Willow Glen, California Since 1992
Opinion
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Coming together in the melting pot that's America By Carl Heintze Brown is beautiful. Or so says Richard Rodriguez. Rodriguez works for the Pacific News Service and writes editorial opinions for such diverse outlets as the Public Broadcasting Service and the Los Angeles Times. He's part Mexican-American, Catholic and gay, among other things, and he has recently written a new book called, appropriately, Brown. In this case, "brown" refers not only to his ethnic background but also to the premise that, given enough time, the people of the United States are going to be neither black, white, yellow nor red, but instead a combination of all these colors. Put them all together and you come out with approximately brown. This isn't the only message in Rodriguez' book, but it is the one I will address here. And the reason I address it is because I find myself more and more in agreement with his premise. And Rodriguez' basic premise is that we ought to be considered Americans first—not members of groups segregated and identified by skin color, religious belief or sexual preference. Rodriguez attacks racial and ethnic political correctness—for instance, the media's celebration of the fact that Halle Berry was the first black actress to win an Academy Award. He points out that she's not even entirely African American, being that she's half white. Rodriguez himself does not want to be classified as gay, a Mexican-American, a Latino or "Hispanic," a term that he says was invented by the late President Richard Nixon. Rather, it is his contention that he and Ms. Berry and everyone else who is not white is not first of all a "person of color," as the current politically correct phrase goes, or a hyphenated American. Instead, they are just plain Americans. Instead of focusing on our differences and our diversity, he contends, we ought to be concentrating on coming together. It's this with which I agree. For if we are committed to the idea that America defines us all or that together we define America, then we know what we have in common rather than what sets us apart. All Americans come from somewhere, even if they are Native Americans or First People, as the Canadians call those who got here first. We are a nation of immigrants or the children of immigrants. Even African Americans are the descendants of immigrants—unwilling and oppressed immigrants, it is true, but immigrants nevertheless. Thus, all of us carry some ethnic or racial baggage. In some cases, the old country attachments are several generations in the past. In others they are very recent. But we also carry with us what I call the theology of America, the set of beliefs on which the nation was founded. It is sometimes difficult to exactly define this core of the country, but there are some basic beliefs that make it clear. We believe in the individual. We believe in the individual's freedom to say and do what he or she wants to do, a right only limited by the law. We believe in equal opportunity, the ability to start from a common starting place. We believe we are all equal under the law. The Declaration of Independence says we are all created equal. I am not so sure we all have equal abilities, but I think we agree that we should all have an equal chance at trying our best. We believe in the freedom of religious faith. This, more than anything else, caused America to come into being. This, more than anything else, is central to our existence as a nation. We believe in "the pursuit of happiness." I've never been quite sure what this means either, but I think it means we have the right to seek a life that satisfies us without doing harm to others. The United States came into being because it offered a refuge from the oppressive regimes of Europe. Lest we forget, it was the first republic, the first nation since classic times to be ruled not by kings who believed it was their right to rule divine, but by elected representatives, subject to the general will of the people. For all these reasons, the nation has survived as a republic longer than any other in the world, and over its lifetime it has continued to offer a refuge for the oppressed of other continents to share in this set of ideals. Through the immigration floods of the 19th and early 20th centuries it has continued to hold out this hope to the world. Its hope is not division—it is unity. It's about finding the way to approach the American dream—maybe without ever reaching it, but approaching it nevertheless. It has not hurt, of course, that we have been protected by friendly neighbors to the north and south and by wide oceans to the east and west and by the fact that for almost a century and a half we had an open frontier, blocked only by the Native Americans, whom we drove onto reservations. Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident. He can be reached at feodorh@juno.com. |
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