TYPICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND CULTURE
Are People Really Different?
“Democracy means not ‘I’m as good as you are’ but ‘you’re as good as I am.’”—Theodore Parker.
Immigration has made the United States the most composite nation on earth. More peoples of widely different national and racial origins have been brought together and welded into a single political, economic, and social system than anywhere else in the world.
What constitutes a race? Does each race have certain hereditary characteristics which determine its mental life and social behavior? Is there a racial stock which is superior—physically, mentally, and morally—to other racial stocks? Just what differences, if any, exist between those who were born here and those who have adopted this country as their home land?
There is no such person as a native American, nor was there ever such a person if we are to be strictly accurate. We are told that even the American Indian is an immigrant who came from far-off Asia by way of the Bering Straits and Alaska. Our ancestors may have come on the Mayflower or in the steerage, we may be descended from immigrants who settled here generations ago, or we may have come direct from other lands, yet one fact remains crystal clear—WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS.