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
" "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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Frances Alice Kellor
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Additional quotes by Frances Kellor
The sources of authority in America are the final interpreters of Americanism. These are the legislature and the court. Every other Americanization achievement stands or falls finally according to the way equity is maintained among men. The administration of justice is the determining factor in men's lives, whether they turn to or from America. It is for the court to make clear the difference between liberty and license, and at the same time assure to each man alike the right to free speech. Let inequalities appear and Americanization is defeated. It is for the court to impose duties while it makes clear the opportunities, and to see that duties and privileges are alike the heritage of all free men. Free education is placed at the disposal of all people in America, but it is the duty of all to maintain and extend its benefits. It is well to set the immigrant in the pursuit of liberty and happiness when he lands here, but without safeguards against exploitation he can scarcely be blamed if he concludes that such liberty is a delusion of American minds.
America is no longer afraid of the word culture. In fact, it is considering quite seriously in some quarters having a culture of its own and calling it by that name. This makes it possible to consider as Americanization a recognition of the cultural forces in the various races as expressed in their literature and institutions. There is a growing appreciation of the fraternal and religious forces in the lives of the various races and their indispensable value in race fusion. In the old world, the cultural life of a race is so inextricably associated with their religious life that its first vital contact with American cultural life would seem to proceed along the lines of religious and fraternal development.
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Beyond the slogans of "a common language and a common citizenship" a program of Americanization has not been accepted. America, the greatest immigration country in the world, has no national domestic policy whatsoever and no organization as a government for dealing with race assimilation, its most delicate and fundamental problem. Americans like to think hi a crude way of this country as a melting pot, with peasants from Ellis Island going in at the top and citizens in American clothes going out at the bottom. We now know there has been little real change accomplished, and we are beginning to wonder whether the new arrival needs as much change as we thought he did to become one of us.
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