Beyond being an element of family lore, idealized memories of earlier immigrants sometimes seep into the media and journalistic, and even some academic, accounts as well.Ĥ Earlier Ellis Island era immigrants are often remembered as folk heroes of a sort who worked hard, strove to become assimilated, pulled themselves up by their own Herculean efforts, had strong values, and, in the case of Russian Jews, were people of the book. Idealized memories of these earlier immigrants are often emotional and strongly held because they refer to Americans’ own European ancestors. This was a time when the vast majority of the millions of immigrants arriving were from Europe, especially southern and eastern Europe. The Good Old Days: Turn of the Twentieth Century Memoriesģ Nostalgia related to nativism in contemporary American society is at least partly about imagined “good old days” of immigration and ideal immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. It can help illuminate nativism as it has developed American style. A focus on nostalgia for a mid-20th century “golden age” can enrich the analysis of current-day nativism’s links to demographic change ushered in by mass immigration, its appeal to a particular segment of the American population, and its connections to political party mobilizations. It involves memories of a mid-20th century time after the Second World War, before the onset of large-scale contemporary immigration and before the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, gay empowerment, and other social and economic changes drastically altered the American landscape. The second type of nostalgia, for an America of the 1950s, is a much more significant component of today’s nativism and xenophobia. In the first type, Americans often make invidious comparisons between Hispanic, Asian, and Black immigrants today and “better” European immigrants of the late nineteenth and early 20th century. I look at two types of nostalgia, one for a more distant past of a century or so ago, the other for a period closer to the present. Adding nostalgia to the analysis of nativism and xenophobia can, I believe, contribute to understanding why they arise, the forms they take, and their consequences.Ģ This article is concerned with the content and role of nostalgia in the virulent nativism of early 21st century America in what one might call its Trumpian or Republican form. Despite often being overlooked, nostalgia, or a sentimental or wistful yearning for a period in the past, has been an element in nativism and xenophobia in the United States, and therefore deserves our attention. ‘un-American’) connections.” Xenophobia, a closely-related concept used by many contemporary historians, stresses the enduring prejudice, animosity, or bias toward foreigners throughout American history, in which they are demonized as a threat to the nation and its people (Lee 2019: 7-8). Indeed, according to American historian John Higham’s (1963: 4) classic definition, nativism is an “intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e. Fear, hostility, and opposition, these are the attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that are usually associated with nativism in the United States. 1 When scholars write about nativism in the United States, nostalgia rarely enters the picture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |