Phil Thrash

Part 2. “Long Essay”   “We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident?”     

      “That all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” written

by T. Jefferson, from “The Declaration of Independence.”  The “We” in the passage was the “Dominant Culture” of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Catholic men who signed The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.   This piece of history provides the motivation for the immigrants who were the antecedents to the signers as well as subsequent immigrants from the “Old World” to the “New World,” in search of freedom to have life, liberty and to pursue happiness.  The words are bastion and hope of the “American Dream.”  The words may be pieces of hot coals of forgotten U.S. promises in the mouths of the Native Americans, and unforgotten chains of injustices to the Afro-Americans.  This paper will examine immigrant narratives, minority narratives and a few of the “in between” narratives to explore how and if these “Truths” really are self-evident in the “American Dream” in context with our class objective and readings.

     “Soap and Water” by Yezierska, a second generation Jew, and a survivor of some Russian Pogroms is a quintessential example of the immigrant narrative.  She and her mother fled Russia for their lives in hope of finding freedom in America, exemplifying the dynamics and stages of the immigrant narrative’s Objectives 1 and 2, Stage 1: Leave the Old World, and Stage 2: Journey to the New World, Stage 3: Shock, discrimination, and an attempt at Stage 4: Assimilation to the Dominant American Culture.  The narrator was pulling herself up by the “bootstraps,” exhibiting the freedom to pursue happiness, by getting a college education while working grueling hours at the laundry.  Then upon completion of degree requirements faced the egregious discrimination by Ms. Whiteside who was going to withhold her degree due to her dirty unkempt appearance.  Ms. Whiteside became the epitome of arbitrary and capricious discriminations of the “We” in the title of this piece, which lends doubt to the narrator whether she was created “equal” or not. The narrator did not give up her belief in the “American Dream,” and with some kindness from another professor, found herself at last by “finding America.”    

     “The English Lesson” by Mohr a second generation New York born Puerto Rican, brings together parts of Objective 2: “Assimilation as a “melting pot” in her treatment of a various mix of immigrants trying to learn English, from the third generation of German immigrants Ms. Hammas.   Lali and William Colon, a dwarf, spent their Tuesday nights away from Lali’s husband Rudi’s diner to study English with 28 other immigrants of varied nationalities, including 3 Chinese, 2 Dominican Republicans, one Sicilian and a Polish Jew.  All of these people seemed to me to be part of the “Model Minorities” who wanted to better themselves for one reason or another.  Interestingly, one of the Dominican Republicans, Diego Torres, vehemently rejected assimilation in his tirade towards Ms. Hammas.  He wanted the economic opportunities the U.S. would provide, but he vociferously maintained his cultural background, a resistance to assimilation. Lali was a complex character, as she showed the unusual characteristic of wanting “gender” independence, and dreading the last class, and sure return to her rough-shod Rudi.

      James Baldwin’s “No Name in the Street” seems to be representative of Afro-American minority literature and an angry criticism against the dominant culture and his own “Black Brothers.”    The intellectual and successful Baldwin reunites with one of his high school cronies after MLK’s funeral.  The friend is a postman, buying a house and apparently living a satisfactory life.  The pre dinner conversation leads to the friend using the “Hot Word We” to describe and grant his approval to what “We are doing in Vietnam.”   The “We” is in context with the dominant culture in Baldwin’s essay, and he launches into profanity and proposed violence on his friend for assuming to be part of the “enemy We.”   The rest of the evening was quiet, and Baldwin left empty of the anticipated fried chicken but filled instead with doubts of his objectivity, and or perhaps a reevaluation of being so judgmental towards his friend.  He thought, “This was what MLK wanted, freedom for our race, so they could choose their happiness.”   Baldwin’s piece is complex as it does reflect his, and a Black Color Code, of disenchantment with the “social contract” imposed by the dominant culture, yet, he sees a degree of the “freedom” which MLK espoused so eloquently.

     Chrystos was born in San Francisco in 1946 and associates herself with her father who was of Native American Menominee minority ancestry; however, instead of the reservation, she grew up in the city around Black, Latino, Asian, and white people and identifies herself as an “Urban Indian.”  Her poem “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government” is an intensely personal recrimination of the United States Dominant Culture and reflects Course Objective Three of a comparison of the immigrant narrative and minority narrative and a visual and oral picture of the “American Nightmare.”   The visual presentation of the poem shows her condemnation and rejection of accepted syntax and structure.  The lines are 1 ½ spaces vs. single or double spaced.  There are two spaces between words, and there is no punctuation.  The form, I submit, has the spaces betweens words to emphasize the pauses in the oral delivery, which constituted most Native American stories, passed generation to generation. She rejects the dominant culture’s writing format as well as “names or terms on old sorry paper” the broken treaties of the dominant culture.  She shows similarities with some immigrants of marginalization, yet the Native Americans suffered U.S. pogroms to promote the dominant culture’s “pursuit of happiness.”  She rejects the “Social Contract” or treaty in her parting words from the poem, “Take these words back with you”

     From the “In Between” I looked at June Jordan’s “Report From The Bahamas.”   Jordan a Black woman was born in Harlem of Jamaican parents.  My first take was that she was an angry snobbish black woman in an identity crisis, but I calmed down as I read and saw her ire as fire of a consumed author.  She was being hyper critical of the Black Bahamian working class at the hotel she was occupying in  Bahamas, which to me was senseless, as I feel that any work is noble, as long as it is legal and not injurious to persons or property.  Jordan was trying to connect with her background during her vacation and got hung up on class-status-race consciousness.  She even mentioned the “White” Delta pilots, this was particularly irksome to me as my combat crewmembers in Vietnam consisted of an Irish Co-pilot, a Black Flight Engineer, a Japanese Navigator and a Russian Loadmaster, and we were all in Vietnam to do what LBJ said, “win the hearts and minds of those little people to save them from the ravages of Communism.”  No more digression, yet that piece of literature of war does say wonders for assimilation in the U.S. Military.  As a result of my past diversity experiences in aviation, I thought her remark was unfounded.   She yearned for Easter back home with her parents.   She encountered an abused South African, abused by an alcoholic husband.  In her search for help for the black student, she found a white Irish lady who took the abused student under her wing for protection.  Jordan‘s piece reflects a “reverse color code” initially, when she is consumed with the mundane aspects of her identity connection.   When the “connection stakes” are raised to survival of the Black South African girl, Jordan grows in a gender connection across races with the Irish rescuer to transcend racial issues to rise to a higher level of humanity in saving a human life.  She may have gotten closer to Objective 3:  which crosses to “New Immigrant Identity” of Objective 6.

      Edwidge Danticat’s, Haitian born “Children Of The Sea” is an “In between” narrative reflecting the immigrant’s pilgrimage or escape from sure death to survival.  These Haitian “Boat People” were experiencing unimaginable inhumane acts perpetrated on them by their “dominant majority” or government leaders.  They took suicidal chances to get to the “American Dream” of freedom.  The parallels of their torments by their government reflect what this early U.S. dominant culture did to the African-Americans and Native Americans.  The literature reflects the realities of what the Haitians were leaving and the hope they had in America.  They are experiencing a Haitian Nightmare in search of their freedom represented by their mental pictures of America.  This literature is associated with parts of Objective 3: dealing with “New World Immigrants,” especially the Afro-Caribbean.  A sad piece of history reflective of the Spanish Importation of African Slaves into the New World after 1492.   

     I think that the viewpoints of the examined literature answers this essay’s title or question. It is not evident that all persons are created equal from the viewpoint of the dominant culture.  When you narrow the question down to the particular narrative, immigrant, minority or “in-between,” the question becomes less clear or maybe more clear.  Maybe we all are created equal, but maybe we have different dreams from what the dominant culture thinks is the “American Dream.”