But above all, by that time we will have had time to reassert the great practical idea behind immigration and naturalization—the idea of men making themselves over—as for a century and a half they have made themselves into Americans.
An Experiment in Evolution
Note: I have used the phrase "becoming American" and defined it as it defined itself; legally, in the customs of the country, it seems to mean becoming a citizen; experimentally "becoming" has happened to us, we have seen it happen, it means that we recognize an essential affinity between an immigrant and Americans, living or dead.
Yet to many people the words may be vague; to others they may seem a particularly dangerous lie. Those who are interested in certain foreign groups, less promptly "Americanized", will protest that for all this "becoming", some are not accepted as American; those who are basically haters of all foreigners will say that the law accepts citizens, but no power on earth can make them Americans.
It is my experience that the phrases created by poets, politicians and people are often the truest words about America; and one of the profound satisfactions of life is to see the wild imagery of the poet or the lush oratory of the politician come true, literally and exactly true, scientifically demonstrated and proved.
In this particular case, absolute proof is still lacking, because we are dealing with human beings, we cannot make controlled experiments. We can observe and compare. Under the inspiration of the eminent anthropologist Dr. Franz Boas, the research has been made; so far as it goes it proves that the children of foreigners do become Americans. Specifically, their gestures, the way they stand and the way they walk, their metabolism and their susceptibility to disease, all tend to become American. In all of these aspects, there is an American norm or standard; and the children of immigrants forsaking the norm or standard of the fatherland, grow to that of America.
The most entertaining of these researches was in the field of gesture. The observers took candid movie shots of groups of Italians and of Jews; they differ from one another and both differ from the American mode (which is a composite, with probably an Anglo-Saxon dominant). The observers found that the extreme gesture of the foreign-born Jew is one in which a speaker gesticulates with one hand while with the other he holds his opponent's arm, to prevent a rival movement; and one case was noted in which the speaker actually gesticulated with the other man's arm. To the American of native stock this is "foreign"; and research proves that the American is right; such gestures are foreign even to the American-born children of the foreigner himself. The typical foreign gesture disappears and the typical American gesture takes its place.
And this is not merely imitation; it is not an "accent" disappearing in a new land. Because metabolism and susceptibility to disease are as certainly altered as gait and posture. The vital physical nature changes in the atmosphere of liberty—as the mind and the spirit change.
The frightened lie of racial doom which has fascinated the German mind (under its meaner guise of racial superiority) was never needed in America. Seeing men become Americans, the fathers of our freedom declared that nothing should prevent them; they were not afraid of any race because they knew that the men of all races would become Americans. Their faith of 1776 begins to be scientifically proved today; a hundred and sixty-six years of creative America proved it in action.
It is on the basis of what Europeans became in America, that we now have to consider our relations with the Europeans who remained in Europe.