Mary Baker explains why she chooses not to have any qualifiers to her identity: American.
Amen to that.
I have held the same position for about a year now (i.e. as long as I have been a naturalized American citizen). I am an American. Any other adjectives or qualifiers demean my proud United States citizenship. I am an American. There is no other group of people to whom I belong or to whom I owe anything. I am an American and whatever I may come to accomplish reflects on Americans and no one else.
America is the Greatest Melting Pot, not a salad bowl. I do not feel that anyone who wants to retain their distinct cultural identity and flock together among the birds of a feather can honestly call themselves “American”. Sure, each group of immigrants do bring their unique culture and enrich us: but as they enrich us and we assimilate to them, they need to be enriched by us and assimilate to our American culture. As much as I like Mexican food, I don’t want Chicanos deluding themselves that they are Americans. Go back to Mexico if you want to separate yourself from the mainstream America.
I just wish that everyone would stop playing identity politics and focus on this great country and how we can make it better together, as Americans—or not, as “loyal opposition” is one of the greatest American (well, and British) ideas.
Update: Lloyd Marcus is another proud American.
While some classes may be closed due to the walkout on Sept. 24 being publicized right now, I have great hopes that classes that actually teach something (i.e. anything but humanities, such as political science or English, really) will go on as if nothing happened. In case my hopes, that reasonable teachers would not participate in a political publicity stunt at the cost of their students, are dashed to bits, I am determined to make sure that my students are not affected, not in my class.
This supposed protest didn’t come up in our weekly Physics 111-BSC GSI meeting, and I hope it never will (because that would indicate that no one plans on skipping work that day). But in case it does, and in case any of the GSIs normally in the lab on Thursdays walk out, I will volunteer to be in the lab.
I know unions don’t like that v-word. People who volunteer don’t make any money and that means they can’t get a piece of the paycheck. Fuck the union. Fuck United Auto Workers Local 2865, a.k.a. the GSI union.
I have tried hard to keep politics out of my classrooms, whether it’s from me (you might have seen that I leave most … inflammatory political posts off this website) or from anyone else. I haven’t had to so far worry about the “anyone else” part, but if you think that I would let anyone harm the learning environment to serve their political cause just because opposing would be unpopular among my peers or because the damned GSI union would be displeased, you would be wrong.
There are only two things, short of me falling deathly ill, that can keep me out of the BSC lab on Thursday, Sept. 24: (1) my fellow GSIs show up to work and I don’t have to do their job for them; (2) none of the students come to the lab due to their enthusiasm with this walkout.
We will see what happens.