one small thought on the uniqueness of america: …...benjamin franklin (1755) did not want to...

明治大学教養論集通巻540号

(2019 ・ 9) pp. 15-28

One Small Thought on the Uniqueness

of America: Around the Concept

of the Land of Equality

Junko Yagasaki

I Introduction

The United States has been believed to be the land of freedom and has

attracted people from all over the world. Although it does not have a long

history, the country has been going through various difficulties and chang-

es, which could lead to novel social movements and experiments. The

United States is also considered to be the land of equality, but in reality

the equality was not equally given to every member of the society.

At the beginning of the United States Declaration of Independence,

which was adopted during the anti-colonial war with the Kingdom of Great

Britain by the Continental Congress in 1776. the following is stated: "We

hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal. that

they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. that

among these are Life. Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Besides the

concept of liberty or freedom, equality is another important and valuable

image of the United States for Americans. However. equality has not been

achieved in the domain of race and ethnicity in theじnitedStates. Even

though the situation has really improved. it has yet to be complete.

16 明治大学教養論集通巻540号 (2019・ 9)

The 44th president of the United States of America. Barack Obama,

who is half African American and half white, is a symbol of the change

and achievements in the struggle against racism in American society. The

fact that he is considered to be the first "black" president of the United

States, although he is half African American and half white, indicates the

present situation and the problem of American society.

II Anglo-Saxon Superiority

While the United States of America is composed of people from various

countries around the world besides Native Americans. the most important

and powerful people in America is the elite group of white Americans.

This group is often designated as WASP (White Anglo-Saxon, Protestant),

although they usually do not describe themselves as such. Their language

is English and they mainly have English-oriented cultural traditions and

their traditions and cultural patterns were actually the basis of the main-

stream of American society.

The theoretical basis of Anglo-Saxon superiority was the 19th-century

Social Darwinism or Social Evolutionism, which was very popular then in

Europe and the United States. The idea that the top of the evolutionary

ladder was the society of the British Empire at that time gave Anglo-Sax-

on superiority an academic endorsement. I think that this concept, which

is deeply rooted in American society, underlies discrimination and preju-

dice against non-white people or even non-WASPs in the United States.

Long before it obtained this theoretical endorsement, even the found-

ing fathers of theじnitedStates seemed to have a discriminatory view

toward others. Benjamin Franklin (1755) did not want to "darken" Amer-

One Small Thought on the Uniqueness of America: Around the Concept of the Land of Equality 17

ica by increasing "the Sons of Africa," (Black people) and planting them in

America. He thought that "by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys (Asian)"

they had an opportunity of "increasing the lovely White and Red (Native

Americans)." Although he appears to favor Native Americans, who are

not whites. he writes on the same page that "Scouring our Planet. by

clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect

a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus" (Franklin

1755: 10). We could say that Franklin was racist.

Furthermore. Franklin had a very narrow definition of "white." He

seemed to think only Anglo-Saxons were "white." because for him most

Europeans. "the Spaniards, Italians. French. Russians. and Swedes" had a

swarthy complexion. Franklin believed that America should belong to the

Anglo-Saxons. He was obviously ranking people based on their skin color.

Anglo-Conformity and the Melting Pot

This idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority underlay the Anglo-conformity

theory (Cole & Cole 1954). which was one ideal model of assimilation (Gor-

don 1964). In this notion, immigrants were expected to merge into and

conform to the core Anglo-Saxon. Protestant cultural traditions, giving up

their own cultural heritages back home, since England was the mother

country whose culture and institutions should prevail in the United States.

The 6th president of the United States. John Quincy Adams, wrote a

letter in 1818, when he was the Secretary of State under the previous

administration of President James Monroe, to a German aristocrat in

response to an inquiry concerning immigration. Adams claimed that if

immigrants to the United States could not adjust to "the character, moral.


political and physical. of this country," they could always "return to the

land of their nativity and their fathers" and should know that "they must

cast off the European skin never to resume if'(Levine 1996: 109).

There had been people who had believed in another. more tolerant

theory of assimilation since the 18th century. Crevecoeur, an American

writer. who was originally French. was one of them. In a letter titled "What

is an American?" of Letters from an American Farmer that was first pub-

lished in 1782 in London. he writes that immigrants arriving from all na-

tions "are melted into a new race of men" (Crevecoeur 1971: 43). He states

that Americans are "a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch.

German, and Swedes" and "from this promiscuous breed. that race, now

called Americans. have [sic.] arisen." (1971: 41). In his approach, Americans

are new people. not being descendants of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

This is the basic idea of the melting pot as an assimilation theory. although

the term "melting pot" became popular at the beginning of the 20''・ centu-

ry after Zangwill's play, "The Melting Pot." which was first staged in 1908

in New York, was a great hit

Ford English School

In the Anglo-Saxon dominated society, however, the melting pot theo-

ry could be easily connected with the Anglo-Saxon superiority. Newcom-

ers or new immigrants who are put in a melting pot should be melted into "a

new man" with the cultural traditions of the Anglo-Saxons. Americaniza-

tion in this situation would be equal to Anglo-Saxonization.

Henry Ford, who is famous as the founder of the Ford Motor Company,

established the Ford English School in 1914. which existed for eight years,


for the company's immigrant workers. Those immigrant workers learned

not only English language but also about American culture, history and the

important values in American society. It was founded in order to make

those immigrant workers Americanized by instilling the important virtues

such as frugality, good manners, and cleanliness. into the newcomers.

At the commencement, as a symbolic activity, the school's graduat-

ing class entered the huge pot, on which was written "The Ford English

School Melting Pot." Each member was dressed in the clothes of his/

her homeland carrying the trunk he or she had brought to the United

States. After some teachers "stirred" the pot with huge fake ladles, those

immigrant workers who were graduating from the Ford English School

emerged from the melting pot dressed in American-style clothes, waving

American flags (Nye 1979). The performance symbolized that they had

become good Americans.

Henry Ford wanted to consider himself to be "more a manufacturer

of men than of automobiles" (Schwartz 1971). Considering what kind of

English School he founded. what Ford wanted to manufacture was An-

glo-Saxonized Americans. Ford's interpretation of the melting pot was

very different from what Crevecoeur had thought of in the 18th century,

which was the original form of the melting pot.

III Blackness in American Society

In the United States, as is noted in the Declaration of Independence.

"all men are created equal." and "they are endowed by their Creator with

certain unalienable Rights," and these truths are "self-evident." However,

for African Americans. who constitute the second largest racial and ethnic


minority in the United States. equality and equity were not self-evident.

Racial discrimination and prejudice against African Americans as well as

other minorities has been a serious problem in American society for a long

time.

The Era of the Nineteen Sixties

Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved blacks and their

civil rights had been widely restricted particularly in the South until the

civil rights movement became popular in the 1960s. which culminated in

the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 36th president Lyndon

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. which prohibited

discrimination based on race and ethnicity, religion, and sex. A mere 44

years after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Barack Obama

was elected the 44th president of the United States in 2008, an astounding

accomplishment.

Actually, the 1960s was a truly amazing time, when you think of the

concept of equality in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1924 or

the Johnson-Reed Act, which banned immigrants from Asia and set quota

on immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, was very unequal and

unfair to non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants. This federal law was repealed by

President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Immigration and Nationality

Act of 1965. or the Hart-Celler Act, into law in 1965. Marriages between

whites and non-whites had been prohibited in many states. particularly in

the South. until 1967. when those state laws to ban interracial marriages

were finally ruled to be illegal and unconstitutional by the United States

Supreme Court. Only 50 years have passed since American people could


marry freely anywhere. which is a surprising fact for a country which is

considered to be the land of freedom and equality. The 1960s definitely

seems to be very important decade when we think of the concept of equal-

ity in the United States.

During that time. in my opinion. the United States worked really hard

to become a society free of discrimination. I always think of the change of

roles assigned to black actors on TV dramas and movies. Although in the

past. blacks were often portrayed as criminals or manual laborers. they

now play doctors, scientists, and superiors of white subordinates. This

type of equal casting of black and white actors has probably been quite

educational because it spread an awareness that even in real life it is only

natural that blacks can play these roles in society.

It could be said that the image that we have of the United States as

a free country with diversity and equality, which we consider to be the

essence of America, has been built by the hard work of American people

over the past 50 years.

Whites Who "Became" Blacks

There were some White Americans, who wanted to learn the hard-

ships and adversities of Black Americans. John Howard Griffin (1920-1980),

a white man from Texas, was a writer who was interested in racial equal—

ity. In 1959, in order to investigate the plight of black people in the Deep

South, he "became" a black man by darkening his skin using drugs and

sunbeams to pass as a black man. He traveled as a black man in Louisi-

ana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, where the discrimination and prej-

udice were most severe. It was an extremely dangerous trip, because he


would definitely be attacked both by blacks and whites, if his true identity

had been revealed.

After his safe return from his trip, he wrote a book in 1960. Black Like

Me, which created a controversy, and became a bestseller. Griffin person-

ally experienced lots of unreasonable discrimination. prejudice, unfairness,

and injustice prevalent in the Deep South. He also came to realize that

some white people's paternalistic attitudes of bringing them up to "their

level" were a deep insult to black people (Griffin 1960: 192).

After Griffin's courageous attempt to become a black, one white female

journalist from Texas, Grace Halsell (1923-2000), carried out a similar proj —

ect. She darkened her skin to pass as a black woman and experienced a

life as a black in Harlem, New York. Then she too wrote a book in 1969,

Soul Sister: The Story of White Woman Who Turned Herself Black and

Went to Live and Work in Harlem and Mississippi. She was a beauty, but

those white men who had previously made advances to her took no notice

of her, passing right by her without a glance. Halsell realized that all they

saw at that time was a black woman and nothing more.

Just before his trip to the Deep South as a black man, Griffin asked

his white friend whether people would treat him as John Howard Griffin,

regardless of his color, or they would treat him as "some nameless Negro,"

even though he was still the same man. His friend said to him, "As soon

as they see you, you'll be a Negro and that's all they'll ever want to know

about you" (Griffin 1962:4).

Black people were invisible to white people. Sallie Bingham (1991),

who is from a wealthy Kentucky family with lots of black servants at home,

writes in her family memoir that blacks were simply invisible to most white

people, except as "a pair of hands offering a drink on a silver tray."


What I think is interesting is that whites did not care about the fact

that black servants cooked for them. Unlike the Indian caste system,

where the upper castes avoid what the certain lower untouchable castes

have touched, whites in American society do not seem to mind eating the

dishes that blacks cooked with their hands. Although they had prejudic-

es against blacks, they relied on black servants and black nannies, who

waited on them hand and foot. Blacks seemed to have been deeply inter-

mingled with whites in American society, which makes their status as a

minority quite different from that of other latecomer minorities.

That might be, I think. the reason why Kuwayama (1998). a Japanese

anthropologist. who used to teach at a university in the United States,

wrote that he envied African Americans. He felt envious of the minority

status of African Americans, saying that "Asians, with their liminal status

in the racially polarized society of America, are both praised as a model

minority and ignored or discriminated against." He further writes that

"on more than a few occasions, I wished I were a black, not an Asian"

(Kuwayama 1998: 87). The fact that African Americans have long been

deeply rooted in American society has made their standing as a minority

unique, although their status has not been equal to whites and their equity

has yet to be achieved.

IV Whiteness in American Society

The election of the first African American or more specifically non-

white president, Barack Obama, had a historical significance in American

history. His mother was a white woman from Kansas, while his father

was an African black man from Kenya. Actually, President Obama is only

24 明治大学教徒論集通巻540号 (2019・ 9)

half black, and the other half is white, which makes him a biracial presi-

dent. However, all people talked about was his black half, not the white

one, which seems to be rather strange and unbalanced. This unbalanced

notion. I think. comes from people's attitudes toward the definition of

whiteness in the United States.

For the social categorization as blacks, "one-drop rule" used to be ap-

plied to those who have sub-Saharan African ancestry in their family ge-

nealogies particularly in the South before the Civil Rights Act was passed

in 1964. It signified that only one-drop of black blood makes you a black

regardless of your appearance. It suggested that this rule was socially

and culturally discriminatory against people with African ancestry.

Boundaries between Whites and Blacks

The 2000 United States census defines white people as those having

origins in any of the original people of Europe, the Middle East, or North

Africa. The status of being white was important for citizenship acqui-

sition, because the 1790 Naturalization Act allowed only "a free white

person" to be naturalized as a naturalized American. This brought legal

disputes in lawsuits by peoples who were denied recognition as whites by

immigration officials.

The cultural and social boundaries between whites and blacks have

been changing in American history. As mentioned before, one of the

founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, had a very narrow concept of whites,

considering whites to be only English and Germans of Saxon descent. A

Jewish American anthropologist, Brodkin (2002), who writes about histori-

cal changes in Jews'racial assignment in American society, says that Jews


were not considered to be "white" until after WWII.

Even though an American popular actor. Johnny Depp, makes it public

that he is part Native American, people think he is a white, not a Native

American. Keanu Reeves, a Canadian actor. who has a little Chinese blood

in him, is considered to be a white. On the other hand. Tiger woods. an

American professional golfer. who has mixed ancestry of Caucasian. Black.

Native American. and Asian. is considered to be a black. It would be a

remnant of the one-drop rule. but it definitely is not fair.

Because of the one-drop rule. the range of blackness is so wide and

inclusive that some people who are considered to be blacks could pass for

whites if their black ancestry was concealed and unknown. Philip Roth.

a Jewish American writer. wrote a novel. The Human Stain (2000). which

dealt with a life of one black university professor. Coleman Silk. He passed

for white due to the lighter color of his skin. but living with that secret

made his identity very complex.

It is conceivable that some black people who would be able to pass for

whites have become members of a white majority in the United States.

Many Americans actually marry inter-ethnically and inter-racially. If the

"one-drop rule" were applied to the white blood. meaning that a single

drop of "white blood" makes a person a white, many people who are now

considered to be blacks would become whites.

Because Americans have been ethnically and racially mixed over time

in the United States due to inter-ethnic and inter-racial marriages. the

boundary between whites and non-whites is arbitrary. It does not reflect

reality and the distinction, as well as the definition, of whiteness and black-

ness would be cultural and social.

The commonly shared classification of blacks and whites in the United


States might also be wrong from a scientific perspective. One statistical

analysis study done in 1958 shows that over 28 million white people are

descendants of people of African origin and about 21 percent of the people

classified as whites in 1950 had an African element in their inherited bio-

logical background (Stuckert 1958).

V Conclusion

From the standpoint of one's identity, the problem becomes more

complicated. Americans generally have an identity that is based not only

on being an American, but also on being a member of a particular ethnic

group, race, religion, and so forth. I remember one American student

whom I became acquainted with while I was studying at a university in

Canada as art undergraduate. He said that he was Jewish and he was

very proud of being a Jew, even though only his father was an American

Jew and his mother was a non-Jewish Catholic. He overidentified with his

Jewish half and identified himself as a Jew. Former President Obama se-

lected only "Black" on the census form, even though he was half black and

half white, by having a black father from Kenya and a white mother from

Kansas. Like my American friend in Canada, Obama overidentified with

his black half and identified himself as a black.

At Pennsylvania State University, there is a popular class, Sociology

119, Race and Ethnic Relations, where students find out their own genetic

makeup using a DNA test since they may not be who they think they are

genetically. One student who considers himself to be a "proud black man"

found out that genetically he is 52 percent African and 48 percent Euro-

pean. However, he says that he is half white, at least. genetically, but not


culturally. The fact that he is black is more important, and it is who he is

comfortable with (Daly 2005).

Americans can "choose" their own identity because they possess a

multilayered identity of being an American and an individual who belongs

to a particular racial, ethnic or religious group. The fact that they can do

this or they are allowed to do it seems, to me, to be fortunate and in a way

a blessing.

Today what some fanatic groups of people talk about in American so-

ciety is "white superiority" or "white supremacy," not "Anglo-Saxon supe-

riority." This is probably because the definition of whiteness has been ex-

panded and being white is not exclusive to being Anglo-Saxon any more.

I think this vagueness of the concept of whiteness illustrates the uncertain

basis of white superiority in contemporary American society.

Racial and ethnic intermarriage is becoming more and more popular

and common in today's America. To marry someone of a different ethnic

group seems to be very American in contemporary American society.

From a biological perspective, there seems to be few pure whites or blacks

in the strict sense of the word in the United States. It could be said that

there is a hope of equality and equity for African Americans in this racial-

ly and ethnically mixed, in other words, culturally, socially and biologically

mixed, American society. The United States as the land of equality and

equity is not yet a reality, but American society is always changing and

seeking new experiments, which makes American society and culture an

even more intriguing subject of study.


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