The first principle in race fusion is the opportunity to establish a home base in a country and a genuine love for that home. The home sense in the m… - Frances Kellor

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The first principle in race fusion is the opportunity to establish a home base in a country and a genuine love for that home. The home sense in the many peoples that have come to America is inseparable from the sense of the soil itself. Many immigrants have lived close to it, dug their hands into it, planted in it, watched their crops grow, and had a home stake around which cluster a thousand associations. Whatever there is of poetry in their lives is associated with the soil, and their worship is inseparable from it. Whatever there is heroic in their memories comes to them through it. In America it is not so. The majority of immigrants, with this land allegiance strong within them, find their way into crowded cities and unsightly industrial towns. They have little chance to plant and to harvest and to acquire a home stake; and when they do acquire it they cling to America. What do these men know, until perhaps it is too late, of the beauty of the expanse of America, and of the citizenship which gives them a partnership in national parks? What do they know of the traditions and achievements of Americans, inseparably linked with American soil? That allegiance of America which is part of real Americanization must somehow find a way of establishing affection for the soil.

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About Frances Kellor

Frances Alice Kellor (20 October 1873 – 4 January 1952) was an American social reformer and investigator, who specialized in the study of immigrants to the United States and women.

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Alternative Names: Frances Alice Kellor
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When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.

Admittedly America has not fully succeeded. The absence of definition, of principles, and of methods of Americanization shows her success thus far to have been rather a happy accident, an outcome which cannot be expected in a more exacting future. Has it been regarded as a war necessity to be dealt with expeditiously and then dropped, or will it become a science, thereby progressing from emotion to reason, from impulse to logic, and from chaos to order? With the war ended, there is danger that we will turn aside to new interests, unless a foundation of science can be laid and a philosophy evolved.

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Americanization is the science of racial relations in America, dealing with the assimilation and amalgamation of diverse races in equity into an integral part of its national life. By "assimilation" is meant the indistinguishable incorporation of the races into the substance of American life. By "amalgamation" is meant so perfect a blend that the absence or imperfection of any of the vital racial elements available will impair the compound. By "an integral part" is meant that, once fused, separation of units is thereafter impossible. By "in equity" is meant impartiality among the races accepted for the blend, with no imputations of inferiority and no bestowal of favors. With anything less than this in mind, America will fall short of a science and of giving the world anything of lasting value for its racial problems. Nation building is to be in the future a deliberate formative process, not an accidental, dynastic, geographical, and economic arrangement. It is to consider the rights and desires and hopes of races. It is to be a deliberative process, and as such must be selective. If the Allies succeed in freeing the small nations, as now seems certain, the world will witness the most interesting and dramatic re-assemblage of races that has ever taken place in history.

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