The big melting pot of diversity".