Died some, pro patria,

non ‘dulce’ non ‘et décor’...

– Ezra Pound, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”[1]

Unveiling a statue to the memory of Commodore John Barry, in Washington, a few months before the outbreak of war in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson made a speech entitled, “Men who think first of themselves [are] not true Americans.”[2] The point of the speech was to draw on Barry’s Irish roots to provide an example for all members of the Irish “stock”, and to admonish other Irishmen who had not followed Barry's path of wholehearted commitment to the American nation.

It can be no surprise that a self-proclaimed Scotch-Irish Presbyterian like Woodrow Wilson would find many Irish Catholics reprehensible, and far less worthy of American citizenship than members of his own distinguished group. But the terms Wilson used to describe the Irish highlight the way he thought about immigration and what he felt new groups needed to do in order to gain acceptance into American society:

John Barry was an Irishman, but his heart crossed the Atlantic with him. He did not leave it in Ireland. And the test of all of us – for all of us had our origins on the other side of the sea – is whether we will assist in enabling America to live her separate and independent life, retaining our ancient affections, indeed, but determining everything that we do by the interests that exist on this side of the sea. Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name. This man was not an Irish-American; he was an Irishman who became an American. I venture to say if he voted he voted with regard to the questions as they looked on this side of the water and not as they affected the other side; and that is my infallible test of a genuine American, that when he votes or when he acts or when he fights his heart and his thought are centered nowhere but in the emotions and the purposes and the policies of the United States.[3]

The Scotch-Irish had excelled in serving empire in this way, whether it was putting down the Irish in Ulster, fighting the Maharatas in India, slaughtering the indigenous peoples of North America, or in service as missionaries in Africa. Wherever and whatever, the Scotch-Irish had excelled in the cause of empire. As Woodrow Wilson would have argued, this meant that they were willing to place the larger concerns of an imperial nation before their own ethnic or religious concerns; in reality it meant defining the empire so that it incorporated their aspirations and excluded those of others – black, Irish, Chinese, and so on.

Woodrow Wilson would have proudly declared that the Scotch-Irish contribution to the cause of “enabling America to live her separate and independent life” had been second to none.[4] At the same time, the Scotch-Irish had retained “their ancient affections.” Surely this was what the charge of the mounted Klansman at the end of “The Birth of a Nation” (loosely based on Wilson's own History of the American People), had been all about. Ancient affections (the gathering of the clans), had been brought into the service of the American Republic, rescuing it from the troubled times of Radical Reconstruction, “Black Rule”, and subjugation of a “superior” civilization by members of an “inferior” one. In Wilson's day, and even now, the message that immigrants were obliged to learn was that it was important to celebrate aspects of their ethnicity, but only if these seemed to conform to the overarching imperial narrative. For men, this might be “serve your country” (“be all that you can be”), or “bring wealth to her shores”; for women, it might mean, “bear the Sons of the Empire,” or “be the best helpmate you can be.”

In the 1890s, when Wilson had been the great academic and author of numerous political science and historical texts, immigration was beginning to have its greatest impact on American society, at least since the Civil War. Everyone was commenting on the problems besetting the nation as a result of the influx of so many foreigners and it was not just a question of the increase in volume of immigration, though this was dramatic. According to Wilson, “The census of 1890 showed the population of the country increased to 62,622,250, an addition of 12,466,467 within the decade.” As Wilson made clear in his History of the American People (a text that, as its title would suggest, accepted the notion that there was indeed such a thing as an “American” type), these new immigrants just weren’t on a par with the Scotch-Irish:

Immigrants poured steadily in as before, but with an alteration of stock which students of affairs marked with uneasiness. Throughout the century men of the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood which was every year added to the vital working force of the country, or men from the Latin-Gallic stocks of France and northern Italy; but now there came multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence; and they came in numbers which increased from year to year, as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population, the men whose standards of life and of work were such as American workmen had never dreamed of hitherto.[5]

Of such low quality were these immigrants, a “coarse crew crowding in every year at the eastern ports,” that in the eyes of the Princetonian, even “the Chinese were more to be desired, as workmen if not as citizens.”[6]

Wilson’s one major act as President with regard to the issue of immigration was his veto of the Burnett general immigration bill in 1914 and 1915. This bill included a literacy test as a way of excluding many immigrants from entering the United States. Wilson’s response to the bill has appeared enlightened. His veto read: “Those who come seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one of the chief of the opportunities they seek, the opportunity of education.”[7] Wilson protested that the object of such a provision was “restriction, not selection,” suggesting that he would have supported the latter.[8]

Wilson’s enlightenment on this issue must be questioned. First, as even Arthur Link noted, political considerations were uppermost in Wilson's mind when he vetoed the bill. In a reply to a letter from Senator John Sharp Williams, he wrote that he would rather not have “set my judgment against so many of my friends and associates in public life.” Unfortunately, he continued, he had made “the most explicit statements at the time of the presidential election about this subject to groups of our fellow-citizens of foreign extraction.” Because of this, he could not give his assent to the bill.[9] But even if we were to accept Wilson's reasoning for his veto, we must ask on what basis would “selection” be determined, if it was not to be that of literacy. The answer would surely have been found in Wilson’s estimations of the racial capacities of each group seeking entry into the United States. It remains uncertain whether or not Wilson was disappointed when the Burnett bill was reenacted in 1917 and Congress overrode the Presidential veto.[10]

As we survey the course of immigration to the United States, we now find that the very immigrants Wilson decried are looked on with nostalgia, as being of “the right kind,” with the right cultural backgrounds to add to the great American tapestry. As Micaela di Leonardo has written,

I'm a veteran of the appalling racist literature of the 1960s and 1970s, which speculated about whether my ethnic population, given its pathological families and bad values, would ever be able to achieve intellectually and professionally. Now, after decades of government subsidization of white ethnic mobility, all is forgiven and forgotten. We wops are considered assimilated into the larger white population, and nobody even bothers to disaggregate our SAT scores.[11]

Now it is the “NEW” new immigrants, focused on by Theodore White, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and others, who produce so much "difficulty".[12] The country is faced with an influx of South Asians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chicanos, Haitians, Cubans, etc., and this has led repeatedly to the Wilsonian refrain that the nation is on the verge of collapse. (African Americans, of course, even when they followed the pattern of mobility of “white ethnics”, remained tarred by the stigma applied to the “race” as a whole, since many of them clearly remained ghettoized and outside the mainstream.)

The question arises: how is it that the earlier immigrants, about whom such dire predictions were made, managed to assimilate into the so-called mainstream? Was Wilson’s assessment just plain wrong, based (as it no doubt was) on an absence of any significant interaction with even a single newcomer to his country (after all he hated going anywhere near New York City)? Or was his assessment right, inasmuch as these people managed to remake themselves as “Americans”, lifting themselves out of the benighted conditions that had plagued them in Southern and Eastern Europe?

The answer lies somewhere in-between. Wilson was wrong about the immigrants in that they were not very different from any other new arrivals in the United States, but like all immigrants these people did proceed to re-make themselves, not as idealized “Americans” as one would expect of people endeavoring to enter the mainstream, but as idealized ethnics. As part of the process of migration, influential members of each group endeavored to rewrite their own ethnic narrative to accentuate characteristics that would facilitate acceptance from those around them. Such characteristics secured for them, not equality, but a position on an imperial hierarchy. At the turn of the century, when American society promoted masculinity and independence and stable, patriarchal families as good, and femininity, dependence and unstable, matriarchal families as bad, it is not altogether surprising that these visions of good and evil helped guide newly-forming ethnic narratives and traditions.

This ethnic reinvention highlights the relationship between an imperial nation and its migrant groups. Newcomers to the United States seldom sought genuine multicultural changes, for if they did they would undermine the very things that had made the country so attractive to many of them in the first place. Instead, they sought a place on the established hierarchy, and once on that social ladder they attempted to climb steadily upwards. Naturally, immigrant groups already on that ladder endeavored to maintain their position by arguing that more recent arrivals were upsetting the delicate social fabric and ought not to be given imperial blessings. And, indeed, most of the inter-ethnic and inter-racial fighting that occurred took place between groups close to each other on the hierarchy, with the result that as each group demanded its “piece of the pie”, social elites remained relatively unscathed.

In Woodrow Wilson’s mind (and he was very much representative of an imperial consensus on this issue) there were “good” and “bad” ethnic groups. As we have noted, for Wilson the Scotch-Irish defined good, while the Irish, and the new immigrants of the 1890s defined bad. Everything was expressed in cultural terms. If a group prospered it was because of their cultural baggage, if they did not do so, it was for the same reason. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” was the great phrase of the day, mainly because it suggested to people “lower on the scale of civilization” that there was hope for their own “upliftment”, while it suggested to those near the top, that because of cultural defects (always redefined when necessary) their “inferiors” would stay where they were. In the meantime, the social equilibrium was reinforced.

A good southerner like Wilson would have known all about this. The only delicate issue for members of the social elite was “maintaining standards” at such a high level that individuals from “culturally disadvantaged” backgrounds would need to transcend their own community’s “inadequacies” before they could gain acceptance in the highest levels of society.[13] And the supreme test, the one that would enable people with power and connections to feel comfortable recommending a person of immigrant “stock”, was that he believed in the justness of the “bootstraps” philosophy, and the right of the elite to rule. If standards declined, then the rules would need changing to make things just a little more difficult. Just as it has been throughout the last fifteen years with current immigration and multicultural debates, during the 1890s the fear of declining standards was an important issue (and, like today, the concern then was also that the Anglo-American “civilization” might fall behind other great imperial civilizations – Germany – or the new Europe – and Japan).

Even the great multicultural debates of today, are more often questions about imperial position than truly anti-imperial concerns about multiculturalism. With few exceptions, leaders and representatives of ethnic and racial groups appeal for more consideration from those around them on the grounds that they are fully committed to the “mission” of the United States, a mission not considered in anti-imperial terms (though often the supposed anti-imperial origins of the nation are used to telling effect), but a mission that would see the U.S.S. Enterprise retain its rightful place in the galaxy of nations.[14]

Of course, accommodationist postures make tactical sense for an ethnic elite, especially in a nation that is riding high – one that has pulled off victories over empires as evil as the Soviet Union and Iraq. But even when the nation is in crisis, brought on by economic recession or oil embargoes, very little questioning of fundamental assumptions of American economy and society seems to occur. The Great Depression brought perhaps the greatest threat to the imperial consensus, but the Second World War and the United States’ rise to global dominance cut short much, if not all, self-reflection arising from economic recession.[15] Maybe such crises have not lasted sufficiently long to lead to the decline of imperial self-justification, but before this can occur a process of demonization occurs of those groups who question national goals (peace activists), or who appear to be outside the consensus (Black Power advocates, anarchists, or Communists), along with the search for external foes who can be blamed for the problem. This has remained unchanged since Wilson’s day, when anti-war protesters, Wobblies, Socialists and Germans threatened imperial hegemony. The post-Cold War World may be different, but the War on Drugs, the fears associated with illegal immigrants, the scapegoating of Japan for American economic woes in the 1990s, and the recent assault on liberties in connection with the war in Afghanistan, suggest otherwise.

When groups outside the mainstream do endeavor to organize against oppression, they appear to take a position that threatens the very social fabric. And in some ways, they do indeed threaten that fabric. After all, in conditions where a “stationary state” (to use John Stuart Mill’s term[16]) appear to exist, where the Gross National Product is not moving ever onward and upward, and markets are not opening up for American products (in short, when the “pie” is not expanding), then it is safe to say that the incorporation of a minority group into the mainstream on terms of relative equality with all other groups is going to mean that something is taken away from those other groups. But for many the hope is that the “stationary state” has not been reached, and optimists will even argue that incorporation of an out-group will generate the required expansion. More often, though, the intention of ethnic leaders is not to threaten that social fabric. They will often present themselves as maligned and mistreated “Americans”, and (often with the early Martin Luther King, Jr. as their guide[17]) will talk of the brotherhood of peoples and commitment to mutual, “American” goals, and their belief in the Constitution.

What often is absent is a presentation of ethnic goals based, not on the inclusion of the one, but on the absence of exclusion of the others (in its broadest sense). Here one means, not only the argument that no community, regardless of its composition and beliefs, should be excluded from determining the future of American society, but also that within different ethnic groups no section should be excluded. In other words, the imperial condition that has done so much to shape ethnic narratives, before, during, and after migrations, must be questioned to the extent that ethnicity itself is humanized. In the past, idealized ethnicities have revolved around masculinized narratives, and consequently, have not presented a radical alternative to mainstream doctrine.[18]

In looking for the presentation of ethnic demands in opposition to social exclusion, I am also suggesting that a government’s role in the world needs to be altered. In any “World Order”, from Woodrow Wilson’s down to the present Bushite assault on evil”-doers”, the goal of American diplomacy, its “tragedy” perhaps, has been to secure the privilege of the United States in the world. What this means is ensuring American markets at the expense of others and securing American borders to keep out the world’s “surplus population”, so that the standard of living in this country can remain higher than almost anywhere else in the world. As long as the discrepancy between American personal income or land-per-capita-ratios and those of the rest of the world continue to be so great, it remains within the interest of each and every ethnic group within the United States to rewrite their ethnic narratives so that they correspond to those of the mainstream.

In the long run, however, such discrepancies will most likely be altered, and Americans will need to recognize, as many both inside and outside the United States now seem to, that if “America” can only be “America” when its economy is trampling over those of other nations, perhaps the imperial assumptions on which this republic is founded are a luxury that can no longer be afforded in this age of global social, political, economic and environmental limits (note, however, that democracy and rights are not included in those imperial assumptions).

But, lamentably, Woodrow Wilson is the hero of the hourglass. New biographies appear and old biographers attempt to show that had it not been for his ailing health, he would have established the World Order that only now seems to be taking shape.[19] The man who segregated Washington, D.C., who provided the inspiration for Reverend Dixon's Leopard’s Spots, who then screened D.W. Griffith’s film version of the same romance in the White House, and proceeded to praise it as “like writing history with lightning;”[20] this president who pushed for self-determination for most European nations, but supported colonialism throughout the rest of the world, including American intervention in Latin America, who intervened against a popular mandate in the barbarous European war (partly, I would be tempted to argue, to avoid the British Empire’s collapse and a return to worldwide “Black Rule”), and who contributed no end to the hardships of the Soviet Union by intervening in its Civil War; this President has been rediscovered as the harbinger of this latest New World Order. And so he was. Shards from his imperial ordering, reflecting his gendered and racialized mindset, have survived down to this day.

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Notes

[1] Ezra Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," in Collected Poems.

[2] Ray Stannard Baker & William E. Dodd, The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, volume I: The New Democracy (NY: Harper & Bros., 1925).

[3] Ibid., p. 109.

[4] See Henry Jones Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915), written by one of Wilson’s faculty members at Princeton University.

[5] Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (NY: Harper & Bros., 1902), pp. 212-3.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Wilson, quoted in Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (New York: Harper, 1963), p. 61.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., footnote 15.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Micaela di Leonardo, “Boyz on the Hood,” in The Nation, (August 17/24, 1992) p.181.

[12] Theodore White, America in Search of Itself (New York: Harper, 1982); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (New York: Norton, 1992); Stanley Fish review of literature in Transition.

[13] It is at this level that the Civil Service Reforms of the Progressive Era take on such important meanings. As Plunkett or any other ethnically-based local politician pronounced at the time, these reforms were rationalized on the basis of ideas of “professionalism” and “meritocracy.” In fact, however, their most important function was undermining sources of power for ethnic enclaves in America. The street, celebrated by Plunkett as the school for his sort of politician, was now replaced by the University; William L. Riordan, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (Boston: Bedford, 1984).

[14] It is not surprising given these conditions that war and sport (often with the boundaries between the two blurred) so often play a fundamental part in defining imperial position and providing justification for the continuation of the United States more-or-less unchanged.

[15] Theda Skocpol; Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

[16] John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957).

[17] James H. Cone argues that by the end of his life Martin Luther King was beginning to question many of the assumptions on which American political economy is based; Martin and Malcolm and America (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991).

[18] This was the fundamental flaw in Randolph Bourne’s thinking. His concept of a Trans-National America was intended to create a post-imperial or anti-imperial America. Unfortunately, Bourne had as the agent of this change the expression and empowerment of ethnic cultural groups. Bourne; For an understanding of ethnic narratives as masculinized, see Lisa Lowe, "Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences," in Diaspora 1, 1 (Spring, 1991) p. 34.

[19] Link’s claimed a great deal for Woodrow Wilson’s illness; August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson (New York: Scribner, 1991).

[20] Michael Paul Rogin, “D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’”