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Why don't minorities that don't want to be American just go back to their homelands instead of starting a new China town or Puerto Rican village in our cities? Maybe there should be more laws restricting that sort of thing. I can only imagine those people don't like "white" people or people who act "white".
People were saying the same thing in the late 19th and early 20th century immigrants for Poland, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Germany, and various other European countries. If you've studied history it's not at all unusual for immigrant populations to form ethnic and cultural enclaves. It usually takes about two to three generations for a particular ethnic group to branch out of their enclaves.
It's also indicative of this country’s history of discrimination against various immigrants and ethnic groups. If an immigrant group is facing hostility and discrimination from native born Americans who feel this country is uniquely "Theirs" wouldn't it make sense for them to band together based on their cultural values, interest and lifestyles?
If you want to know what mainstream American culture is, look at the fundamental cultural features that make Americas founding ethnic groups indistinguishable today. English-Americans, German-Americans, and Irish-Americans in particular.
-They are English speakers and see the canon of English and early Anglo-American literature as its literary inheritance with some significant Germanic influence. From Mother Goose to the Brothers Grimm to Shakespeare to Charles Dickens to Ethan Fromme to Mark Twain, etc.
-The Western art music tradition (Classical music from western and Central Europe) and the conflation of Western folk and African folk music form its past and present musically.
-A system of law and justice based on influences ranging from the Magna Carta, English Common Law, and Classical Philosophy. In other words, principles of managing a state based on Anglo-Germanic and Greco-Roman principles.
-Western Christianity temperered, historically, with Classical Philosophy.
-Social Tolerance and Equality (I know a lot of people will disbelieve this one, but on the balance, no culture has embraced equality and tolerance like western Europe and the U.S., slavery and colonialism, notwithstanding.)
So what do all those features look like? Like a post-Colonial, liberal (in the broadest, non-political sense) derivative of post Reformation English and German culture.
That is mainstream American culture and the main influences on it in the post-war era are coming not from the other elements in the 'tossed salad' per se, but from the pervasive post-modernist, politically correct influences that insist that the tossed salad would taste just as good with lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes as with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and about five pounds of salt.
Having self-segregated cultures in America (such as Chinatowns) is not in itself a bad thing, but when the size of those communities becomes large enough and/or disenfranchised enough to challenge the status quo, it becomes a problem.
Chinatowns are an example of success in multi-culturalism in that the residents have come to terms with adopting enough of the American worldview to allow them to succeed in America without giving up their identity. The situation with Islam in Europe is very different. They are far more numerous in proportion to the host population and they not only want to maintain their identity, they want to move it onto their adopted shores wholesale while snubbing the indigenous European culture that blindly welcomes them with open arms.
Why don't minorities that don't want to be American just go back to their homelands instead of starting a new China town or Puerto Rican village in our cities? Maybe there should be more laws restricting that sort of thing. I can only imagine those people don't like "white" people or people who act "white".
Your reference to Puerto Rico doesn't quite make it. Puerto Rico was taken over by the US against the will of the Puerto Rican people, and the island continues to be a US territory. Puerto Ricans have the same right to legal migration from the island to, say, New York or Orlando, as any person born in California has the right to migrate to Nevada. Puerto Ricans are all born US citizens.
President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to the American Defense Society in 1919:
Quote:
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American.
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Bingo! Well said.
You hit the nail on the head.
People use to come to our country and assimilate.
They accepted our culture. Not to say they did not continue with their traditions and enjoy their culture, but they were eager to join in and became an "American!". They didn't try to force their culture on their new country.
It is not so easy like you wrote. Many immigrants were political and other came for money. When collected amount of money which they wanted they went back home.
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