AMERICAN CIVLIZATION

SEMINAR ONE

AMERICA: WHAT COMES TO MIND? Icons: culture specific image

AMERICANA

VARIOUS WAYS TO DESCRIBE AMERICA A nation of nations Society of Immigrants A nation of people with a fresh memory

of old traditions, who dare to explore new frontiers

”America is a mistake, a giant mistake” (Freud)

CIVILIZATION vs. WILDERNESS Coca colonization

AMERICA

What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from." ~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. ~Robert Orben

America: Where a man can say what he thinks, if he isn't afraid of his wife, his boss, his customer, his neighbors, or the government. ~Joe Moore

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. ~John Updike

METAPHORS DESCRIBING AMERICAN CULTURE Melting pot: loss of original culture,

W.A.S.P. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Salad bowl: ethnic enclaves live side by

side Symphony: : polivocality Rainbow: : Many colors Kaleidoscope

MELTING POT

The dominant paradigm until the 1960s St. Jean de Crévecoeur: promiscuous breed: ”a mixture

of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes” (1782)

”What then is the American, this new man? He is neither an European, nor a descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other country […] He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government, he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world”

MELTING POT

”The energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles and Cossacks, and all the European tribes,—and of the Africans, and of the Polynesians—will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state.” (Emerson)

”You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. […] We are not a nation so much as a world” (Melville Redburn 1849 )

”America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming! […] God is making the American […] He will be the fusion of all races, the coming superman” (Israel Zangwill 1908)

BEYOND THE MELTING POT

”The alien, who comes here from Europe is not the raw material Americans suppose him to be. He is not a blank sheet to be written on as you see fit, he brings with him a deep-rooted tradition, a system of culture, taste, and habits that comes into conflict with America as soon as he landed.” (Marcus Ravage Eli)

Salad bowl, mosaic: groups with similar national and ethnic backgrounds living side by side preserving old identities, cultures, customs (Chinatown, Little Italy)

BEYOND THE MELTING POT

Other explanations: static, constant change is not indicated

Lawrence Fuchs: Kaleidoscope theory, reflecting the dynamics of ethnicity: ”American ethnicity is kaleidoscopic: complex and varied, changing form, pattern, color… continually shifting from one set of relations to another, rapidly changing”

Virágos: a dynamic system entailing the interaction of a primary core and several secondary cores, parallel cultures

THE STORY OF AMERICANS

A story of immigration and diversity Celebration of diversity and cultural

heritage

NATIVE AMERICANS

Arrived 28,000 B.C At the time of Columbian landfall: 1,5

million At first relatively friendly relations, Pocahontas, helps John Smith, 1608,

First Thanksgiving 1621 Worsening of relations: encroachment

on territory, religious expansionism, undermining Indian culture

NATIVE AMERICANS

Jamestown Massacre, 1622 Powhatan, Openchancanaugh

Indian is the archetypal enemy Declaration of Independence ”Merciless

savages” 1838: Trail of Tears 1876: Battle of Little Big Horn Custer’s Last

Stand 1890: Wounded Knee massacre, Indian:

vanishing American

NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE Place names: Massachussetts, Michigan,

Mississippi, Idaho Corn, tomato, potato, tobacco Canoes, snowshoes, moccassins Guerilla warfare, fighting tactics,

skirmishes

THE GOLDEN DOOR

First great wave of immigration between 1840-1860: Old Immigration, Irish, Germans,

New Immigration: Non-WASP, Eastern, Central Europe, 1880-1924

Symbolic processing point: Ellis Island Statue of Liberty: „give me your tired, your

poor, huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, and I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

Reaction: nativism, 1924: Johnson-Reed Immigration Bill rejection of immigrants

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE

Bible: City upon a hill—John Winthrop’s speech (1630) mission concept, American exceptionalism

Roman heritage: latin expressions E pluribus unum One out of many Novus ordo seclorum: New order for the world English background, but Thomas Paine:

Europe, and not England is the parent country of America

Virtuous Republic

A MODELL OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY For wee must Consider that wee shall be as a

Citty upon a Hill A city that is set on the hill cannot be híd.

Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.

The eies of all people are uppon Us, soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken, and soe casue him to withdraw his present help from us, wee shall be made a story, and a by-word through the world

THE AMERICAN MISSION CONCEPT

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

UNWILLING IMMIGRANTS

1619: First Africans arrive 1619-1808 Importation of slaves 1865: Elimination of slavery 1896-1954: Segregation: legally

justified separation of the races Plessy v. Ferguson 1896: separate but

equal Brown v. Board of Education 1954

separate but equal has no place

SEGREGATION

FIGHTING SEGREGATION

The separate but equal doctrine has failed in three important respects. First it is inconsistent with the fundamental equalitarianism of the American way of life in that it marks groups with the brand of inferior status. Secondly, where it has been followed, the results have been separate and unequal facilities for minority peoples. Finally, it has kept people apart despite incontrovertible evidence that an environment favorable to civil rights is fostered whenever groups are permitted to live and work together.

President's Committee on Civil Rights, 1947

CIVIL RIGHTS

1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott 1963: Martin Luther King I have a Dream 1964: Civil Rights Act 1965: Voting Rights Act the revolution of rising

expectations, Malcolm X Affirmative Action-positive discrimination,

compensatory policy for past suffering, preferential treatment for minorities, women in housing, employment, and education ,Bakke v. U.C. Davis

I have a dream….

NATIVISM: Not all welcome?

Rejection of immigrants Indian resistance to settlers William Bradford: mixed multitude,

bestiality Benjamin Franklin: palatine boors 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act 1907: Gentlemen’s Agreement 1915 Ku Klux Klan against immigrants William Simmons: America is a garbage

can

NATIVISM William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, Norton Anthology of American Literature,

Third Edition, From Book II, Chapter XXXII, Anno Dom: 1642 [A HORRIBLE CASE OF BEASTIALITY] And after the time of the writing of these things befell a very sad accident of the like

foul nature in this government, this very year, which I shall now relate. There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger. He was servant to an

honest man of Duxbury, being about 16 or 17 years of age. (His father and mother lived at the same time at Scituate.) He was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx. 15 and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.

NATIVIST VOICES

”men of the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe made up the main force of immigrants, but now ‘multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland who had neither skill nor energy nor an initiative of quick intelligence were coming.” (Woodrow Wilson 1901)

”wide open and unguarded stand our gates, and through them presses a wild, a motley throng, who bring with them unknown gods and rites.” (Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1892)

NEW IMMIGRATION PATTERNS 1945: Main source: Latin America,

Southeast Asia 1978: Elimination of hemispheric quotas,

opening the door wider 1990: Revised immigration law:

admitting 675,000 immigrants each year Diversity visas for countries with few

immigrants (Bangladesh, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago)

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Approximately 5 million people 1986: Simpson-Mazzoli bill: amnesty to

illegal aliens Strong penalties for businesses hiring

illegal immigrants

CRUCIAL TERMS

Explain the following: Frontier, polivocality, diversity Encroachment, archetypal, vanishing Nativism, heritage, segregation Compensatory policy