Hyphens

I remember in the 1960s, our history teachers were fond of saying that the United States was a melting pot made up of people from every country in the world all blended together and thus distinguishable only as “Americans.” In the 1970s my history teachers told me we were a salad bowl, with many ethnicities tossed together but retaining distinctive cultural peculiarities. No matter how much dressing is applied, you don’t totally blend in. And now we find the age of hyphens.

A political cartoon the other day had a Democratic Party (but it could have been any government-related form) questionnaire seeking to put someone in a box through endless categories of ethnic identification (stereotypes?). It seems to me that the idea of being an American, whether of the melting pot or salad bowel variety is no longer a valid category. For years I filled in the part on the census asking my race with “100 yard dash” but I guess that is also passé since we now sprint in meters.

I love researching family genealogy and discovering I am part English (Anglo-Saxon and Frankish) as well as Scottish, and German (several tribes no doubt) all blended together to form, what? Well, how about “American?” You non-mutts who think you are just pure Korean or Ashanti or whatever, I’d wager if you could look back far enough, you might discover Ghengis Khan, or some other conqueror who overran your land, lurking in your genetic code somewhere. Not to take anything away from ethnic heritage, we all love to know who we are, and that is the beauty of being an American-all the different ingredients of all the individuals thrown together in one country. I think something is lost though, when we create all the special interest categories of take-your-hyphenated pick-American. E Pluribus Unum applies to the states. In some sense it used to apply to the population also.

What does an American look like? Watch the Olympic games and you might see a good cross-section. Or better yet, consider the professional golfer, Tiger Woods-who will likely become the first athlete to earn a billion dollars. Why pick Woods? His father was a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Vietnam War veteran who happened to be 50% African, 25% Chinese, and 25% “Native” American. His mother’ ingredients were 50% Thai, 25% Chinese, 25% Dutch. Tiger Woods calls himself “Cablinasian.” Whatever the ethnic potpourri, that is a quintessential American, and an efficient mix to produce a golf champion.

The study of American history is, in part, the study of immigrants though we don’t usually think of it that way. Even the clans that were already here when the English settlers arrived in 1607,had come from somewhere back in the mists of time. The Bible says of Christians that there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female. Why can’t we have, there is neither Micronesian nor Aleut, black nor white-just American?

Bill Potter