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Listen Up, Racists!

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Phil Vargas, Ph.D. (former migrant farm worker)

Listen up Racists! This is what our America is all about!

In the past few days we have seen a tremendous outpouring of sentiment in demonstrations for humane immigration reform across our land. They have mostly been immigrants of all colors and their relatives -- and Americans of good faith -- seeking to diffuse oppressive legislation that could turn many of them into criminals.   

May I respectfully remind all Americans of who we are: The strength of our great nation is in the tremendous potential dynamism of a social amalgam. The strength of our great nation lies in an inter-mixture of diverse strains and components which in wars against oppression and tyranny has drawn upon its many human colors, talents and creative energies, and courage, to preserve the unified whole which the many have been able to become. Hispanics account for 42 Medal or Honor winners in WW II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam conflict -- some were immigrants.

Our great nation is constantly changing and needs to be ever correcting itself, growing, and becoming better and better (one would hope) through a constant drawing on people of many origins, colors, and backgrounds. For our America is constantly drawing from many sources and many human strains. And our country makes possible the continued infusion of new talents, aspirations, visions -- new positive energies and ideas -- from many human strains (ethnic, cultural, gender, genetic) that make up the American people. Our great nation is a dynamic and evolving "unit" whose strength is in looking both to the future and to the past.  

According to Albert Speer, the confidant of the Fuehrer of Nazi Germany, Hitler held the view that America's weakness was that "The Americans could not stand a trial by fire ... no such a thing as an American people existed as a unit; they were nothing but a mass of immigrants from many nations and races" (Inside the Third Reich Memoirs).

Those words about our country by the most destructive of our enemies still poses a challenge to this special society of ours, a society whose strengths are grounded in diversity and heterogeneity. Hitler's viewpoint proved fatal. But what Hitler did prove is that once a nation descends so that it holds that one group is superior to another, no person can be safe from the concentration camp or the firing squad. 

Our country is a great mixture of many peoples and cultures, and we have become great because of our inter-mixture and by living together as one people -- as Americans! Great nations are built by the intermixture of peoples of many colors and strains, and that is what America is, and, in large part, that is where its greatness lies.

For there is such a thing as a polyglot American people which can manifest great strength as a unit. Our special society is a great deal more than a disparate "mass of immigrants from many nations and races." We are all Americans contributing to the greatness of an America that, we hope, will always be "becoming." And the immigrants coming from Latin America and other places are enriching our institutions that gain strength from the continual infusion of life energies from many human sources that will only make our country stronger.

And we need to continue to enrich our America in order that it can continue becoming a better nation -- for all Americans. For our nation is a dynamic, evolving "unit" whose strength is in its inter-mixture, looking both to the past and to the future.  Great nations are built by the inter-mixture of peoples of many colors and genetic strains, and that is what America is, and, in large part, that is where America's greatness lies. For the immigrant infusion only strengthens our great society. Our America was and is an unfinished process, not a final superior perfection exercising dominion over the weak and imperfect -- those who don't "fit." 

Phil Vargas
Hispanic American
Korean War Veteran

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION