History of a literary radical, and other essaysBourne, Randolph Silliman
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History of a literary radical, and other essays
Bourne, Randolph Silliman
American essays -- 20th century
If freedom means the right to do pretty much as one pleases, so long as
one does not interfere with others, the immigrant has found freedom,
and the ruling element has been singularly liberal in its treatment
of the invading hordes. But if freedom means a democratic coöperation
in determining the ideals and purposes and industrial and social
institutions of a country, then the immigrant has not been free, and
the Anglo-Saxon element is guilty of just what every dominant race
is guilty of in every European country: the imposition of its own
culture upon the minority peoples. The fact that this imposition has
been so mild and, indeed, semi-conscious does not alter its quality.
And the war has brought out just the degree to which that purpose of
“Americanizing,” that is to say, “Anglo-Saxonizing,” the immigrant has
failed.
For the Anglo-Saxon now in his bitterness to turn upon the other
peoples, talk about their “arrogance,” scold them for not being melted
in a pot which never existed, is to betray the unconscious purpose
which lay at the bottom of his heart. It betrays too the possession
of a racial jealousy similar to that of which he is now accusing the
so-called “hyphenates.” Let the Anglo-Saxon be proud enough of the
heroic toil and heroic sacrifices which moulded the nation. But let
him ask himself, if he had had to depend on the English descendants,
where he would have been living to-day. To those of us who see in the
exploitation of unskilled labor the strident red _leit-motif_ of our
civilization, the settling of the country presents a great social drama
as the waves of immigration broke over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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