Immigrant Song

It is easy for a white Western European to say, “They're not assimilating like we did.” It's true, our ancestors managed to maintain their sense of cultural heritage while assuming the identity of true Americans, and did so for the most part with little effort. I myself am an immigrant; becoming an American was as natural for me as leaving the Old World was for my father after the devastation and horror of World War Two. But we assimilated into a culture that was pretty much already the same as the one we left. Our ancestors shaped the prevailing white Western European culture here. The Spanish, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Germans, the Norwegians, the Danish all were crucial in making colonial and later revolutionary America a melting pot – for Spaniards, Brits, French, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, Norwegians and Danes. Our ancestors did not assimilate at all, if you think about it. They brought their cultures with them and forced them down the throats of the indigenous peoples across the length of the New World. Their motto could easily have been: “Assimilate or die.” Join our culture or suffer the consequences. Conquerors do not assimilate. In fact, when we began inviting laborers from other parts of Europe, and Asia, we wanted their labor but we pushed against their culture. Even the Irish, themselves Western Europeans, were met with hostility. Still another entire group of people we imported as a labor force – free labor, against their will. So what worries us about immigrants? Do we fear that the Muslim world will do to us what our ancestors did across the globe? Or are we simply afraid to lose our white supremacy? Inquiring minds want to know.