American Culture?

One argument often used to support anti immigrant sentiment and/or legistlation is a nativist attitude which proclaims that America is at risk of losing our cultural identity as a result of the influx of Immigrants. This is obviously feeding into Xenophobic individuals' fears. In the comments section of the recent News Times Live article regarding the breakup of the Santos Family, one such nativist exposed her true xenophobia, and almost immediately had her "Losing our Cultural Identity" idea shot down, very quickly. Thanks to Dis Noir..who certainly did his homework ;)

Posted by: DisNoir36 Thu, Jul 19 2007
Um actually, the man responsible for most of the early Disney characters was what would now be considered an anchor baby whose father was from Germany. Walt Disney was also an anchor baby, a decendant of an Irish family which emigrated to North America and first established roots in Canada.

Superman was co-created by an anchor baby son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania named Joel Siegel and a Canadian born named Joe Shuster. Shuster was also the son of Jewish immigrants who emigrated from Holland.

Jeans were first created in Genoa Italy and went to France where they got the name blue jeans or 'bleu de Genes' which translates into Blue of Genoa. Levi Strauss was a German who brought them here in the 1850's.

Halloween or All Hallow's even, is a pagan holiday imported from England and other parts having origins among the Scots and Irish there who brought it here. It's also known as Samhain, and is the night before All Saints Day which was a Catholic holiday created to coincide with a pagan holiday for the purpose of converting pagans. BTW Christmas is another pagan holiday which was bastardized by the Catholic Church and created to coincide with the Winter Solstice. It's no coincidence that according to the Catholic Church Jesus Christ was conceived (supposedly) on March 25 as that was also the day he died. Neither the gospels of Matthew nor Luke mention when Jesus was actually born. The only thing uniquely American about either one is the complete commercialization of religious days.

Thanksgiving which is not uniquely American was started by British immigrants who thanked god for the food they had, food provided by Indians in 1621. It's also celebrated in Canana and actually predates the origins here in the US having been first celebrated in 1578.

I'll give you Memorial Day since that was a uniquely American holiday first celebrated after the Civil war by among other people liberated slaves.

Oh and not even Elvis Presley, who was descended from Scottish and German immigrants was without immigrant influence having developed his musical style from gospel and blues music which was predominant among the southern black communities. Unless of course you consider slavery as uniquely American, since many of those soutern blacks would not have been here if it wasn't for slavery.



Seriously, next time you go spouting off nativist crap, check your goddamn facts. SHO is correct in that the American culture was by and large created by immigrants and children of immigrants who brought over their culture and traditions from other parts of the world and from that adapted it to life here in America. We would not have many of what we have if it weren't for immigrants.