Stephane Hessel, who inspired #Occupy and the Arab Spring, wrote that "no one is ever just 'French' or 'German.'" Or American?…
Who are we? According to Republicans, if you don’t speak English, you
aren’t an American. They demand immigrants “assimilate,” which is their
way of saying they must become conservatives; walk the walk, but also
talk the talk.
They didn’t start it. Noah Webster, in his 1828
American Dictionary of the English Language,
called for a national language
as the logical conclusion to our political revolution, and suggested
that if we’re not all speaking the same language, we’re committing
treason “against the character and dignity of a brave an independent
people” – ourselves.
What is the link between language and culture, or
language between and identity? Are, for example, French Canadians less
Canadian than speakers of English? And if not, why are Spanish-speaking
Americans less American than English speakers?
Scholar Greg Fisher, studying the place of Arabs in
the Roman-Persian world of Late Antiquity, notes that “the dominance of
language as a marker of ‘ethnic’ identity in the modern world is so
powerful and familiar a phenomenon that we might wonder if the same held
true in antiquity.”
Sure, the ancient Greeks chided the Macedonians for
speaking a barbarian tongue, and sure, even in the polyglot Roman
Empire, Greek and Latin were the languages of government, but you could
speak Syriac and be a Roman citizen. The Romans felt superior, but
language was less a national identifier. They might have liked to make
broad generalizations about various “races” but they would follow an
Arab emperor.
Fisher points out that “linguistic nationalism is a
modern idea.” In the Republican Party, it is tied to ethnic nationalism,
and nobody should need convincing that we won’t see Americans elect an
Arab president any time soon, though his ethnicity might be less an
issue than his religion.
A black man with an odd-sounding (to English ears)
name has the same problem. Indeed, even though his English is more
refined and concise than that of many of his critics (he knows “moron”
is not spelled with an ‘a’ for example), Barack Hussein Obama can’t be
an American, critics say, because his skin is the wrong color and he
isn’t the right kind of christian, if he is christian at all.
Stephane Hessel, who was a member of the French Resistance as well as a concentration camps survivor, who inspired #Occupy and the Arab Spring, and who moreover was born German but became French, wrote that “no one is ever just ‘French’ or ‘German.'”
Or American? (And I won’t even get into the issue of Americans who barely speak an intelligible English)
Indeed, in the antebellum South, you were not just
an American, but a Virginian, perhaps more so the latter: Robert E.
Lee’s devotion was to a state, a geographical location rather than a
lofty ideal of states united.
Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, who lost his
country, and as an emigre wrote in French, said that, “One does not
inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our
fatherland — and no other.”
Hessel, citing Cioran’s words, pointed out that,
“Since I speak three languages, I have chosen to have as many home
countries as languages I speak – and since two of those languages are
spoken globally, my sense of belonging perhaps extends beyond the mere
borders of my home nations.”
You could go further than that. According to
Plutarch, Athenian philosopher Socrates said, “I am not an Athenian or a
Greek, but a citizen of the world.” Socrates didn’t have to speak all
the languages of the world to believe that. He likely spoke only Greek.
But his thought transcended the limits of his language.
This is not something Noah Webster would have
understood. And it is all nonsense to Republicans, of course. There is
no room in such thinking for nationalism, let alone American
exceptionalism. Yet my great-great grandfather, who spoke Swedish and
not English, came to this country from Sweden and fought for his adopted
country in the Civil War. Many of the Republicans who speak most
vehemently of American exceptionalism have never served this country,
even when speaking the appropriate language.
Is being American more about talking the talk than walking the walk after all?
Who is more American? The Swede who does not speak
but serves, or the Republican who speaks but does not serve? Perhaps
this is not a question to a Republican’s liking; it is not simple enough
an equation for an ideology that allows only either/or.
As Hessel pointed out, language has
community-building abilities and man is a social creature. For all of
modern conservatism’s talk of personal responsibility,
as President Obama said,
“You didn’t build that.” None of us do it alone. The early pioneers
would walk miles a day to help their neighbors erect a cabin or plow a
field and to be helped in turn.
In places like 1850s Minnesota, neither of them had
to be speaking English, but make no mistake, they were both Americans,
building the American dream in a new world full of opportunity.
Here is another question a Republican might not understand, asked by Hessel:
You may in fact feel
more belonging to a city or a neighborhood rather than to an actual
country; or to a religion, a skin color, a long lost origin, a real or
imagined physical place or perhaps even a sexual orientation, an
ideology. Indeed, who should a Turk of Berlin from Kreuzberg who is also
a homosexual with leftist tendencies and Sufi sensibilities choose to
be? We are all aggregations of different references, sometimes quite
contradictory in appearance.
Aggregates of different references. Those are fighting words in Red States.
And nonsense to the white evangelical Texas male
wearing BDUs and waving a Confederate battle flag with an AR-15 slung
across his back. You’re either American, which means you share his
referents, or you are “other,” which might mean you have brown skin, or
feel attraction to your own sex, or worship the wrong god (or none), or
have those leftist tendencies, or maybe just think America isn’t
perfect, or all of the above.
The wrong answer to any of them means you should just leave.
Never mind that the Founding Fathers established a secular government, or that our Texan is waving the wrong flag.
There are plenty of socially liberals
out there. There are plenty of catholics who pay no attention to their
priesthood, some of whom insist their congregants eschew contraceptives
while they sodomize those same congregants’ young boys. Just saying
you’re something doesn’t make you something. You have to show it.
How much does what language we speak matter? Will
Durant, synthesizing Aristotle, wrote that, “We are what we repeatedly
do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
We should strive to be excellent then, in whatever
language we were brought up to speak. Language is a referent, one of
many. There are many people who speak no English at all who have a much
better idea of what it is to be an American than some who speak it as a
first language.
Zealots, true believers, extremists, people for whom
one belief drowns out the world’s nuanced medley, who embrace either/or
thinking, wield language, like religion, as a weapon.
And that is the thing. As Hessel said, we are
aggregations. Often of conflicting ideologies or sentiments. Few of us
are all one thing or another. The one thing we all share – the one thing
we must all share – is the idea of America. The idea of liberty.
Humans are social animals. We build communities. Our
English ancestors did not always speak English, but Celtic and Latin
and German and Norse and French. I think we can trust ourselves to find a
way to communicate.
