Phil Thrash 

Pogroms: Some Effects on and Causes by the Dominant U. S. Culture

     My first Immigrant Literature Course reading for June 1, 2006, “Soap and Water,” introduced the word “pogrom” to me in the sentence, “I had become a refugee from the Russian pogroms, aflame with dreams of America.” (Yezierska p. 109)   I finished the poignant story by Anzia Yezierska, before looking up the definition of pogrom. After reviewing the dictionary definition, I got on line and captured the Wikipedia version of pogrom: “Pogrom: To wreak havoc, demolish violently through attack on a particular group; ethnic, religious or other, primarily by destruction of their environment.”  (Wikipedia p.1)  An epiphany was beginning to stir in me on a subject which I have been trying to reconcile for the past 37 years, from when I arrived in Vietnam until the present moment.  This journal’s quest is to answer, “What was the foundation of my socio-religious-political beliefs, those beliefs of the apparent “Dominant Culture,” and how did they evolve, and now, how might pogroms have affected them?” 

     After eight months in Vietnam, I had not quite abandoned my White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Presbyterian faith, but I was beginning to make comparative studies of the religions of the persons who occupied the grounds I flew over in event I might need to parley with them if shot down and captured. My prior politico-military beliefs were in shambles of disillusionment especially after listening to the music from the Woodstock Festival in 1969.  The songs were not just of protest, but also of questioning the U.S. Military Industrial Complex and its influence on socio-economic-military-political affairs.  I was caught up in what I would now describe as a U.S. pogrom towards the Vietnamese.  The political-religious-military beliefs of the dominant culture and mine in 1969, seemed to exist by following the faith and accepting the ancient religious concepts resultant from the Exodus led by Moses. The Israelites facing the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s army approaching, cried out to Moses: “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians; for it would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”  Moses said, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord …for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again.”  (Exodus 14:12-13 p.70)  Yezierska captures this macro-concept of FAITH in a micro-time capsule of the early 20^th Century Jewish Immigrant in “Soap and Water,” where she voiced, “…the persecuted races all over the world were nurtured by hopes of America.”  (Yezierska p. 109.)    Her lineage emigrated from Russia to the U.S. based on Russian pogroms, which shared characteristics of the earliest pogroms Moses and his children experienced from the Egyptian Pharaohs, both in search of dreams of freedom and happiness.  However, a universal thesis of the reality of pogroms maybe captured thru this brief paper’s socio-historic analysis of the global concept of persecution of minorities and ethnic groups from the dawn of history until now.  These pogroms continue as a major influence on what constitutes a dominant culture, and maybe portions of its socio-political-religious zeal to institute democracy and military might in the Name and Word of God to the willing and un-willing. 

     The dominant culture’s religious beliefs are so narrow and limited, yet have unrelenting associated political power as demonstrated by the U.S. government in its attempts to institute U.S. forms of democracy thru military intervention, i.e., pogroms, throughout the world from the United States’ inception until now.  Our government’s laws, the U.S. Constitution, come from predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Catholic men who wanted religious freedom, yet in the process of getting the freedom have engaged in government sanctioned pogroms against the Native Americans in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny.”  To conduct this socio-political-religious war of U.S. expansion and conquest against the Native Americans, the Dominant Culture enslaved Africans to do the hardest, dirtiest work to produce goods and services to promulgate the U.S. Government’s goal of Westward Expansion.  The Native American minority experienced a genocide conducted by the U.S. Government’s “Dominant Culture” in its goals to promote “democracy” within the United States.  The African-American minority were freed in “word,” yet, enslaved until present time with capricious laws and discrimination which remains a form of slave bondage which still might be seen as a form a pogrom.  Our attempts to “democratize” Vietnam resulted in the worst U.S. military defeat in history.  The “Dominant Culture” did not dominate the Vietnamese with the U.S. Pogrom there, and maybe a lesson was learned by our government leaders.  However whenever I read today’s paper and see how many G.I.s were killed in the Middle East, and now suicides of protest by Guantanamo detainees, I somehow doubt it.

       The “Literary Theory and Criticism” literature course I took at UHCL last fall provides direct correlations with the Pogroms against the Jews and the vast influence of the resultant basic religious-political-military-socio-economic concepts of the “Dominant Culture.”  “Historicism is a type of literary criticism that examines literary works within their diverse and interrelated historical contexts.  In analyzing a text, the historicists consider the cultural and social forces that influenced and are revealed through the text.”   (Bedford p. 202)   I have attempted to use the Historicism critical concept to look at “Soap and Water” and “Exodus” to arrive at a general “Macro-Concept” in this paper’s first two paragraphs to tie the historical significance of Jewish Immigration into the Dominant Culture.   We in the U.S Dominant culture seem to exist within a schizophrenic situation of “Might Equals Right” because “God”, the ancient Jewish God brought from Moses gives us the “right” to determine by law what is right and wrong.  The “Dominant Culture” not only determines right and wrong for its citizens, but also for the willing and unwilling upon which the U.S. model of democracy is being imposed.  Vietnam should have been a harbinger to the “Dominant Culture” that there are more Gods and cultures out there other than the one the “Dominant Culture” accepts. I survived Vietnam and since May 1970, the date of my return from Vietnam, I espouse no particular religion and try to maintain sensitivity to all. I question everything I can about U.S. government’s use and abuse of power. The answer to this journal’s quest evolves as I age.   In the insightful words of our next Governor, Kinky Friedman: “May God bless you all, what ever God you may or may not believe in.”                              

                                             Bibliography: Works Cited

Murfin, Ross, Ray, Supryia, “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms,” Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, New York, 2003.

The Second Book of Moses Commonly Called Exodus, “The Holy Bible,” Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson and Sons, Toronto, New York, Edinburgh, 1952.

Wikipedia Web site: Wikipedia.org/Pogroms, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Yezierska, Anzia, “Hungry Hearts,” “Soap and Water,” by A. Yezierska, 1920.