On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was teaching a large lecture class. I ran through what we knew and what we didn’t know at that point on that terrible day.
What I remember best was the reaction of the students. Those familiar with New York were devastated. Many of the others seemed fascinated, as if it were all a video game.
Except for the Arab-Americans. They quickly and quietly just got up and left. They didn’t know what it was all about. But they all had a really good idea who everyone else would blame.
By the way, when I was a child, we thought there weren’t any Arabs in Michigan. That’s because immigrants of that day wanted to assimilate as fast as possible. They wore western clothing, struggled to learn English, and didn’t teach their kids the old language.
Years later, I went to Argentina and encountered a society that looked like an alternate universe America. It seemed to be a melting pot where nothing was melting.
English Argentines went to their clubs, spoke their language and stayed to themselves. So did the Italians and the Germans.
There wasn’t much of a national identity, or sense of Argentina first. And the country, which should have been rich, wasn’t doing well.
Today, we seem to be having temperature control problems on our melting pot. Some newer immigrants don’t want to learn English.
And people who should know better are giving new arrivals a hard time. So here’s the scoop.
We are all immigrants, even if your Native American ancestors walked across the Bering Strait. Nobody’s leaving, and nobody has to wear anybody else’s uniform.
So let’s just deal with that, and in the immortal words of one of our more pathetic citizens, let’s just all get along.
Comments