Rediscovering value of the melting pot

Star Tribune
October 17, 2001
Katherine Kersten

Since Sept. 11, the New York Times has devoted a page each day to the pictures and stories of some of the victims who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Gazing at these faces, one is immediately struck by the melange of ethnicity they represent. On just one day, the following names appeared: Anderson, Abad, Wong, Arczynski, Melendez, Juarbe. Nothing could remind us more forcibly that America is a universal nation, a lodestar to people from every corner of the globe.
Our country has always been a nation of immigrants. But in recent years it has been in danger of becoming something different: a hyphenated nation. Increasingly, we have defined ourselves not as Americans, first and foremost, but as African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Irish-or Italian-Americans. Instead of viewing ourselves as citizens engaged in a common project, we have begun to see ourselves as a people divided along racial and ethnic lines. According to this view, the primary obligation of citizenship is to "celebrate our differences." True understanding of one another is beyond our reach; tolerance is the most we can hope for.

In the wake of Sept. 11, this notion seems thoroughly discredited. Across the nation, Americans of all backgrounds seem moved by a new unity, a heightened consciousness of the vision of life we share. The New York Times explored this last week, in an article about the way racial tensions have eased since the terrorist attacks. According to the Times, the new spirit of understanding stretches from President Bush and minority members of Congress to ordinary citizens sharing the subway, to police and civilians encountering one another on the street.

One young New Yorker captured the change succinctly. In the past, he said, "I just thought of myself as black. But now I feel like I'm an American, more than ever."

It is ironic that our newfound unity has emerged in response to one who hates us. For while many of us did not grasp that all Americans are fundamentally alike, Osama bin Laden did. In his evil desire to destroy this nation, he did not distinguish among us. All the differences of skin color and ethnic background that loomed so large to us were nothing to him. He understood that our way of life, with freedom of conscience at its core, is a powerful threat to the absolutism he champions.

The terrorist attacks have highlighted the fact that America is, after all, a great melting pot of peoples and cultures. Here the ethnic rivalries and class distinctions of the old country slowly melt away, to be replaced by a new ideal of equality and opportunity. Here the descendants of Turks and Greeks, Arabs and Jews, and Protestants and Catholics from Northern Ireland, shop at the same stores and send their children to the same schools. They live peacefully side by side, and go to the same polls to elect representatives who speak for them all.

In light of the current crisis, it is remarkable to see this process of assimilation at work in a relatively new immigrant group: the roughly 60,000 Afghans who live in Fremont, Newark and Union City, California. This group may well be the largest concentration of Afghans settled anywhere outside Afghanistan.

Fremont's Little Kabul neighborhood is a thriving community where Afghan-owned businesses are patronized by shoppers of many ethnic backgrounds. In recent weeks, Fremont's citizens of Afghan extraction have come together across tribal and ethnic lines to begin laying plans for a new, democratic Afghanistan. They are seeking to enlist the help of all America's Afghan professionals in rebuilding their homeland in a post-Taliban era.

To stress American unity is not to suggest that ethnic and cultural differences will ever cease to play a vibrant role in our nation's life. Nor is it to deny that some immigrant groups will progress more quickly than others. Americans of all backgrounds will continue to disagree strongly about important political and cultural issues. Moreover, as time passes, old racial and ethnic tensions are likely to resurface. Nevertheless, at a fundamental level, the equation may well have changed forever.

What draws us together is a common threat. This threat has renewed our interest in the principles of American citizenship, which are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the Gettysburg Address. We are newly conscious of our shared story -- the story of how our freedom was won, and how the quest for opportunity and the pursuit of happiness advanced. This American story can be adopted and embraced by all, as the Afghan-born citizens of Fremont can testify.

-Katherine Kersten is a senior fellow of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.