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Much of the present unpopularity of the theory of Americanization is due to confusion in men's minds. It has grown with such rapidity that this has b… - Frances Kellor
" "Much of the present unpopularity of the theory of Americanization is due to confusion in men's minds. It has grown with such rapidity that this has been inevitable. One thinks it is summed up in learning the English language; another thinks it is achieved by becoming an American citizen; a third, that it is adopting American clothes and manners and associating with native Americans; and a fourth, that it means that everybody should be able to sing "The Star Spangled Banner". The means of Americanization are still confused with its essence. While the necessary things were being done each day to help win the war, people were asking : Can we work intelligently and effectively together in a national effort, without agreement as to the definition, the substance, and the form of Americanization? What are the probabilities of success if these matters are left to the individual determination of the thousands of persons and of agencies now at work Americanizing the 2400 or more communities having foreign-born residents? They are beginning to ask what will be the final indestructible definitions and principles of Americanization and what are to be its finally approved methods. So early in the experiment the answers can only be postulated.
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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
There is no science of race assimilation. No nation has had a sufficiently free opportunity with many diverse races to establish its enduring principles and certain procedure. America has this opportunity in her thirty-five different races speaking fifty-four languages, of whom 13,000,000 are foreign-born. One third of her total population has its roots in other soils and in diverse cultures. She has the laboratory for the experiment in her wide expanse of territory, much of it still unsettled; in the elasticity of her institutions ; and in the still formative state of her cultural life.
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.
Americanization is the process, then, of guaranteeing these fundamental requisites to each man, native and foreign-born alike, and just in proportion as the English language and citizenship interpret these requisites, they are Americanization agencies. The failure of Americanization in the past years is identical with the failure of these guarantees. It is in the home, the shop, the neighborhood, the church, and the court that Americanization is wrought, and the mutual relations of races in America as expressed in them will give the eternal principles of race assimilation that we seek. Today these basic points are disregarded and it is thought that committees and community councils piled high upon one another will do the work. The chief value of most of such organizations is in educating the native-born American; there is abundant evidence that the foreign-born adult is not greatly drawn to this country as a result of them.
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