Who belongs, who does not
Noah Smith thinks on the implications of a feeling of belonging to America in relation to Fergeson, MI. Edward Harrison’s comments 6:21 PM are worth noting.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
Try reading this as a black man and having a feeling of belonging:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/08/michael-daly-the-day-ferguson-mo-cops-were-caught-in-a-bloody-lie-live-from-la-farine-cccx-august-18-2014.html
Woot!!!!!
DeLong posts a lot about the World Wars. When is he going to focus on how FDR made Japanese-Americans feel like they “belonged” in this country?
Jay,
I think that’s Michelle Malkin’s department.
@ Jay:
I don’t think anyone today agrees with what FDR did to the Americans of Japanese descent during the war
@Axt113:
So because DeLong worships FDR he cannot speak of the treatment of Japanese-Americans as it would be blasphemy? Note that Noah also failed to mention FDR.
I do recall a post on the Japanese-American internments at “Grasping Reality”. It reprinted the obituary of a man who ran the farms of about seven of his neighbors who had been interned – planted the fields, sold the crops, paid the property taxes and sent most of the profits to the families, and turned the farms back over to them in good shape after they were released. Most of his “Living Blogging WWII” posts are about battles, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some about the internment.
Let’s see what a quick Google search finds … here’s one:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/07/liveblogging-world-war-ii-july-15-1943.html
Mr. Chu’s story was heartbreaking, but not surprising.
As a third generation American of mostly Anglo decent, and having had a father who served in WWII, I always assumed Iwas the kind of “real American” Mr. Chu said he was not. I was raised in Florida, so assumed I’d be considered Southern, but I was wrong. Moving to North Carolina in the early 1970s made me realize that I was not, and probably never would be, ‘one of them’.
Their suspicions didn’t arise over my Americanism, but from the fact that in their eyes, I was not Southern. I wasn’t from the Deep South of old. I may have been a WASP, but I couldn’t trace my roots back to the Civil War, or, as some still called it, “The War of Northern Aggression”.
Their mindset was more narrowly tribal as to who belonged. Maybe because their home state had invested so much blood and treasure in trying to become NOT American, their sense of belonging wasn’t focused on Americanism.
Because I looked like them, it wasn’t until the first introductions, when my “foreign accent” was revealed, that I got the sometimes withering, sometimes pitying, “You’re not from around here, are you?”
North Carolina back then was a strange mix of off-putting-ness and hospitality. At the same time that I was made aware of my not belonging, I was offered other conventions of hospitality, usually being asked to attend church by the person I’d just been introduced to.
I grew up in a small town, so I understand small town cliquishness. My family homesteaded in my town in the late 1800s, so I “belonged” in that sense, in Florida. Moving to NC was my first, and only experience of being treated with suspicion because of my “outsiderness”.
But I had the benefit of looking like everyone else (well, everyone else who had the privilege of being white in the South.) I never felt the kind of separateness Mr. Chu did.
Humans are tribal animals by nature. We self-sort along various lines: economic, racial, religious, political. It’s unfortunate, but it’s human. Some rise above it more than others. I wish Mr. Chu could have met more of those who choose to rise above.