General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI found this 1907 quote from T. Roosevelt concerning immigration......
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
Responders please take note.. I am neither condemning nor condoning TR's statements.
I just thought that it was an interesting take for 1907.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)Xipe Totec
(43,872 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)IIRC, wily Ben Franklin found the silver-tongued (and silver-penned) T. Paine in England and thought he could help the revolutionary cause. Franklin was correct. Paine did know how to stir Americans. But, he seems to have been a bit shady in other respects.
Bucky
(53,805 posts)Paine was an alcoholic and a failed businessman and a crappy engineer and a screw up as a politician (he got jailed in France before the Terror after having been elected to the French assembly) and had a tendency to be ingrateful to those who helped him out of his numerous scrapes.
But that said, he was a troubled genius and his wisdom and clarity of political vision speaks for itself. If we can't get past the fact that George Washington was a slaveholder and Abe Lincoln was a corporate railroad lawyer and Thomas Jefferson had a predilection for married women and underage slaves and Martin Luther King was a serial philanderer and John Kennedy was a drug fiend and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an outright racist.... then we lose all the gifts of the people who, despite their flaws, gave us the imperfect gift of a liberal democracy and a legacy of ideals that we should all live up to.
As my Grandma told me, and I agree, with people you got to take the good and keep the bad in perspective--there's only been one perfect man in history. Of course she was talking about Jesus while I was thinking it was George Clooney. But that's a different topic.
merrily
(45,251 posts)was really his religion, he lapsed a lot.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)Aristus
(66,096 posts)structure.
And if conservative white Americans don't like the plethora of hyphenated-Americans (a term that TR himself used), then they can play their part in ensuring that every American who isn't a white Christian receives equal treatment in the eyes of the nation, the culture, and the law.
I expect that many who define their national standing with a hyphenated phrase are doing so because they are being treated as 'less-than' by the prevailing social majority, and wish to express their pride in who they are.
clarice
(5,504 posts)to have a virulent racists or xenophobic agenda attached to most of his policies.
Aristus
(66,096 posts)He was definitely pretty progressive for the times on the issue of race.
As I recall, he only had one real moment of weakness. He invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, and the nation's bigots went berserk, demanding that he never do that again. Rather than flip them the bird and carry right on inviting whoever the hell he wanted to, which would have been perfectly in character for him, he backed down instead. Neither Washington, nor any other prominent African-American of the time was invited back to be a guest at TR's White House.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)I am curious to your view of this quote?
I am personally still trying to wring out the full meaning.
TY
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)he was not referring to Americans from south of the border. And, he darn sure wasn't a friend of "African-Americans." About all they can say for him is that he invited Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner, the first time an American Prez invited a Black man to the White House for dinner. That is sad.
Aristus
(66,096 posts)See above.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Last edited Mon Jun 27, 2016, 09:46 PM - Edit history (1)
Booker T. Washington reference as if he was a civil rights activist.
A quick aside, I actually got it into about 15 years ago with an honest to god grand wizzard -- or whatever they are called -- of the Oklahoma KKK who had the gall to claim he was a "civil rights activist."
Xipe Totec
(43,872 posts)The very fact you posted these words means they resonate with you.
Don't throw the stone and hide your hand.
clarice
(5,504 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Complete acculturation historically happens within three generations, so I often wonder why the consistent focus on "every facet an American"
bravenak
(34,648 posts)Teddy R
philosslayer
(3,076 posts)His visage on Mount Rushmore is an abomination
bravenak
(34,648 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)The sculpture is a desecration.
clarice
(5,504 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)are sacred land to the Lakota Nation.
Here's a rough equivalent: imagine someone painting a black and white cow and scrawling "Eat more chicken" over the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
clarice
(5,504 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)It was a prideful venture. I'd not have done it. I prefer doing mosaics. A nice mosaic mural somewhere would suffice and last a long time if done with care. Centuries. More even.
clarice
(5,504 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)Bucky
(53,805 posts)Kiss
clarice
(5,504 posts)hunter
(38,264 posts)That's not what we are taught grades K-12.
My Wild West family believed they had a friendly relationships with local Indians, but they sure as hell knew the members of their own white community who were out killing and raping and swindling Indians.
My grandfather didn't attend my marriage to, in his words, "a Mexican girl." In his world it was okay to date Mexicans but you didn't marry them. To his credit, he got past that.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)AMERICAN is used incredibly arrogantly and is so deeply embedded that I didn't realize until someone pointed it out to me recently.
Canadians, Mexicans, Aregentinians, Chilleans, among others are from an American continant. Yet, the longstanding myth that the only true "Americans" are citizens of the USA continues to prevail.
Forcing cultural assimilation is intended to apease people who are offended by hearing or seeing in Spanish. The more languages, the better IMO.
clarice
(5,504 posts)If you decided to emmigrate to a Country who's culture you where unfamiliar with... would you demand that that culture bend to your native cultural values and language? I wouldn't.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)No one that I know of. In fact, USAers of Mexican heritage were discouraged from speaking their native language. Many people feel a great loss over that. They should have been comfortable using the language of their parents and the fact that they didn't is hate inspired.
clarice
(5,504 posts)Let's assume that the "International Language of Business is English"
Is encouraging immigrants to speak in their native language actually EXCLUDING them
from many business opportunities? And if so, what is the actual agenda of the people
pushing natavism? Is it to hamper certain groups of people from the business mainstream? And if THAT is true,
I find it deplorable.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)So much that people complain about pushing 1 for english during an automated call. The all too common call for people to not just learn English, but to give their own language up. I hear that from people quite often, so I have a pretty staunch belief that people should be able to use their native language without me arrogantly considering it to be an imposition. Your business example is interesting considering that we, as a nation, we are still too nativist and foolish to use the metric system.
840high
(17,196 posts)family didn't. We came here legally and love America and it's customs.
clarice
(5,504 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)frankieallen
(583 posts)Negroes are excited by a freedom they dont understand and are not equipped to handle the demands and privileges of citizenship. -Woodrow Wilson
I went n****r chasing on Monday. Right through Central Africa: Vine St. There was no trace of that Nelson n****r. -Harry Truman
Ill have those n****rs voting Democratic for the next 200 years. -Lyndon Johnson
African Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do. -Bill Clinton
clarice
(5,504 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)because they knew it was time to rise above their personal prejudices.
Rethugs are incapable of such behavior.
bhikkhu
(10,708 posts)few individuals are that submissive and simple, even among the winger crowd. A nation like would be a caricature of a horribly self-limited bit of humanity.
clarice
(5,504 posts)proclivities is divisive at best.
matt819
(10,749 posts)My grandparents immigrated to the US around 1910. Lower East Side. NY. They learned almost no English and spoke almost only Yiddish until they died some 70 years later.
In this way they represented the essence of what it meant to be an American. If didn't matter what language you spoke or how much you did or did not assimilate. America was a safe haven against the threats they faced in eastern Europe before WWI.
My parents and sibling followed the usual pattern of first and second generation Americans since the beginning of the US. And I think we are a better country as a result, regardless of whether we are fluent in English or assimilate as TR wrote.
Indeed, one can argue that while long term Americans may very well speak English, in some communities assimilation is the last thing on their minds. Witness the anger among many white southerners who are still fighting a war they lost more than 150 years ago.
peace13
(11,076 posts)My little friend Pearl, age 85 who immigrated here as a child said, 'The problem is that people come and they don't melt.' This was ten years ago. She worked hard to be an American and was not happy about what she was seeing.
clarice
(5,504 posts)LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)Can you finish telling us what your issue with the SPLC is now? I'd *really* like to know.
clarice
(5,504 posts)Nevernose
(13,081 posts)We destroyed a nation and brutalized thousands of Filipinos from 1899-1915 (or thereabouts). Teddy was CiC and president, and bears a great deal of the responsibility.
Mark Twain and many other progressives hated TR's guts: http://www.twainquotes.com/Roosevelt.html
(Still a big fan of the national park system)