American Culture, American Values, and Immigrants

Can we preserve American culture, and American values, with “other people’s babies”?  Representative Steven King found himself accused of white supremacism for a tweet in which he said, in part, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” and in an article at the National Review, Jonathan S. Tobin wrote, in defense of immigrants, that, as was the case throughout our history, the next generation of immigrants would just as surely adopt American values of “liberty, democracy, and the rule of law.”  (Yes, this is old news but it wasn’t when I started drafting this post.)

Now, it seems to me that there are a couple issues here:

In the first place, the operating assumption seems to be that “liberty, democracy, and the rule of law” (plus, sometimes, also equal rights for all, tolerance, and non-discrimination) are assumed to be universal human values that  all people will ultimately gravitate to once they are themselves liberated from the oppression they may have experienced in their home countries, or (as Tobin does to a certain degree) that immigrants to the U.S. are attracted by these values because they share them.  But is that necessarily the case?  It’s my understanding that if you took a typical Chinese student studying in the U.S. and asked them about the lack of free elections, they’d defend their country and say that democracy is unnecessary and what’s more important is economic growth, national unity, etc.  You might say that they’ve been brainwashed by their system, but if they, in turn, stay in the U.S., there is no immediate reason to think they will be lovers of democracy and liberty as we perceive of them.  Or consider Mexican immigrants: though their country is nominally a democracy, it is not, so far as I understand, a true participatory democracy with respect to the experiences of peasants and the poor, and “rule of law” is very weak there.  Corruption is the norm, and, as much as illegal immigrant advocates like to say that they have “only” broken laws regarding forging of ID or working under the table, this still speaks to ideas of laws as optional that come from a country without a strong “rule of law” tradition.

Now, every time we see naturalization ceremonies, there’s a narrative of being able to, finally, be able to vote and participate fully in our democracy.  But how thoroughly are other notions extinguished — the idea that some groups have more rights than others, or laws don’t always need to be followed if you don’t like them?  And, too, there are a large percentage of permanent residents who do not become citizens, and, in fact, maintain ties to the home country and vote in their elections, and don’t necessarily see themselves as Americans (having sought naturalization for its practical benefits) but who primarily identify as their former/original nationality.

What’s more, there are other “American values” that are much more in dispute — chiefly the “value” that education and hard work brings success.  The new “value” of progressives is much more that the right government policies, including generous government spending, bring success, and this is much more in line with what many of these immigrants might have experienced in their home countries.  The ideals of human rights to liberty, free expression, and free exercise of religion for all, are replaced by “rights” to education, housing, etc.  And the ideal of nondiscrimination and equal treatment risks being supplanted by tribalism, in which everyone looks out for their “group” first and foremost.

And what of American culture?  No, this is not just “liberty, democracy, and the rule of law.”  I mean the question of whether football and baseball are replaced by soccer.  Whether the Irish dancers on St. Patrick’s Day fade into the past, or turkey on Thanksgiving or ham on Easter.  Backyard cookouts, and Fourth of July parades, and so on.  Country music, apple pie — and Boy Scouts are struggling to recruit (and find leaders) from immigrant families who have no similar traditions.  It seems to me (though I can’t find a link to back this up) that some time ago I read in the paper that there was a back-up as the Von Steuben Day Parade in Chicago (made famous by Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) finished off just as the much larger Mexican Independence Day parade was about to get started, and afterwards the Von Steuben Day Parade was moved northwards to the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Now maybe this doesn’t matter.  After all, plenty of elements of “American culture” have disappeared without much of anyone noticing — who square dances any more? And it’s not as if immigrants forcibly prevented people from square dancing.  But it still is perfectly understandable for native-born Americans to feel it as a loss if someday it won’t even make sense to say “as American as apple pie.”

And looking at Europe, where there are battles over whether traditional meals with pork in them are to be dropped from school cafeterias, and where new immigrants come from countries that have no tradition of democracy or of equal (or even non-abusive) treatment of women, its easy to fear that their present will become our future.

Having said that, I’ve sat on this in draft form for a while.  I don’t have concrete information on what percent of new immigrants maintain dual citizenship, or report caring more about elections in their country of origin than here, or, conversely, report adopting American traditions and, indeed, eat apple pie, for example, and without data to support or reject the reasonableness of these concerns, this piece can’t be anything other than a conversation-starter.  But I’ll post this anyway, and start that conversation.