A Historic, Political Milestone
I have a strong aversion to politically correct first's. But if you study the history of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States and Canada, you will learn that in addition to black Americans, the Klan targeted other people as well. My bilingual parents were part of the Franco-American community in the Fall River, MA area, and their grandparents immigrated from French Canada. To provide more context, I quote here from Charleen Touchette:
In 1892, we French Canadians were considered such a threat to the character of Protestant New England that a June 6th New York Times editorial...accused us of migrating to the United States as part of a "priestly scheme now fervently fostered in Canada for the purpose of bringing New England under the control of the Roman Catholic faith."My people were described as vermin invading New England. Racists called us "dumb frogs" and the "Niggers of the North" or the "White Niggers of America". In 1881, a United States Government Report by the Bureau of Statistics of Labor dubbed us the "Chinese of the East".Bigots lobbied to institute a nationwide English only law in the 1920s to prevent our families from sustaining the three tenets of French Canadian culture, "Foi, Langue, et Famille"...Who will remember to tell how the KKK Night Riders blazed through New England towns heavily promoting anti-Franco propaganda and burning a cross or two on the Canucks' farms, front lawns and the streets amid the tenements of Little Canada?
Charlotte movingly writes about how the Anglophones have largely succeeded in crushing Franco-American culture. As the first-born, I was the only sibling to be brought up speaking French. [I ran into initial issues attending an English-only kindergarten, and my folks overreacted by permanently refusing to speak French in front of their children.] My mom told me how the Anglophonic classmates in her parochial school used to mock her French accented English.
[One of my favorite stories about my mom is from the brief period we lived in France while my dad (in the USAF) was stationed there, and because of limited housing on base, we had to live in a small nearby French town, Mars-la-Tour. This French woman was trying to guess where in France my mom had been raised based on her French accent (I think she guessed Paris). My mom insisted she is American, which the French woman immediately disputed, claiming that "Americans don't know how to speak French!"]
The interesting thing is that whereas the 3 Guillemette brothers have always been fascinated by our Franco heritage, perhaps triggered by the 1970's iconic series Roots [in fact, I was required while at OLLU to attend a campus lecture being given by a then unknown author named Alex Haley, whom described his journey to the Eureka moment of hearing the name "Kunte Kinte" from an African oral historian], my mom and maternal uncle, a priest who did not want to be typecast and assigned to saying masses in French to dwindling numbers of elderly parishioners, have distanced themselves from their heritage, preferring to identify with the dominant culture. My mom still forwards to me on a regular basis emails promoting English-only legislation by conservatives such as Newt Gingrich. I personally treasure cultural and linguistic diversity, a defining characteristic of American liberty and our national heritage, and I heartily welcome law-abiding visitors, guest workers and immigrants from other countries. I do not want to be associated with any thinly-veiled majoritarian agenda serving the interests of paranoid Anglophones.
I recall the pride I felt as a young Catholic boy, having the first (and only) Catholic President as a role model. I can only imagine how a parent of color tonight feels, telling his or her children that the boyhood dream of Barack Obama to be President was not just words, an idle promise for any person of color, but today became reality, and that for them, too, all things are really possible. Two generations ago, a man of the cloth, one whom had a dream and preached nonviolence, was violently killed. But violence cannot silence ideas, cannot kill a dream. Today his dream came true.
To quote my favorite Linda Ronstadt song:
Dreams to dream in the dark of the nightWhen the world goes wrong, I can still make it rightI can see so far in my dreamsI'll follow my dreamsUntil they come true.
My interpretation of today's event is somewhat different than those whom focus on Obama's race. I saw the first-born son of a Kenyan immigrant and his wife, a white woman, take the oath of office today. To me, this is the quintessential American story.
Mr. President, you and I differ on a number of issues, and I'll leave those for another day. Today I acknowledge the mandate that my fellow Americans have given you, I respect your ability to inspire them, and I honor the civility of your tone and your words. God bless you and your family in the years ahead, and God bless our country, which we both love passionately.
