Citizenship and American Identity
In “Trans-National America” by Randolph Bourne, he says “ All our elaborate machinery of settlement and school and union, of social and political naturalization, however, will move with friction just in so far as it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence that America shall be what the immigrant will have a hand in making it, and not what a ruling class, descendant of those British stocks which were the first permanent immigrants, decide that America shall be made.” This quote has a strong meaning and represents not only what was happening in the 1900s but what is the reality in America today. In this quote Bourne argues that it would be better for America to alter its culture with the impact of the new immigrants. It’s better to not let the Angelo-Saxon culture which originally descended from the British to impact the new cultures and decide how America will be. Instead to let new cultures of ...