It’s amazing to me that a country like ours, built on the backs of successive waves of immigrants who came here willing to do the lowliest job for the least wage in order to get a chance at something better for their children, should find itself so divided over the issue of immigration today. Between who wants to build walls between America and Mexico and who wants to force us to have national ID cards and who wants the cops to be able to compel everyone they stop for any reason whatsoever to have to prove their citizenship, it feels like my country has lost its collective mind.
Maybe I’m a bit sensitive to this issue because I am the grandchild of immigrants. Until I got to high school, I didn’t know anyone had grandparents who spoke without a thick accent of some sort. I thought everyone knew how to say Merry Christmas and Happy Easter in at least two languages plus Latin.
My grandparents had first hand memories of Italy. My parents didn’t. They were caught between the two worlds. They could speak Italian, knew the names of their parents’ home villages, and were aware of their heritage if only because they caught the tail end of the era when people hung signs in their store windows saying help wanted but Italians need not apply. I grew up thinking I was an American whose grandparents spoke a little funny and cooked amazingly well. I couldn’t speak Italian and had never seen a sign suggesting that because I was Italian I shouldn’t bother applying for a job.
In school I learned that my ancestors were people called the Pilgrims who wore funny clothes and started the first Thanksgiving. I just assumed they began their dinner with a huge antipasto like we did. By my generation, the Italian and American were all mixed up into one fun potpourri of traditions. One of my earliest school memories is playing a pilgrim in a class play at St. Michael’s. The audience was full of parents of Italian ancestry watching their children out act their American heritage.
The thing is, I was raised in America and I was raised American. I didn’t become an Italian American until much later when political correctness swept the land. Before that, I’d been an American whose grandparents came from Italy. Had I ever been told I had to go back to Italy because I wasn’t a real American, I would have been highly insulted and, worse, would have been scared to death. Don’t get me wrong. I love Italy. I’ve been there to visit many times. I’m proud that I come from a nation that has produced people like Michelangelo and Verdi. But they are part of my history, not my heritage. My heritage is the Mickey Mouse Club, Davy Crockett, coonskin caps and American Bandstand. My heritage is July 4 parades, the Declaration of Independence and the Betsy Ross house in Philadelphia.
That’s the thing about coming from an immigrant family. By the third generation you are an American and pretty much only an American. You might know your grandparents’ backgrounds, you might love the culture or religion that they embrace, but you are not them. You weren’t raised in the land they left. At best, if you’re lucky, you’ve inherited some fun traditions or recipes that your grandparents brought with them so many years ago.
To some extent, the immigrant experience of the Germans, Italians, Jews and Irish was somewhat eased by the fact that we all looked pretty much alike and, certainly by the second generation, no one could tell us apart unless we were Hasidic or Amish. To this extent, Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants have an extra hurdle on their way to assimilation into America’s melting pot. But make no mistake. No matter what they look like, what they are is American.
America does not have one face that defines it now and forever. For that we should be grateful. A country that continually renews itself with the blood of those who are brave enough to travel an immense distance to a strange land where they do not speak the language or know the customs in order to give their children the chance to dream big, is a lucky country indeed.