Nase Novine, August 09, 1978

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The search for roots has become a
national preoocupatipn. A visitor to the
United States might be puzzled by all
the talk about roots - the loss of roots,
theiieed for roptslfHe might think that
in America a root ; crisis has replaced
the energy .cr£risl; But jvhat sort of
roots are; these we are seeking -- potatoes, carrots, rutabagas? Nothing
of the kind; rather Americans are
seeking for the their figurative roots
their ancestral lines, their family
genealogies. We are asking: where
fhoarveebeIarsc?omwe hafrtomis? mwyho dwisetrinectimvey
heritage?
Americans traditionally have been a
fowardlooking people more interested
in the future than in the past. In
America, it was said, one Was judged
not by who one was but by what one
could do. Pride of ancestry was
regarded as an ariostocratic pretensi-on,
out-of-pla- ce in a democratic soci-ety.
The present retrospective mood of
the country therefore represents a
basic shift in the national psyche. This
is not, however, the first time that.
Americans have paused in their head-long
rush, into the future to glance
backwards. The late 19th century was
also characterized by a quest for
ancestors, particularly on the part of
oldstock Americans. Genealogy flo-urished
as Anglo-America- ns sought to
distance themselves from the incoming
flood of immigrants. Filiopietistlc soci-eties
such as the Sons.and Daughters of
the American revolution and the
Society of Mayflower Descandants
were formed at that time.Th'e depressi-on,
decade of the 1930s was also a time
of intense interest in tracing family
histories. One can speculate that the
search for roots has been characteris-tic
of troubled, unsettled times, times
of economic and psychological. insecu-rity
when the future appeared uncer-tain.
Certainly the contemporary fever of
ethnicity is part and parcel of the sear-ch
for roots. Today we appear to be less
interested in claiming royal ancestors
than in knowing about the real people
who were our forebearsr'We want to
know, about the lives of our grandpare-nts
because in the process we feel that
we will learn more about ourselves. As
Horace Kallen, an early advocate of
cultural pluralism put it;
'Men may change their clothes, their
politics, their wives, their religion,
their philosophies, to a greater or
lesser extent; they cannot change
their grandfathers (and we would
add grandmathers),"
From our grandparents we receive
our biological and cultural inheritance.
To say so appears trite, and yet such a
simple truth challenges a central myth
of the American belief system. As my
colleague, David Noble has described
this myth, "it was the hope of the
European emigrants in coming to the
New World (that( they could thereby
undergo a religious experience of
rebirth which would allow them to
transcend the tension of the historical
communities ' of the Old World." In
other words, the American, "this new
mcaallne"dashiHme,ctowrasSt. tJoohbne.defrCeerevoefcoseiunr. .
America was a new Garden of Eden
and the American a new Adam. Since
the act of Immigration was to result in
spiritual rebirth, the immigrants was
expected, as Crevecouer put it, to leave
"behind him all his ancient prejudices
and manners, and receive new ones
from the new mode of life he has
embraced."" Or in the words of John
Quincy Adams, immigrants "must cast
off the European skin never to resume
it. They must look forward to thier
posperity rather than backward to
their ancestors." The myth of rebirth
become in Frederick Jackson Turners'
frontier thesis the most influential
historical explanation of American
exceptionalism. "In the crucible of the
frontier", the clared Turner, "The
Immigrants were Americanized, libe-rated,
and fused in to amixed race".
And yet we have not forgotten our
ancestors. Although we may have
never known them or even visted their
graves in Galicia, Sicily, or Slovenia,
yet they in habited our imaginations.
What manner of folk were they and
what of myself do I owe a quest for
indentity and inevitably in volves an . exploration of one's ethnicity. But why
has this become so important to us at
this particular time? One can suggest a
number of reasons. In the wake of the
Black Revolution, Vietnam, and Wate-rgate,
faith in the incibility, the righte-ousness,
the homegenity of Amarica
has taken quite a battering.Cofidence
in the wisdom and the will of the
the wisdom and the will of the
Anglo-America- n establishment has be-en
undermined. The compelling power
of the Americanization myth has been
sapped, allowing the in herend plurali-sm
of American society to surface. Our
immigrant fathers were per suaded or
coerced thad they shoould become
Americans and nothing else. As a
result much was lost or abondoned,
languages, traditions, beliefs, and cus-toms.
We of the second and third
generations received a mutiliated heri-tage,
fragments of culture, a few
words, a folk tale, a prayer. For this
we' do not blame the immigrants;
influenced by the pervasive contempt
for foreigners, we has arrogantly
declared that we could not be green-horns,
we were Americans. In a sense
it is a miracle that anything at all of the
ethnic heritage has survived. Almost
too late we are coming to'realize that to
be American is to be ethnic (are not all
human beings by definition ethnic?).
Americans we now see is composed of a , congeries of ethnicities - and the
Anglo-America- n culture is simply one
of many ethnicities. It is true thata _ pseudo-cutlur-e is
rapidly encroaching upon us all alike,
threatening to blight our cultural and
spiritual lives just as pollution does our
physical habitat. This erzatz culture is
the monster child of modernization,
born of an incesuous coupling of mass
production and mass merchandising.
McDonalds, Coca-Col- a, televison,- - the
automobile, eptimomize this pseudo-cultur- e of modernization ("pseudo"
because if it is not the product of
organic historical growth, but
.--
the instant creation of machines and
salesmen). Advertising, the mass me-dia,
and mass consumption have
become the instruments for a global
standardization of tastes, values and
ТШ&Е27 k v ('' Шш
LOUIS ADAMIC
lifestyle. The ethnic revival (which is
by no means confined to the United
States) can be understood as a rebel-lion
against this grey tide of homogeni-atio- n
which threatens to engulf us like
a gigantic oil spill. We turn to our
ethnic traditions and indetities. as
defences against the erosive forces of
modernization. As Michael Novak has
commented " to be concious in a new
way of the path one's family has
traversed is to have moral leverage,
against current principalities, powers,
and propaganda system." Ethnicity
provides us with weapons, commete-mets- ,
affiliations, in the battle against
dehumanization by technology and its
hand-maide- n, bureacuracy.
The "roots' phenomenon has been
greatly stimulated by Alex Haley's
book of that title - and particularly by
the televison production. For eight
successive evenings some 130 million
Americans (over half the population)
watched the saga of a black family
unfold over the course of two centuries.
The culmination of twelve years of
obsessive research, Haley traced his
hamily history from the mid-18t- h
century when, a Maninka warriorr-Kunt- a
Kinte, was captured by slaven-hunter- s
- down to the presrent. Altho-ugh
critized as to its historical accura-cy,
Haley's work vividly portrays
certain essential truths about the Black
Americam experience. The television
series and the book have had an
enormous impact upon black and white
Americans alike, stimulating many to
undertake searches for their family
roots; liberaries and archives throug-hout
the country have been inundated
these past few months with request for
genealogical information. In a a nation
wide Gallup poll subsequent to the TV
series, some 70% expressed an interest
In tracing their falmly histories - but
for many it will be a difficult task.
Some 30% did not know from what
countries their ancestors came, while
some 70% did not know what year their
ancestors had rived in America. At
the Immigration History Research
Centre, we have received many letters
reflecting both the interest and lack of
knowledge; "My grandparents came
from Sicily sometime in the 1890s" - or
"My people came from what was
Austria, but were Slavs" "Can you
help me find my roots?" Poignant
appeals.
seHriaelseyo'sf bRoookostswishitchhe hcauvlemainpapteioanredof ina recent years exploring various ethnic
histories. Irving Howe's The World of
our Fathers, on American Jews, Mic- hael Arlen's Passage to Ararat, on the
rediscovery of the armenian heritage,
Richard Gambino's blood of My Blood)
on being Italian -- and more particularly
Sicilian American, and Jimmy Bres-lin'- s World. Without Erid, on the Iris
Americans. These works combine his-tory,
autobiography, and ficlton in a
quest for indentity. But It is Michael
Novak's The Rise of the Unmoltable
Ethnics (1972) which serves as the
manifesto of the new ethnicity. Novak,
a third generation Slovak American,
addressed himself to the persistence
of ethnicity as a vital and creative
force In American life. Part history,
part literary cirticism, part philosphy,
part political polemic, The Rise is a
controversial work which inspires so-me
and Infuriates others. For many
second and third generation ethnics
reading the book has been a liberating
experience because Novak has spoken
the unspeakable. It is ok, he told them
to be ethnic, to trust their intuitions,
instincts, and sensibilities. "When a
person thinks," Novak said, "more
than one generation's pasqions and
images think in him." The doctrine of
Americanization which would have us
repudiate our private histories impove-rished
both the individual and the large
society. Challenging the dominance of
the Anglo sperculture, Novak asserted:
"No one ethnic group speaks for
America. The task is to discover what
America Is, or might yet be" : Espousi-ng
a politics of cultural pluralism,
Novak deflnad the ethnic agenda for
the 1970s.
It Is worth remembering that much of
what Novak and others have been
sayhg recently was well said some four
decades ago by Louis Adamic. If Novak
is the spiritaul father of the new
ethnicty, Adamic certainly is it grand-father.
Curiously neglected and largely
forgotten even by his unknowing
disciples, Adamic speaks with remar-kable
relevance to our current conce-rns.
Born in the Slovenian village of Blato
in 1898, Adamic at the age of fourteen
came to America. Although he had
studied for several years in the
gymnasium, Adamic later decribed
himself as "essentially a Slavic peasa-nt".
Be that as it may, he clearly was
endowed with a keen mind and a
writting talent. While laboring at
menial jobs and serving in the U.S.
Army, Adamic mastered the English
language sufficiently to become a
contributor to H.L. Menchen's America
Mercury. In one of his first books,
Laughing in the Jungle, Adamic gave a
vivid account of these early years in
America. With the publication of The
Native's Return in 1934 (a Book-of-the-Mon- th
Club selection), Adamic still In
his thirties had established himself as a
successful American writer.
It was at this time that the subject of
immigration and Its significance for
the United States became Adamlc's
central concernt - one which stayed
with him until his tragic and untimely
death in 1951. An immigrant in Intimate
contact4' with other immingra-nts- ,
Adamic brought to the subject a
special empathy and insight. In an
iBgiasi
article antitled" thirty Million New
Americans" published in Harper's
Magazine in 1934, Adamic focused
upon the problem of the second generat- ion. The most important fact about
these "new Americans", Adamic repo-rted,
was "their feelings of inferiority
In relation to old stock Americans and
to the mainstream of American life."
The children were actually more
subject to demoralization than their
Immigrant parenc because they lac-ked
consciousness of a cultural back-ground
and a sense of continuity in
human existence. "Some df them",
Adamic observed, "seem almost as if
they had just dropped of Mars and,
during the drop, had forgotten all about
Mars." These American-bor- n youths
had feeble defenses against anti-immigra- nt prejudices, against the hurtful
slurs of Hunky, Polack, or Dago.
Adamic also commented upon the
tragic estrangement between foreign
born parenc and their childern. Lacki-ng
pride in family or ethnic group, the
"new Americans" sought to repudiate
their origins, even to the extent of
changing their names. However, they
rarely acquired a feeling of being fully
American; whether aggressively cha-uvinistic
or appathetic, they remained
Isolated from the mainstream of
American life. ч
The ideological thurst of Adamic's
argument was that a new conception of
America was necessary, one which
recognized that America was not
longer an Anglo-Saxo- n country and
that the childern of immigrants should
not be expected to become Anglo-Saxo- n
The task, according to Adamic, was to
harmonize and integrate the various
racial and ethnic elements without
"sepperssing or destroying any good
cultural qualities in any of them." A
short-ter- m pluralist, Adamic envisi-oned
an ultimate fusion from which
would emerger "a universal or pan-huma- n culture."
Adamic saw the-- schools playing a
central role in this process of harmoni-zation
and intergratlon. Teachers must
become senstive too and informed
about ethnic cultures - including lear-ning
how to pronaunce names! History
texts must be revised to include
recognition of the role of recent
immigrants. The radio and press
should be utilised to provide authetnic
information about the culture and
contributions of various groups. Only
through such programs would the
second generation be transformed into
"a great body self-respectin- g, constru-ctive
cittizenery". Thus Louis Adamic
defined the problem and the remedy in
1934!
Adamic, more the involved activist
than the objective analyst, the voted
much of the next decade seeking to
implement his program for ethnic
renewal. Through his writings, lectu-res,
and organizational activities,
Adamic strove tirelessly to move
America towards a new definition of
itself - one in which Ellis Island would
be regarded as historically inportant as
Plymouht Rock. Adamic was parti-curlarl- y fond of Walt Whitman's line:
"This is not a nation but a teeming
nation of nations."But he was, also
sensitive to the ugly side of diversity --
to the prejudice, hatred, and conflict -- and he was fearful for America utiles
the diversity could be reconciled
and' harmonized with unity.
In the late thirties, Adamic himself
undertook a vast research project,
gathering the stories of thousands of
immigrants as the basis for a revision
of American history which would be
"an intellectual-emotion- al systhesis of
old and new America." In a series of
books published in the 1940s, including
From Many Lands, What's Your
Name, and A Nation of Nations.
Adamic developed this synthesis. Be-yond
his writings, he actively sought to
implement his program for creating "a
new consciousness of America, of our
selves as a people made up of over fifty
races and nationalities. "Working thro-ugh
the Common Council for America
Unity, which he helped established in
1939, Adamic developted an ambitious
agenda of work to be done. Among the
enumerated tasks were the following:
1. to assemble as complete informa-tion
as possbile about the different
cultural and racial groups by stimu-lating
reasrch in the universities and
by establishing historical archives of
the various groups;
2. to disseminate this information
through a magazine thevoted to
ethnic matters (as well as through ot- her publications),exhibits,radio pro- grams, and especially the schools;
3. to revies America history to give
proper recognition to the contributi- -
ons of all groups;
4. to compile and publish an ethnic
encyclopedia of the American people.
This was, in fact, an agenda for
ethnic studies on a grand scale. Then
came Pearl Harbor, and Adamic and
America turned .their attention to the
issues of war and peace. The hot war
against Nazi Germany and the cold
war with the Soviet Union created a
political climate which was not hospi-table
to ideas of pluralism and dive-rsity.
Conformity and national uni-ty
rather were the passwords of the
1940s and 1960s. Only since the sixties
has it been possible to take up
Adamic's unfinished agenda.
One wonders what happened to those
"thirty million new Americans" of
1934. Today these would be the middle-age- d ethnic Americans about whom
Michael Novak is writting. One wonde-rs
what was the cost to this generation
of the failure to implement Adamic's
program for ethnic pride. What the cost
to society as well as to the individual in
terms of creativity, productivity, and
happiness? Who can say? But I would
venture that the cost has biin great.
Siginificantly it is the members of this
marginality who comprise the leading
advocates of the new pluralism im the
1970s. We have in fact taken up the
work which Adamic .began forty years
ago. After a lapse of aquarter century,
the issue of ethnicity came to the fore
once more, initially in the form of the
militant black power movement. Yet
the violence of the sixties to deal with
the elusive problem of reconciling
diversity and unity. If one reviews
Adamic's agenda of 1939, one is
impressed by the achievements of the
last decade. We now know a great deal
more about the ethnic groups coprising
American society. There has been a
veritable explosion of knowledge with
hundreds of books and thousands of
articles (not all of high quality to be
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Doseljenici
sure) published on the histories and
cultures of the various groups. Rese-arch
centres, archives, and libraries
have been established to make such
scholarship possible. Journals such as
Ethnicity and The Journal of Ethnic
Studies have been established. The
ethnic theme has penetrated the media
with much more reporting and balan-ced
portrayal od ethnic concerns.
Television, radio, the movies, and
advertising, all reflect the heightened
interest in ethnic matters. An encyclo-pedia
of American ethic' group is in the
process of compilation. American
history as tought and written incorpo-rates
increasing coverage of the many
different racial and ethnic elements in
the population.
In 1973, the Congress of the United
States enacted the Ethnic Heritage Stu-dies
Bill, a historic measure which for
the first time committed the federal go- vernment to the principle of pluralism
rather than assimilation. The Ethnic
Heritage Studies Program provides
grants to school system and other insti-tutions
for the development of curricu-lum
materials and the training of teac-hers.
After only four yearsthis Prog-ram
has had a substantial impact upon
what is taught in many schools about
American history and culture. All of
this would have made Louis Adamic's
heart glad. The battle for ethnic
studies, however, remains tobe won.
The majority of educators and teache-rs.
I fear, remain assimilationists at
heart. They can be expected to resist
the introduction of an ethnic perspecti-ve
which should in fact permeate the
entire curriculum. And this is perhaps,
even more true in the colleges and uni-versities
than it is in the high schools
and elementary schools.
But to counteract that gloomy pros-pect,
I was heartened recently to hear
our governor, Rudy Perpich, speak
eloquently about the need to incorpora-te
the contributions of all of our people
in Minnesota history. Growing up in a
Croatian immigrant family, speaking
Croatian as his first language, Gover-nor
Perpich is very conscious, in his
own words, of "the immigrants' strug-gle
to maintain their own heritage and
place it alongside the cultures of other
ethnic groups to create a genuine
American society." Like Adamic, he
knowns thejanguish of _the immigra-nts,
torn between hope for the old,
watching, their childern slowly weaned
from the old ways and old language to
become foreigners under their very
roofs. "Governor Perpich advocated
teaching in the schools the languages 'of
the various groups in order to bring the
childern closer to their cultural herita-ge.
We are fortunate to have a
Governor who is so sensitive to ethnic
diversity. Those of us who epouse a
pluralistic vision of America should
rally to the cause. Certainly this is an
opportune time to press for the
enactment of an ethnic heritage studies
program by the State of Minnesota
similar to those which have been
established in Illinois, Pennsylvania,
California, and elsewhere.
Perhaps then Louis Adamic's spirit
can rest in peace - perhaps the cause he
advanced almost a half century ago
has been won. Not quite, by a long
shot. There remains a great reservoir
of resistance to the concept of a
pluralistic America - much of it in
places of high influence, in" the gover-nment
bureaucracies, in the media, in
the corporations, and in the universiti-es.- A broad counter-offensiv- e has been
denounced as romantic nostalgia, asa
journals and in the press, it has been
denounced as romantic nostalgia, as a
smokescreen for white racism, as a
divisive force, etc. An analysis of the
sources and motives of the opposition
to the new pluralism woud require
another paper. In breif, however, I
believe the opposition stems from a
correct perseption that conscious
ethnicity poses a threat to vested
interests. Once American history and
society are viewed from pluralistic
perspective, inequites, abuses, and
repressions, spring into focus. The new
ethnicity is not simply a form of
therapy to soothe bruised ethnic egos.
Rather the formation of anew histori-cal
consciousness, as in the case, of
Black Americans, is the very basic for
concerted group action to correct
traditional neglects and injuries. The
new ethnicity, therefore, leads to the
realization of a more fully democratic
society committed to a pluralism
of equality among groups a well as
individuals. And that, I believe, was the
essence of Luis Adamic's new conce-ption
of America.
RUDOLPH J. VECOLI
University of Minnesota
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