Transnational America by Randolph Bourne - Essay Example

American Responses Within his paper Transnational America, Randolph Bourne presents his argument that there is no true culture in America except that which has been pieced together from the experiences and cultures of the many different types of peoples who have come to live here. However, Americans are quick to define themselves by the Anglo-centric concepts of their earliest settlers and most dominant members of society. While their claims of holding the ‘correct’ nationality or culture are adamant and loud, they are also woefully incorrect. They fight to have all ‘foreigners’ assimilate into the American culture rather than retaining any sense of the culture from which they came, yet these same individuals do not seem to realize that they, too, are without a real cultural base, stealing instead what is convenient or deemed ‘proper’ from their European, often English, predecessors. Examining Bourne’s argument brings out a strong theme arguing for internationalism and amicable give and take of cultural concepts and beliefs, enabling the country to grow into something unique and unknown in the world. This argument for a truer mixing of cultures is supported by the evidence of several other writers including Sui Sin Far in “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian”, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin in “The School Days of an Indian Girl” and Louisa May Alcott with her “My Contraband” in which such mixing often did not occur to the detriment of not only the individual experiencing these issues, but also to the society who missed out on their earlier creativity and actual worth. Bourne argues that it is not the influx of differing cultures that threatens American concepts of nationality, but American concepts of nationality themselves which work to produce a listless and cultureless environment among its citizens. “It is not the Jew who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his who is dangerous to America, but the Jew who has lost the Jewish fire and become a mere elementary grasping animal … Just so surely as we tend to disintegrate these nuclei of nationalistic culture do we tend to create hordes of men and women without a spiritual country, cultural outlaws without taste, without standards but those of the mob” (5). Thus, rather than providing a place where anyone can call home, as advertised, America becomes merely a place where one goes to forget everything that was once important, a land without a soul and a land unwilling to accept any soul that is offered even as it struggles to retain connections to a cultural identity it has already rejected. By insisting that those who come to our shores give up any sense of their former cultural or national affiliations, America becomes a land empty of feeling, forcing these empty individuals, despite their sacrifice, to the bottom rungs of society in an attempt to uphold ideals that should not be ours to begin with. “They become the flotsam and jetsam of American life, the downward undertow of our civilization with its leering cheapness and falseness of taste and spiritual outlook, the absence of mind and sincere feeling which we see in our slovenly towns, our vapid moving pictures, our popular novels and in the vacuous faces of the crowds on the city street. This is the cultural wreckage of our time, and it is from the fringes of the Anglo-Saxon as well as the other stocks that it falls” (5). In attempting to get everyone to adhere to a culture that does not exist, America is becoming a land torn apart and disintegrated, empty of feeling and thought and without the creative forces of compromise and cultural mixing that once made it great. The consequences of such denial of culture can be seen throughout the lines of Sui Sin Far’s story. She illustrates beautifully and tragically how her life as a half-Chinese, half-Anglo American shaped out as she grew older. While presumably in England as a very small child, she relates how other children were instructed not to play with her because of her ancestry and how her mother failed to understand the internal struggles she was having as a result of this. She has little sense of her own heritage, unpleasantly discovering her first examples of Chinese in New York City: “With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese person. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, dressed in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs … ‘Well, we’re Chinese and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be [like that]’” (1) she concludes and immediately gets into a fight with other children on the block who also don’t understand what her culture is all about. Throughout her story, Far continues to illustrate the many ways in which she is denied any real knowledge of her Chinese cultural heritage despite seeking it out even while she is denied entrance into the culture in which she has lived throughout her life. From the children beating her up in the streets of New York to the hounding questions of people in Canada to the astounded dinner guests at a party in San Francisco, Far continues to find that she is accepted nowhere. Her white countrymen refuse to accept her because she is Chinese, her Chinese compatriots refuse to accept her because she is white and there is seemingly no segment of the population capable of understanding her justifiable pride in her race and unique life experiences. Although she thinks of going to China to live out her life, it is clear that even there, she will not fit in with the culture, having had to form her own for so long. Bonnin relates similar rejection of an alternate culture within her story. As a child of the indigenous people of the land now known as home by millions of white people, Bonnin describes the experience of being a novelty and a ‘foreigner’ within her own homeland. “I sank deep into the corner of my seat, for I resented being watched. Directly in front of me, children who were no larger than I hung themselves upon the backs of their seats, with their bold white faces toward me. … Their mothers, instead of reproving such rude curiosity, looked closely at me, and attracted their children’s further notice to my blanket. This embarrassed me, and kept me constantly on the verge of tears” (1). The entire experience of the school in the east is described in great detail as to what was considered strange and unusual to the native children, who were forced to adopt the culture and traditions of a land far away and rejected by the settlers who were now enforcing the same concepts they had struggled against not long ago. One example of this enforced adherence to arbitrary rules is the cutting of the hair. “Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards” (3). When Bonnin’s hair was cut, this was the impression she had of her situation, as if she were a captive in enemy hands. “I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit … now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder” (4). As with Sui Sin Far, Bonnin found that with her acceptance of the white man’s ways, she had lost touch with the true Indian heritage she had left behind. And while she could no longer relate to her family on the Dakota plains, she was also not accepted or comfortable within the society of the whites. Louisa May Alcott was firmly entrenched within the English culture of America during her lifetime, but was not blind to its inherent evils. In her story, “My Contraband”, she illustrates how the English culture’s inability to accept another culture led to such hatreds that would fuel the Civil War. By adopting an attitude of superiority, the white men of the south, regardless of the actual tone of their skin, were given absolute power over the black men, again regardless of the actual color of their skin. While Robert might have been able to pass for a white man and was at least half a white man’s son, the other half or portion came from a black woman, a slave. This automatically placed him in the position of a slave, although an honored one who was given many privileges not usually afforded to other slaves simply because he lived within his father’s house. However, his younger brother, constantly jealous of the man who had his father’s eye and his father’s looks, was able to destroy everything Robert ever had in his life that was good when he inherited his brother as a portion of his property, along with Robert’s lovely wife, whom Nate also desired. As the protagonist attempts to talk Robert out of killing his own brother, she finds many of the cultural constraints placed on ‘civilized’ men of ‘proper’ English society would not hold. “He was but a man – a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he deny himself that sweet yet bitter morsel called revenge? … Who had taught him that self-control, self-sacrifice, are attributes that make men master of the earth? … He had no religion … what did he know of justice, or the mercy that should temper that stern virtue, when every law, human and divine, had been broken on his hearthstone? … No, - all these influences, these associations, would have proved worse than useless” (9). Thus, although he was expected to live by the culture of his ‘betters’, he was not the beneficiary of these same rules and laws, again a victim of a cultureless culture within the frame of English correctness. Rather than attempting to cow everyone into the same sort of anti-culture that has been generally adopted by the white Anglo-Saxon men coming into this country from Europe, Bourne suggests we capitalize on our nation’s unique opportunity to embrace a variety of cultures in a way that has never been done before, or at least never recognized. He uses as his example the Anglo-Saxon youth who goes away to college to become acquainted with students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures either untouched or only lightly touched by the oppressive weight of the American society. “He breathes a larger air. In his new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself citizen of a larger world … he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide” (8). Rather than denying all cultures in favor of one or none, Bourne suggests the new path of America should be to embrace differences and learn from them, to allow the creativeness inherent in the various nationalities and cultures to shine forward with their best light and help create a better world for all. “Perhaps, the greatest advantage of multiculturalism is that it bridges the chasm of ignorance and arrogance” (Ainsah-Mensah, 2007). Regardless of one culture’s strengths, there is another culture that has strengths as well. By bringing these together in a culture in which such sharing of ideas is openly encouraged rather than seen as threatening, many solutions to some of our most common problems, such as global warming, etc, might be found. Works Cited Ainsah-Mensah, Stephen K. “The Many Faces of Multiculturalism.” Articles for Teachers. ESL Teachers Board, 2007. April 22, 2008 Alcott, Louisa May. “My Contraband.” Bonnin, Gertrude Simmons. “The School Days of an Indian Girl.” Bourne, Randolph. “Trans-America.” Far, Sui Sin. “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian.” Read More