Until the Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, millions of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere entered the United States each year. (Although it should be noted that these supposed "boom years" of immigration are easily outstripped by recent statistics; the year in which the single greatest number of immigrants came to America was 2002). Elaine Fain talks about the response of many urban librarians and their efforts--some hotly nativist and aggressive, others more soft-pedal and merely laughable--to "Americanize" the newcomers.
I finished this article with a few observations:
1.) Fain quoted Joseph Foster Carr of the Immigrant Publication Society saying, "...Rigorous and 'Prussian' methods of Americanization accomplished nothing but bitterness, stirring incredible resentment and antagonism among our foreign born. They directly nourish the Bolshevism that we fear."
My own wonder is how much the 'Americanization' drive was propelled by fear of communism? If there had been no communism, would the early twentieth-century immigrant wave have remained less assimilated and thus not been subsumed under the general grouping of "white" Americans?
My own feeling is that, yes, it might have at least cut down on the conscious efforts to Americanize immigrants--i.e. the outreach efforts by librarians.
2.) After the immigration restriction laws of the 20's, Fain says that the same librarians who did so much work with immigrants tried to change gears and begin work with other groups, but, "An attempt in 1935 to set up a "Section for Inter-Racial Service" was denied by the ALA Council because a majority feared that the word "inter-racial" might be offensive in some parts of the country."
That to me seems like the huge blind spot of all this: That the librarians were willing, eager, and able to to so much work with these populations of new Americans while essentially neglecting a population of Americans that had been "on-site" since the beginning.
Still, there's a pretty mendacious argument peddled by anti-immigrant groups today that if we allow in more immigrants, it will only undercut the status of existing groups like African-Americans and poor whites. I'm not inclined to take this argument seriously, not only because I don't think it's true on its face, but also because anti-immigrant groups haven't ever made much of an impression on me as people with a deep and abiding concern for any group of poor people.
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3 comments:
Deanna- I agree. This is an interesting insight. Librarians were interested in "Americanizing" immigrants into ideal Americans and not necessarily into the Americans they wanted to become. I found interesting how Carr's opinions changed throughout his involvement with immigrants according to Fain. Towards the end of the article Fain writes that Carr later encouraged librarians to carefully screen books written in foreign languages for content. This goes back to your same point that librarians wanted serve immigrants for their personal agenda of forming ideal Americans rather than simply offering reading materials. The censorship of materials reiterates this platform.
In response to your second question--you raise a really intriguing point about how the library neglected existing minority populations. But could it be for innocuous reasons? Was the focus on immigrant populations rather than African-Americans a result of geography? Fain writes that public libraries, at the turn of the century, were "expanding quickly in growing industrial cities with large immigrant populations." Perhaps the plight of immigrants was just more pressing to urban librarians in New England at the time. Or maybe the potential political repurcussions of "inter-racial" service were just too risky for the ALA Council to adopt.
I thought it was really interesting the two very different kinds of service that urban librarians performed for immigrants. There was one motion to accomodate and embrace the immigrant's cultures--books in that language were purchased, librarians made an effort to learn basic aspects of the language to make the visit easier, holidays from that culture were celebrated, etc. Then, there was a large shift in which the libary's role was basically to create good American citizens, even if a person's cultural identity was lessened (or erased) because of it.
I think this was the most interesting part of the article because, as eileen already mentioned, we're still facing the same issues. Do we as reference librarians learn spanish and other languages to help accomodate our patrons--in our collection development do we purchase the world language collections? Or do we live by the motto that seems to be a common right now: if they live in America, they should speak English--thus, emphasizing the need to teach ESL classes and create programs to help them assimilate.
I certainly don't know the answer to the question, but ultimately, one thing that I really would have liked Fain to discuss was if there were efforts to track which was more effective in creating a positive experience for the new Americans. Obviously the second, less accomodating type of Americanization isn't as PC as most would like it, but did this help them get jobs, start a family and find a place, an identity within the US? Or was the effort to preserve the culture more effective. No answers on my part... just lots of questions.
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