Naturally, this tendency of conserving strict national integrity is strongest among the oldest and most highly organized States, and weakest among the new and loosely integrated countries. Countries like Japan and England, which have long, proud histories and traditions, and which are highly organized, are more strict about the way they take foreigners into their households. On the other hand, new countries like Australia and the South American republics, which have short histories and few traditions, are more or less liberal in admitting foreigners. This truth has been exemplified by the history of the United States. She has shown a marked laxity in this regard during the colonial and growing periods; but as soon as she achieved a more perfect national unity and consciousness, she began to manifest a strong tendency toward integration, exerting her energy on the one hand upon consolidation of her population and on the other upon excluding “squatters” who would not readily assimilate.
Whether or not such a nationalistic policy may be considered just, and whatever change the future may witness in this regard, the fact remains that not a single nation in the world at present discards or rejects the policy in practice. In the face of such a situation the only alternative for the Japanese in the United States, when they obstinately cling to their own ways of living and thinking, would be to go elsewhere.
This conviction of ours should not be confused with the hasty, groundless conjecture that the Japanese are a race utterly impossible of assimilation to American ways by nature and constitution. Most of the careless agitators who put forth statements to this effect start from the wrong end in their reasoning. They assume what ought to be proven, and forthwith proceed to formulate a policy on this assumption. They assume that the Japanese are unassimilable and conclude that, therefore, they should not be given an opportunity to progress. This is analogous to saying that because a child is ignorant he should not be sent to school, forgetting that the very ignorance of the child is due to the fact that he has been denied an education. They fail to see that their conclusion is the very cause of their premises. What we maintain is that when the Japanese shall have proved unassimilable, after all means for their assimilation have been exhausted, they should then be persuaded to give up the idea of establishing themselves in America.
Meaning of “Assimilation.”
A great deal of confusion arises from the ambiguity of the term “assimilation.” Its interpretations vary from the idea of a most superficial imitation of dress and manners to that of an uncontrollable process of biological resemblance or identity. Those using the term in the former sense, in face of the fact that the Japanese in their midst dress, talk, and live like Americans, consider it indisputable that they are assimilable. Those who use the word in a narrow sense of ethnological similarity, on the contrary, insist with equal conviction that the assimilation of the Japanese is absolutely impossible. Neither is wrong in reasoning, for assimilation, according to the accepted diction, means the process of bringing to a resemblance, conformity or identity—it is a relative term. Hence, in order to determine whether it is possible for the Japanese to become Americanized, it is necessary to find a standard by which the process can safely be gauged. Without this it is wholly absurd to say either that they are or are not assimilable. If the standard be fixed at physical identity with Americans, the Americanization of the Japanese is hopeless—at least for a few generations; but if it be fixed at conformity with American customs and social order, the Japanese have to a certain degree already been assimilated.
How is the criterion to be determined? Perhaps it may be found, like the standard of our morality, in practical usage; that is, in the accepted usages and customs of the United States. Here we can do no better than point out the traditional spirit of cosmopolitanism, or firm adherence to the policy of racial non-discrimination, which was sustained even at the costliest of sacrifices and which is inscribed in the immortal fourteenth amendment of the Constitution, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” If the supreme law as well as the traditions and customs of the land do not deny, on account of color or race, any person born in America the right of citizenship, it is apparently un-American to make racial similarity or conformity the standard of assimilability.
A nation, however, cannot maintain its own rights and honor among the family of nations without upholding its individuality. But America’s individuality does not consist in ethnological unity alone. It consists more in cultural and spiritual solidarity. America upholds her dignity and national rights with the strength of that patriotism of her people which is born of their active sharing in her culture and ideals, as well as of their common experiences of American life. Clearly, then, one criterion of Americanization is unmixed devotion and allegiance to the cause and welfare of the United States—devotion and allegiance not blindly compelled by force of imposition, but born of voluntary and unrestricted participation in American culture and ideals, religion, and industry; in short, in the entire American life. More concisely expressed, the required standard of assimilation in America is an active share in American life as a whole to such an extent that unmixed love and the will to devote self to the United States are no longer resistible.
The essence of Americanization was elucidated in simple and beautiful words by President Wilson in his memorable speech delivered at Philadelphia in 1915 before an audience of naturalized citizens of that city. He said in part:
... This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created.
You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom?... to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race.... You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You cannot become Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American....