"THIS IS A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS"

“This is a nation of immigrants.”

I read or hear this statement, or something like it, often. For example, candidates for the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States use this statement to make the point that this is not a country just for white people who, somehow, are already here. And yes, I have used the phrase.

But think about it; what does this statement really mean? 

The United States was founded by white, Christian, immigrant men from northern Europe and their male descendants. The Nation these men founded excluded: the native people (male and female) who were on the land before the immigrants arrived (they were actually colonizers), immigrant women, and the African slaves (male and female) owned by the immigrant men. This was all dictated by the Constitution these white, immigrant men wrote and ratified. So yes, this is a Nation of immigrants.

But, most people who use the phrase “this is a nation of immigrants” don’t mean it the way I just laid it out. What they mean is that the things we have in the USA today are the result of the ideas and aspirations and plans and businesses created by immigrants, with each generation of immigrants bringing that much more to the successes of our society. 

But I’m changed by this thought exercise. Once again, I can glimpse - hopefully see fully naked - the truth of the racist core of America, the institutionalized part that we all live in and by, and that we don’t truly comprehend that by it’s very nature and history, the United States of America is a nation of 18th century white, Christian, European immigrant men. We don’t really stop and think before we say “this is a nation of immigrants,” because we don’t recognize, let alone accept, the racism inherent in that phrase. 

The objective is not to blame, it is to fully understand. Only by understanding it do we have any hope of pulling it out of our communal core. 

This is a Nation created on a landscape once occupied by diverse nations and tribes of people who were replaced through a prolonged genocide starting with colonialists/occupiers from Europe.

This is a Nation by white men who overthrew rule by an English monarch and established a Constitution based on representative democratic rule.

This is a Nation in which the Constitution created by white 18th century men left out native people, women, and the African slaves owned by the white men.

This is a Nation in which government and corporate rules and laws grew out of the instructions inherent in the Constitution written and ratified by white, immigrant men, and only major and prolonged efforts by excluded members of society (women and African-Americans and Native Americans and Latin Americans and all the Everything-Americans struggling alongside them) resulted in changes to the Constitution that technically include these people in the official “We.” 

This is a Nation, over the course of more than 2 centuries, that has been populated by immigrants from around the world, many of whom were discriminated against and made wage slaves or outright enslaved, and those immigrants and their descendants built the society we live in today upon the foundation laid by the 18th century white, immigrant men.

If you say all of that, then I will accept it. 

—-

January 4, 2020

written after reading the poem “How Easily the White Professor Forgets” by Emmett Wheatfall 

(Our Scarlet Blue Wounds. 2019. Fernwood Press, Oregon).