Pride and Protest

History is often written in terms of the images people in power wish to project. American history, for example, was long recounted as if the English, Scotch-Irish, and a few Dutchmen were the only ones to have had an impact on the growth and development of the country. Early textbooks and classroom lectures dealt almost exclusively with “The Anglo-American Tradition” or with “Our Christian Heritage.” Throughout most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, newcomers from northwestern Europe were encouraged to forget about the customs of Germany or Scandinavia and to adapt themselves to eminently superior American life ways. Other immigrants were often considered beyond the pale of social acceptance. In story and song, Irish Catholics, Italians, Poles, and Russian Jews—and those who came from China or Japan—were referred to as “unassimilable aliens.” Many politicians expressed serious doubts about whether such immigrants would or could ever have the makings of “real Americans.”