We Are All Immigrants Anyway

In our last module of the class, we studied the dominant culture – my culture. As Dr. White predicted, it was a little uncomfortable to scrutinize my own biases and preconceived notions. I delved into the 2013 bank of model assignments to try to learn even more from the students who had gone before me. As I read through several model assignments in preparation for the final exam, one theme crystallized for me almost immediately. We are all immigrants, claimed Marissa Turner, Sarah Gonzalez, and Dorothy Noyes. As a member of the dominant culture that is staunchly and steadfastly ensconced within its inherent privilege, this was a statement that jumped off the screen to me in each of the three essays.

Marissa Turner crafted her 2013 essay “Defining America” by introducing the idea that the current dominant culture is made of one-time immigrants. Members of that culture typically descend from someone who did not start out here in North America. She describes the immigration of the original Pilgrim settlers, how they intended to establish a segregated community comprised of people who looked alike, spoke alike, and believed alike. Turner had a good cross-reference back to “Soap and Water” that we read earlier in the semester. She pointed out that the “whiteness” of the Pilgrim society later evolved into the resistance felt by the author of “Soap and Water”; Yezierska criticized the “whitewashed wall of cleanliness” that kept her outside the dominant culture. Turner made an interesting statement that by rights, the dominant culture should have been the native inhabitants of North America. This begs the question if that were so? Where would we be as a culture now? At the time of the Mayflower, the native Americans were in many ways much more primitive than their settler counterparts. She concludes forcefully and righteously that no color skin should dominate over another; after all, we are all just Americans.

An essay entitled “America’s Dominant Culture” by Sarah Gonzalez began in much the same way. She asserted that the nation we now enjoy was founded by immigrants, but those immigrants (the Pilgrims) had no intention of assimilating. They planned to “transplant their culture” on the grounds of the newly discovered country. Like the essay above, Gonzalez’ essay referenced the comparison of the Pilgrims journey to the New World as a new retelling of the Biblical exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. However, she claims that for new immigrants, the easier path is assimilation. I question that statement; it cannot be easy to give up your own customs and family way of life to conform with the society around you. This would be particularly true of people immigrating in search of religious freedom. In fact, the Pilgrims found the opposite to be true on their first attempt in Holland. Assimilation was not the easy choice, so they picked up and moved across the world to try again.

Also in 2013, Dorothy Noyes wrote a research paper entitled “What is White and Why?” She immediately continued the theme by stating that we are all immigrants. Her opening questions were thought-provoking. To paraphrase her question, how exactly did a group of immigrants overwhelm the native culture to establish dominance? How did the widely variegated European settlers (beyond confines of Pilgrim settlers) get lumped together into the homogenous group we recognize as “white”? I did not feel that Noyes addressed the questions completely. For example, the answer to the first question is simple: violence. However, violence is not addressed in her essay. She asked good questions, but answered them ineffectively, leaving me wondering how exactly "white" came to be recognized as one large, dominant group when it came from so many diverse origins.

One interesting change I noted was that in 2013, apparently, students needed only to write their final essay upon the current module of study. They almost exclusively focused on the dominant culture, although I did appreciate Marissa Turner's connection to one of the earlier stories in the semester. I prefer the current parameters of the assignment. I find it much more effective to do as Dr. White assigned, and modify and revise my previous thoughts to make those connections across multiple areas we have studied, much like Turner briefly did.

It is interesting to look into the lens of the future for a moment. Suppose that this class is still being taught 25 years from now. Would the dominant culture still be "white" descendants of European settlers? Would our demographic numbers, which are always in flux, have overturned so that the current dominant culture is, in fact, a minority? It seems that in certain areas of the country, such as the greater Houston area, that trend is already developing. Regardless of how numbers are represented on a census in any given year, the important thing to remember is that we were all immigrants in a sense. This makes equality a more important goal than categorization.