Columnists
Becoming a Real American
by I.J. SINGH
This is not Obama redux, even though it springs from Election 2008.
First I bristled and then I was horrified as I watched Sarah Palin draw a distinction between "real Americans and those that are not" during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Notice the absence of any mention of Native Americans in her call.
An immigrant from India, I am a Sikh-American, and wear the markers of my faith - long, unshorn hair covered by a turban. Sarah Palin had just sundered the nation into "us and them," and relegated people like me to the category of incomplete Americans.
I wondered what makes one a real American!
Sikhs have been in this country for over a century; Sikh workers participated in building the Panama Canal in 1903-04. I have lived, worked and paid my taxes in this country since 1960 - for almost half a century. That is more than two-thirds of my life. I protested against the Vietnam War, though somewhat gingerly since I was not a citizen then. I actively participated in rallies for equal rights during the years of Martin Luther King, and cheerfully marched in a parade led by Gloria Steinem and others down Fifth Avenue in New York City in support of women's rights.
And during my academic career, I must have taught several thousand "real Americans" who have gone on to become physicians and dentists, and academicians who have served this nation admirably.
What do Sarah Palin and her ilk think I should do to become a "real American"? Do you think a crew cut would finally outweigh all the other things I have done in America and give me the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval"? Or are Sarah Palin and her ilk looking to racial and cultural purity?
I think the widely touted concept of America as a melting pot has, in part, contributed to our ambivalent thinking.
We forget that in a melting pot, the ingredients lose their individuality entirely, as if they were processed in a homogenizer. Some observers, instead, posited a "tossed salad" of many cultural, religious and ethnic peoples as the model for America.
But we forget that salads may get tossed a tad too vigorously, and then some ingredients suffer needlessly; examples are the incarceration of the Japanese during the Second World War, as also the long history of slavery and the Blacks. Also, the ingredients in a salad may interact with each other only minimally.
Perhaps a better analogy would be that of a mosaic, in which even the smallest piece has a place and enriches the whole pattern by its presence. But a mosaic, one could argue, may present what is not a dynamic but static reality.
So, I offer you instead the analogy of a large multi-instrument orchestra. In a far corner of the ensemble sits someone with a triangle or cymbals - very minor components of the ensemble. But, nevertheless, each remains a critical piece that contributes vitally to the organically evolving performance. When the lowly triangle or the cymbals speak, even the mighty strings and the pianos listen, and no one can then deny that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Sikh presence in America is a little like the triangle in the orchestra - small but significant.
Citizenship in this great society, to me, is a social contract with the nation in which each individual carries the same inherent rights and obligations as everyone else. The strength and vitality of this nation stem from the variety of immigrants and their endless stream from around the globe that constitute this society. It is their interaction that makes this country what it is - a beacon of hope and innovative energy to the world.
This is the America that becomes our ideal, even though reality may, at times, be at odds with it.
America is not just a place; it is an idea and an ideal that this nation has pursued for over 200 years with singular determination. My faith - Sikhism - too, holds for an egalitarian society. The two ideas come together in me to make me a Sikh-American.
Sure, there have been many Sarah Palins along the way, and there will surely be many more. But as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. said, "The greatest virtue of a functioning democracy is its capacity for self-correction."
It is this that I celebrate in the election of 2008.
November 22, 2008