How we became white people

[natina]

How we became white people

Part of complete coverage on
Census: Who Am I?

How we became white people
By Christian Lander, Special to CNNApril 30, 2010 10:44 a.m. EDT

Editor's note: America's 300 million-plus people are declaring their identity in the 2010 census. This piece is part of a special series on CNN.com in which people describe how they see their own identity. Christian Lander is a writer living in Los Angeles. His book "Stuff White People Like" is published by Random House.

(CNN) -- I am white. I know that's a terribly big surprise, considering that I write a blog called Stuff White People Like, but I mean it, I'm white.

Like really white.

I'm not attempting to assert some sort of superiority through my whiteness; quite the opposite actually. Thanks to my liberal upbringing, I am imbued with the appropriate amount of guilt and shame about my ancestors and their actions in the New World.

Even in my home, I can't offer a blanket to a nonwhite friend without the fear that they will look at me and say "no smallpox on this right?" A joke, but I still want to apologize.

I'm a white male. I belong to a group that pretty much always been able to own land and to vote. I'm more or less from the kind that grabbed power somewhere after the fall of Rome and never let go. In other words, I'm the kind of white guy that has never experienced any real oppression.

Although I guess my ancestors technically left England because of some religious persecution and in spite of a rough boat ride and a rough first Thanksgiving, it's safe to say it worked out pretty well. Unless you got one of those aforementioned blankets.

But in addition to being white and having ancestors on the Mayflower, I'm also Canadian. Yes, I know that might actually make me more white than before, but it also technically makes me an immigrant to this country.

Still, I am loath to call myself an immigrant because I don't want to demean the very real, very difficult challenges faced by immigrants to this country who have had to overcome differences in language, culture and distance from their families. I would say my biggest hardship has been trying to find Ketchup Chips.

But in the eyes of the U.S. government, I am an immigrant, the same as someone from China, Mexico or India. I would not be in this country had I not met my wife in graduate school, and I am thankful every day for her and the opportunity to live in the United States.

So when the census came around, I was absolutely thrilled. I've lived in the United States for eight years (four of them as a graduate student), and in that time, I have never been able to vote or access any public services. The census meant I was going to be counted, I was going to be a part of American history. A good part, not that blanket part.

When the form arrived, I scanned the options and quickly checked "white." I would have checked "Canadian" but that option wasn't anywhere to be found. There it was, I was a white American, or technically a white American Permanent Resident. But then I started thinking about what it really means to be a white American.

As long as America has been around, I would have been considered white. I would have checked the same box in the 1790 census, had my relatives decided to stay on their land instead of moving to Canada to stay loyal to the King of England. But not everyone who checked that box on the census has always been considered white. Irish, Italian, Jewish, German and Eastern European have all been considered not white. or at the very least "not American."

All of these groups came to America amid widespread discrimination, and yet through the process of assimilation and Americanization, the status of white was slowly conferred upon them (read "The History of White People" or "How the Irish Became White" for actual, intelligent research on how this happened).

And with this new-found white status also came the status of "ethnically American." Of course, a lot of people will say that there is no such thing as an ethnic American and that everyone who becomes a citizen is an American. And this is true to the letter of the law, but if we consider the popular perception of immigration and the American dream, to say that white skin has nothing to do with it would be complete folly.

In the popular myth, immigrants arrive as huddled masses yearning to be free and most of the women wear scarves around their head. They move to the Lower East Side or some other suitably "ethnic" community, they change a last name, they learn English and within one generation they are welcomed into the country as ethnic Americans and granted that wonderful privilege of checking the white box on the census.

The reality is that America has a long history of welcoming immigrants who will never be able to check that white box on the census, and unfortunately that means America also has a long history of discrimination against those people regardless of their status in the country. Just one example would be the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II contrasted against the treatment of German-Americans.

But all of that was in the past right? Well, ask yourself this: Who is more likely to get pulled over and forced to show his papers in Arizona today? A first generation Canadian immigrant, or a 10th generation Mexican-American?

What I hope this census will force the country to deal with is the fact that white immigrants like me will never again make up the majority of people that come to this country. America is not getting whiter, it will never get whiter. Well, unless we start handing those blankets out again.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Christian Lander.

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[joeninety]

Thats the problem with your country you're all a nation of immigrants but have forgotten that, then you have the cheek to have a pop at any newcomers for the very thing that all of you are.

last time i checked that land belonged to the Native American Note the word Native, and was taken from him by said immigrants, while the Native American is now treated like less than an immigrant in his own country now thats irony for you.

Here is a little post to remind you of how the immigrants were helped, and look how that panned out for the Native folk, but love how Miss America chooses to ignore:

Thanksgiving observed by the Pilgrims at Plymouth


The First Thanksgiving, oil on canvas by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. (1863–1930)

The modern Thanksgiving holiday traces its origins from a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. This was continued in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance, and later as a civil tradition.
Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English while enslaved in Europe and during travels in England). Additionally the Wampanoag leader Massasoit had donated food stores to the fledgling colony during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient. The Pilgrims set apart a day to celebrate at Plymouth immediately after their first harvest, in 1621. At the time, this was not regarded as a Thanksgiving observance; harvest festivals existed in English and Wampanoag tradition alike. Several colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims, most of whom were Separatists, are not to be confused with Puritans who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony nearby (current day Boston) in 1628 and had very different religious beliefs.[9]

[russtafa]

i wonder if the Mongols,Romans,Persians,Zulus had this guilt or shame for their actions

[joeninety]

i wonder if the Mongols,Romans,Persians,Zulus had this guilt or shame for their actions

Lol you would say that being an Aussie how are your natives doing, but i think the point i was making has kinda flown over your head, as it was not about shame but more to do with irony and maybe being a little more tolerant.....

[russtafa]

Aussie's just say what they believe and don't hide behind the flowers and smiles and false tears

[russtafa]

Lol you would say that being an Aussie how are your natives doing, but i think the point i was making has kinda flown over your head, as it was not about shame but more to do with irony and maybe being a little more tolerant.....

Our natives are living off the government and getting pissed as usual

[Stavros]

last time i checked that land belonged to the Native American Note the word Native, and was taken from him by said immigrants, while the Native American is now treated like less than an immigrant in his own country now thats irony for you.

Hmmm...in Canada they have 'First Nations' rather than the discarded 'Native' 'Indians' and so on -they and their 'cousins' south of the border migrated across what is now the Bering Stait so cannot be considered 'native' to the north American landmass. Literally everyone in America is descended from an immigrant. The concept of Race has little grounding in science, but a lot in politics and culture, I recommend Ivan Hannaford's Race: the History of an Idea in the West (1996)
Race: The History of an Idea in the West Woodrow Wilson centre press: Amazon.co.uk: Ivan Hannaford: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51J24G4NQHL.@@AMEPARAM@@51J24G4NQHL

[joeninety]

Aussie's just say what they believe and don't hide behind the flowers and smiles and false tears

Whose hiding behind flowers smiles and false tears, my laugh is real, because its laughable that immigrants think they have the rights to complain about other immigrants supposedly invading a land which they originally stole.

And my sadness is real for what has become of those displaced people, (as for flowers fuck knows what your on about there mate) but yet again it flies over that Aussie head of yours maybe its a case of you're are totally ignorant to which i cannot help, hence why you don't understand the irony written in my post.

[joeninety]

last time i checked that land belonged to the Native American Note the word Native, and was taken from him by said immigrants, while the Native American is now treated like less than an immigrant in his own country now thats irony for you.

Hmmm...in Canada they have 'First Nations' rather than the discarded 'Native' 'Indians' and so on -they and their 'cousins' south of the border migrated across what is now the Bering Stait so cannot be considered 'native' to the north American landmass. Literally everyone in America is descended from an immigrant. The concept of Race has little grounding in science, but a lot in politics and culture, I recommend Ivan Hannaford's Race: the History of an Idea in the West (1996)
Race: The History of an Idea in the West Woodrow Wilson centre press: Amazon.co.uk: Ivan Hannaford: Books

Ah someone sensible who gets it unlike our Aussie friend, yes guess if we want to get into it we all descended from one, then branched out, hence the genetic differences in us all is so very very slight that scientifically it is regarded insignificant, plus on top of the fact that nobody alive today is pure anything.

That is why i fail to understand Racism and immigrant invaders its a crock of shit but works like magic on the ignorant, divide and conquer, The American way, united we stand divided we fall..........

[Stavros]

I just watched a programme on BBc2 about the island of Lampedusa off Sicily, where 'boat people' from Tunisia were headed, and given sanctuary. Over a period of a few weeks to a month, the 5,000 islanders were outnumbered by 6,000 refugees -needless to say the shambolic island council couldn't cope, and there was an allegation that Rome was deliberately letting the situation deteriorate as part of an intra-European squabble about who, ultimately 'takes' these people, since French is their second language and really that are headed to France. Locals demonstrated on the quayside, some unashamed to say 'send them back', 'let them sink' and so on; others motivated by their Christian faith to help when they can. The crisis was resolved when the man himself, Berlusconi helicoptered in to tell a crowd he had solved in 24 hours a problem their local officials had been struggling with for a month -six big ferries came from Italian ports to ferry the refugees to Sicily -weeks later most were in France.
And then the crisis in Libya erupted, and the 'boat people' returned....

We have been here before: war, crisis, refugees or 'refugees': for some, glorified economic migrants taking advantage of a breakdown at home to go where 'the grass is greener'.

Progroms in Russia, Ukraine and Poland resulted in thousands of Jews arriving in the Uk, mostly London from the late 1890s to the 1920s -after which the breakdown in central Europe brought yet more Jews. The country was being 'overrun with Jews', there was 'nowhere for them to live'; they brought 'diseases', and many other horrors. Ironically, there were a hard core of criminals who dominated the East End around Whitechapel, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green- they established Boxing as a popular, lucrative and completely bent 'sport', they ran sweat-shops little different from slave plantations, they ran opium dens -and many were totally honourable tailors, goldsmiths, grocers, merchants, husbands wives and mothers. Fast forward 70 years and those Jews migrated out of the East End to north west London; their children became doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, comedians, musicians, tailors, jewellers, goldsmiths, grocers, and yes -pimps, drug pushers, pornographers.

In 1972, Idi Amin Dada expelled 50,000 Asians from Uganda -about 30,000 came to the UK in a period of about two to three months, sparking 'outrage', claims we 'had no room', 'didn't want them' and so on. Fast forward to 2011 and that group have become one of the most successful immigrant groups in the UK -one of them,Keith Vaz is a prominent Labour MP.
When Poland joined the EU we were 'inundated' with Poles, about 18 months later people waxed lyrical about Polish plumbers who -this is unheard of in the UK- arrived on time, did their job without leaving a mess, and charged 50% less than the crooks most people had used before. I had lunch in a Polish pub in a town between London and Oxford -a delicious sausage with cabbage washed down with some frighteningly drinkable beer (it was lunch, moi je prefere le vin most times, but anyway).

I welcome them all, what would this country be without them?