From early on in our lives, we’ve understood that we are a nation of immigrants. America is a melting pot of almost every ethnicity in the world. People come to America to achieve certain goals for themselves and their families. They want the opportunity to live free, to have the liberty to make decisions for themselves without interference, in order to pursue their own paths toward personal happiness. They want to have the freedom to worship the way they want to worship. They come to escape tyranny, dire financial situations, or the poor living conditions of their home countries. They want to become Americans. So why are we so divided by ethnicity? More importantly, why are so many of them trying to change America to be more like the countries they left?
In order to be American, you have to put America first. Instead, we see more and more groups of people labeling themselves—in fact, segregating themselves—according to their ethnicities, according to the countries where they were born or the lands their ancestors left behind (or were taken from) but where few of their descendants today show a desire to return. We have people who use hyphenated words to point out how they split themselves apart from their fellow countrymen—African-American, Latin-American, Hispanic-American, Muslim-American, Chinese-American, Asian-American…the list goes on and on. We give special privileges to certain groups and not to others, thus creating even more segregation.
I’m not suggesting anyone give up his or her heritage. By all means, continue to practice the traditions and observe the ancestral histories that made you who you are, but these traditions and histories should not be placed before or supersede the original goal—to be American.
Many of the countries that immigrants leave are cesspools of government control, religious persecution, and poverty. Yet some get to America, then they lobby and vote for policies and politicians that promote the very things they abandoned in their homelands. Why? Why would anyone do that? Pretty counterproductive, no?
If we want America to succeed, we have to quit dividing ourselves into these smaller groups. We have to quit trying to change America to be more like countries x, y, and z. When we are divided, we create an environment that is detrimental to the survival and success of our country. We must work together toward the one goal of protecting and following the very foundation on which America was built—the foundation of everyone having the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
