Xenophobes need to be reminded of two undeniable (National) truths: (1) the American Nation is significantly composed of, and historically populated with, immigrants and their progeny and, (2) the Nation’s singular culture, which they purport to protect, has been ubiquitously imported (tariff-free) by new immigrants from other lands and cultures.
For example, we would refer to the early American cuisine. Food historians describe the limitations of the Nation’s former uninteresting and bland English diet, which was transmogrified by Mediterranean immigrants who introduced flavorful foods, including mixed salads, olive oil, olives, and ingredients such as condiments and new spices. The contemporary American citizen has been afforded, in addition, a virtually unlimited choice of ethnic cuisine, representative of the planet’s ubiquitous ethnic and cultural menus. The aesthetic joy of savory taste is imported.
Further contemplation reveals the plethora of “American traditions,” having historical advent through diverse ethnic introduction by immigrants. This universally applies in such categories as dress, sports, religious observances, skills, literature, art and music, dance, and scientific advances. Furthermore, in addition to their enhancement and beneficial enhancement of the Nation’s culture and folkways, constitute a veritable avatar of the beneficial blending of diverse cultures, appropriately deservant of the Nation’s emblematic meme, “E Pluribus Unum.”
The atavistic and reductively ignorant trait of xenophobia, looked at analytically, is not merely irrational and reductive, but empirically inconsistent with the positive growth of the Nation, and with the objective fact of its historic growth. In addition to the pragmatic increase in productive citizenry, immigration has added to, rather than changed (or “lost”), its admirably salubrious character.
We cannot resist the personal temptation to include, in the wide and diverse plethora of National benefits from immigration, the enrichment of the American lexicon by its empathic program of immigration, as symbolized by the iconic Statue of Liberty.
It is our general observation that the traditional American lexicon has been somewhat inadequate in its available provision of emotion, or of “feeling words.” Unlike the languages of French, Italian, and Spanish, American English has traditionally been of far more utility for invoices and business letterheads than aesthetic or specific emotional parlance. In keeping with our present context, we would empirically observe that, analogous to the formerly traditional. American style of bland English-style cuisine, enhanced by the comestible addition of Mediterranean cuisine, our stilted vocabulary was beneficially supplemented by the addition of more expressive language; the latter, introduced by the immigration of foreign cultures.
Since we are somewhat knowledgeable concerning the enhancement of expression by the nuanced addition of the emotionally descriptive or emphatic vocabulary of the “Yiddish” (Ashkenazic) tradition, we would avail ourselves of the opportunity to cite a list of utilitarian, and perhaps, popularly familiar examples from that imported tongue. Please note that the selected words are the notably emphatic versions of the corresponding English-American word: (Schlep) carry, (kvetch), complain, ( clutz), an ungainly person, (schmaltzy), hot or torrid, gonif (crook), chutzpah (nerve), yente (gossip monger), schtick (contrivance), goy (gentile), mench, (person of high character), tchotskies ( small misc. items), nosh ( snack), schmooze ( to informally discuss), and an additional full cornicopia of American accepted, Yiddish words. As with the improvement in cuisine, it constituted an enhancement of spoken expression. To be sure, there are a great many such words in Italian, Spanish, and other foreign tongues, found to be utilitarian and satisfyingly expressive in American English.
The universal recognition that immigrants to the American Nation do not dilute or alter its cultural nuance, but, ineluctably, add to its unique richness, would be morally beneficial and empirically appropriate.
-p.
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