Immigrants built this country

It’s true.  I think every historian agrees that immigrants built what we call the United States of America.

Bear in mind that what I have to say next is built on generalities.  Stereotypes exist but they do contain some elements of truth.

Whether they came in crowded ships into the harbors of New York or Boston, or came in chains into the harbors of Charleston and New Orleans, it was the labor of immigrants which built this country.

Irish, Italian, Eastern Europeans, or religious pilgrims from around the globe, it was their labor which was used to construct the infrastructure of America.  It was Irish and Chinese labor which built the railroads.  It was the miners from Scotland, the lumbermen from Scandinavia, the fisherman from England, the farmers from Northern Europe and the Hispanics from south of the border who built this country that we live in.

In two or three generations, these  immigrants were able to assimilate into, and help create, the American culture.

But it wasn’t so easy for those whose skin was a different color.  It’s estimated than more than 10 million Africans came to the shores of the Americas which include the Caribbean Islands and Central and South American.  Their “cheap’ labor built the economic engine such as cotton, sugar  tobacco and rice.  Those were the dominate crops which brought in large amounts of capital which financed the construction projects.

But, those whose skin color was different had a difficult time assimilating.  Those who had been brought here in bondage, or those that had risked their lives crossing the river, or those whose labor was purchased in China and died here with only their bones shipped back to their country, were never granted the opportunity to persue  the American Dream.

Discrimination whether blatant or undercover, held many of them back.   It’s only been in the last 50 years that we’ve come to recognize the damage such discrimination caused.  And it’s only in the last decade that we’ve come to understand how harmful it has been.

I don’t have the answer to what we do next.  I don’t believe tearing down American history, or blaming law enforcement, or erasing what we learned in school from our text books, is the answer.

I know that legal discrimination is illegal.  I know that discrimination in any form is a cancer on the people who experience it and on people who live in this country.

What I hope, is that in the next generation or two, everyone can assimilate into the changing American culture.