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I am an American mongrel. I have no clue when anyone in my family arrived in the United States. Given my blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, I have long assumed that my roots lie in northern Europe. But I really don’t know.

One family history assembled by my late father records ancestors of my mother who lived in the northeast before the Revolutionary War, but that provides no detail about why they came or where they came from. Their last names were Drake and Parker so I assume they came from England. But my father believed that another branch of my mother’s family came from a Slavic country and that the family name was changed to York when they were processed through Ellis Island.

PDK_97_4_Richardson_4_fig01My dad also claimed that he had traced his own lineage on his father’s side to an indentured servant who arrived through the port at Charleston, S.C., in the late 1700s and that his mother’s parents were Cherokee Indians. (But my father was also quite a storyteller, so it’s anybody’s guess about the truth of any of this.)

As far as I know, nobody ever returned to their country of origin, instead putting down roots that have grown deeper over the centuries.

When I invited authors for this issue of Kappan and my staff to write their families’ biographies, they tended to know a lot more about their heritage than I did.

I was totally charmed by every one of these stories. But what struck me most was the sheer ordinariness of every one of them. Nobody claimed to have come over on the Mayflower. Nobody rode in on a gilded chariot or claimed linkage to a royal family across the sea. Instead, we are the children of teachers, day laborers, shopkeepers, farmers, and short-order cooks. We are the stuff of America.

Deeply un-American

The tapestry that these writers weave, like the tapestry of this country, is one that is rich because it pulls together the many colors and ethnicities to create a single beautiful pattern. What comes through in all of these stories is a reverence for the generations that preceded us. They acknowledge the debt that we owe these ancestors who believed in the promise of America enough to risk a great deal to reach these shores — or who developed a belief in what America could provide after they were forced to come here.

The reverence that comes through these short bios contrasts sharply with the political rhetoric that characterizes today’s immigrants as threats to the fabric of this country. I regard such distaste for immigrants as deeply un-American. How can you call yourself an American and castigate immigrants who come to this country because they believe so fervently in a dream that too many of us take for granted?

As much as I dislike the anti-immigrant rhetoric, I understand why so many of us are uncomfortable with new waves of immigrants. Change is hard; when we look around the world we see many in other nations who also are discontent with the effect of immigration on their own countries. We are not the only country in the world that struggles with welcoming immigrants and figuring out how they will fit into a society that we cherish.

Truth be told, all of us are most comfortable when we are surrounded by people who are most like us — who look like us, think like us, eat the same food, and worship the same God. But acknowledging that we are profoundly uncomfortable and uncertain is the first step in our recovery. If we cannot acknowledge that we are uneasy about this, we have no hope of moving forward. You simply can’t solve a problem when you deny that it exists.

What we overlook is this: Every immigrant who is struggling to reach our borders is a renewal of the promise of this country. When people stop wanting to come to America, that is when we should start worrying.

 

Citation: Richardson, J. (2015). The editor’s note: Coming to America. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (4), 4.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Joan Richardson

JOAN RICHARDSON is the former director of the PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan magazine.