The Value of Diversity

     Thanks to the genealogical work of a relative on another branch of the family tree, we have learned that our forefather, Peter Horton, came to Long Island, from England, in the year 1640. So, while my ancestor didn’t come over on the Mayflower (like everyone else’s), he wasn’t too far behind.

   His descendants, I’m told, prospered, becoming prominent in that part of New York. Of course, the family tree by necessity kept branching out and, as the country grew, Horton’s (like the families of other early settlers) had kinfolk move westward.

   Aaron Horton arrived in the Fowlerville area, I believe, in the late 1840's or early1850's. He and his wife, Hannah (Mills), are buried in Miller Cemetery on Stow Road. The ensuing lineage saw their eldest son, Stephen R. Horton, marry a Duncan, which has made me a shirttail relative to half of the town. Their eldest son, my great grandfather Rollin, was united in marriage to a Durfee, a Swedish connection, and Grandpa Lloyd was wed to Illah Mae Bement, whose family had French ancestry.

   On my mother’s side, Grandma Amo arrived here from Prussia prior to World War I, sponsored by a family but otherwise on her own in a new land. My grandfather, Louis Amo, who died before I was born, came to Michigan from Canada and had (like the Bem'ents) French ancestry. One of his grandmothers was a Native American.

    I, meanwhile, married a lady whose father’s family (the Smith's) arrived in Michigan from western New York and presumably came originally from England. Maybe they got here ahead of Peter Horton. On her mother’s side are Ullerik & Maria Speicher, a family of Amish/Mennonites who came to Pennsylvania from southern Germany in 1737.

  During the spring quarter of my freshman year at Michigan State University (1970), I was assigned a roommate who had come here from Libya. Mohammed, nicknamed Buzz by the guys on our dormitory floor, along with several other Libyan students, was studying petroleum engineering.

   That wouldn’t be noteworthy, except that Muammar Qaddafi had led a military takeover of that oil-rich country the year before and subsequently announced that foreign petroleum companies were exploiting his nation. By 1973 he would nationalize that industry.

   I always wondered, cynically perhaps, how much the U.S. government and the oil companies knew of Qaddafi’s intentions at that time, and might have been hedging their bets by providing these young men with the know how to take over the production. After all, that nationalized oil still had be sold to processors and then retailed to other countries. Big Oil would still make a profit. At the very least, I found it ironic that our country, home base for some of those international companies, trained the engineers who helped Qaddafi take control of that industry.

    Two young men, a few years older than the students, accompanied the group. While they styled themselves as chaperons, I figured they were guards, sent here to ensure that the boys studied hard and didn’t get any ideas of staying in the USA. One Saturday evening the two chaperons, Buzz and his fellow Libyan students, along with yours truly attended a party. The beer loosened our respective tongues, and the chaperons and I had a spirited, yet friendly conversation about Israel’s presence in the Middle East and what they felt was an undue Jewish influence on American foreign policy in that region.

    During my sophomore year I roomed with Henry, an affable fellow from Saginaw whose family originally came from Mexico. I’m sure, if he ever thinks of me, he must still shake his head.

    The following school year I shared the dorm room with Esham, nicknamed Stan, who came from Syria. He was at MSU on a student visa, studying business. Stan was a few years older than the rest of us on the dorm floor, more grownup in his behavior and study habits, but happy and eager to join us in some of our extracurricular activities. We subsequently learned that he came from a prominent and well-to-do Christian family in Damascus. Stan was anxious to remain in the United States, not feeling too secure about any future he might have in his native land under the dictatorial rule of Hafezal al-Assaud and the Baath Party. A year later, recently married to an American lady, he was happy for two reasons.

   I regale you with this personal history to spotlight the value of diversity. I believe it strengthens and invigorates families, individual experiences, and society.

   The topic of diversity and its importance was dealt with by Henry Adamic in his article “A Nation of Nations.” This piece, which I came across in an old textbook called The United States in Literature was written in 1940, on the eve of World War II when many in the nation were still embracing an isolationist and anti-foreign outlook. Adamic was born in Yugoslavia prior to the first world war and came to American at age 14. He held a number of jobs before becoming a reporter and writing books.

      In this article, he noted that “On its sound, positive side, America always has welcomed diversity, variety, differences.”

     “At its best, Americanism is nobody’s monopoly, but a happy concentrate of some of the highest aspirations and tendencies of humanity…,” he said. “As it seems to me, it is the highest body of idealism in the world today. It is, among other things, a movement away from primitive racism, fear, and nationalism, and herd instincts and mentality: a movement toward freedom, creativeness…

    “Americanism welcomes differences,” he continued, “as if we can stand another motto, I suggest: Let’s made America safe for differences. Let us work for unity within diversity….

    “Our various backgrounds are important and valuable, but, in the long run, not in themselves, not as something perfect and final. They are important and valuable only as material for our future American Culture.”

* * *

    Among the bedrock principles of our nation is the  concept of “Liberty and Justice for All.” And among our cherished beliefs, born out in countless examples, is that America offers and provides exceptional opportunities to its citizens, whether they sport a Mayflower blossom on the family tree or their ancestors arrived in steerage.

    “Bring me your huddled masses, yearning to be free” is inscribed at the base of the Statute of Liberty and in the DNA of the American Dream.

   But not all Americans, past or present, have embraced the notion of universal brotherhood or put out a welcome mat to any and all immigrants.

   The American Party, better remembered as the Know Nothings, built a strong political movement in the mid-1850’s based on opposition to Irish and German Catholic immigrants. The Chinese, brought to California to help build the railroads and perform other necessary work, were later resented and discriminated against. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress in 1882, shutting the doors to further immigration and making Chinese already in the country ineligible for naturalization.

     The railroads, needing people to settle their vast holdings in the West, and industry, requiring more and more workers to man the factories, advertised these opportunities all over Europe during the late 1800's and into the early 1900's. As a result, a flood people arrived; many of them coming from Italy, Greece, Poland, Serbia, and Russia and other Southern and Eastern European nations. Their decision was made easier by religious and ethnic persecution, military conscription, and the limited economic opportunities they faced in their respective countries. But many of the descendants of the Western Europeans immigrants, who came here for similar reasons, did not greet them with enthusiasm or open arms.

   A similar attitude was directed at the Lebanese Christians who emigrated here in sizable numbers from 1875-1920. At the time they were living under the rule of the Ottoman Turks and were considered part of greater Syria. A number of these arrivals settled in Lansing.

   What resulted from this influx of new Americans was the Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, which included the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act. This federal law established a quota system, limiting the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, In addition, it severely restricted the immigration of Africans and outright banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity."

   Despite the obstacles and less-than-friendly welcome, the new arrivals, and more importantly their children and grandchildren, assimilated into the culture, embraced their American duties and responsibilities, accepted a set of core values, and in the process became part of the American Dream. Their inclusion has made our nation more vibrant and dynamic.

    Unfortunately, some of these descendants have chosen to become modern-day Know Nothings.

     Immigration—the who, what, and wherefore--is an old and recurring debate; a tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of this nation. The better angels of our nature and the Biblical command “to love one another” pulls against our instinct to preserve and protect ourselves, our own kind, and oppose what we perceive as threats to our well being and our way of life.

    “The American Dream is a lovely thing,” wrote Henry Adamic, “but to keep it alive, to keep it from turning into a nightmare, every once in a while we’ve got to wake up.”

     We seem to need a wake-up call once again. I hope in our current debate over whether to keep out the welcome mat or bar the door and even build a wall, enough people remember our nation’s motto… I hope they remember what it has signified in the past and the guidance it offers us now and in the future: E pluribus unum… Out of Many, One.