"A Nation of Immigrants." What country am I talking about? The United States, right? It's what I learned growing up in the 1950s. That, and the myth of the melting pot. I learned about how the English and the Irish and the Germans (
like my grandfather in 1892) and the Italians all came to the United States in different waves of immigration, where they all learned English and intermarried and melted into one glorious people and nation.
E Pluribus Unum and all that. But there was always a nagging problem for young me. The story didn't include the Chinese or the Negroes. Young me puzzled over such things, but I didn't find the answers in the patriotic school books. Now, decades later, I have to admit defeat on the melting pot myth. I have come to question the "nation of immigrants" myth altogether.
