The Immigrant Strain

Book excerpt

By: Alastair Cooke

Date: May 6, 1946

Source: Cooke, Alastair. Letters From America, 1946–2004. London: Penguin, 2005.

About the Author: Alastair Cooke (1908–2004) was a British journalist who worked as the Washington correspondent for the Guardian newspaper during World War II. Cooke was resident in the United States from 1946 until his death in 2004. His weekly radio commentary, Letters from America, was nationally broadcast in the United States from 1946 to 2004.

INTRODUCTION

"The Immigrant Strain" was written in the wake of the successful alliance made between the United States and Great Britain during World War II. Cooke writes from the immediacy of that wartime alliance, an alliance that was an extension of hundreds of years of shared history that had created a similar cultural, linguistic, and political outlook between these two countries.

In 1946, the relative geopolitical position of each nation had profoundly changed due to the war. For the first time in their collective history, the United States was a demonstrably superior world power to Great Britain, in terms of both military might and international political influence. Cooke's Letters from America did not provide his audience in either Britain or America with supposed insights concerning an old colonial holding. Instead, Cooke connected his observations concerning American life into broader themes so as to better explain the function of the world's now most powerful country.

Cooke himself was representative of this sense of allied cultures and experiences. He lived in the United States for almost sixty years; he was educated at Cambridge in England, as well as at both Harvard and Yale. Cooke's avuncular but never pandering style was a constant in both the forty-eight years of his Letters from America series, as well as in his work as a host of many British television productions shown on the American national public broadcaster PBS. When Cooke referred to the English generally as being more foreign and more familiar to Americans than any other nationality, he neatly encapsulated his own experience as a commentator on American affairs.

Cooke's title is a clever introduction to the themes that he amplifies in the article itself. His use of 'strain' is both a reference to the different nationalities that are bound together to form the American population, as well as an allusion to the tensions that existed in 1946 in the broader American population as a result of immigration.

The affectionate tone adopted by Cooke towards American life in 1946 was a recurring element in his Letters from America series for the fifty-eight years of its existence. Cooke's manner and his insightful but rarely judgmental approach made him one of the most recognizable voices in the American media.

PRIMARY SOURCE

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

SIGNIFICANCE

Cooke's observations of America through the dual lenses of local residency and his British nationality are clear in a number of respects. The most trenchant of these is his analysis of how immigrants to the United States in 1946 became American over time in both their manners and their outlook. Cooke's analysis remained an accurate depiction of the American approach to its treatment of European newcomers and the manner in which these persons were absorbed into the fabric of American society, particularly as the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 created an influx of European immigration in the years that followed.

Without specifically employing the expression, Cooke describes the classic melting pot theory of American immigration practices, long held as the most desirable manner in which to assimilate newcomers into American society. Cooke's depiction of the Italian immigrant child seeking to conform with his new surroundings would have been applicable to any immigrant arriving in the United States in this period.

Many American citizens at this time espoused the melting pot theory of immigration, since it was thought to reduce the risk of subversive political elements undermining the existing American community. In the years following World War II, a particular concern was the potential entry of Communism or other similar left-leaning ideologies. By encouraging immigrants to conform to the existing America culture, the national government believed the risk of subversion was reduced. Cooke's use of the expression 'un-American' is reflective of the growing fear in 1946 that Communism, in particular, posed a significant threat to American society.

Cooke also observes that being English in America is different than being a member of any other immigrant class in the country. It is a rule of human nature that people tend to feel most comfortable in the company of those persons who are most similar to them. Today, according to the United States Census Bureau, approximately sixty-six percent of the American population is of non-Hispanic Caucasian ancestry, a demographic that possesses a similar genetic background to that of the majority of the population of modern England. The English language spoken in both countries, while subject to various regional inflections and expressions, is very similar. Since Cooke's letter in 1946, the United States and Great Britain have been significant trade partners, as well as allies in foreign military actions such as the conflict in Iraq. Two notable pairs of American president and English Prime Minister (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush and Tony Blair) have enjoyed very close personal and political relations in the period since 1980. With the possible exception of the relationship of the United States with Canada, it is clear that the American/British connection has remained remarkably vibrant as the world's political structure has become more fractured.

Cooke observed in 1946 that there was a sentiment held by many Americans that it was impossible to be distinguished and to sound American at the same time. Implicit in this sentiment is the perception that Americans then felt the need for a form of endorsement from a settled nation such as England before American opinions could be taken at face value. With the speed that information can be disseminated today, and the resultant availability of learned commentaries from every corner of the world and from persons of diverse backgrounds, it is likely that this sentiment as expressed by Cooke has less resonance today.

Sixty years later immigration and immigrants have taken on an entirely different character in America, yet Cooke's observations about the relationship between the existing population and its newcomers remain apt. In 2006, official estimates regarding the number of illegal immigrants to the United States ranged form 11 million to 13 million persons. Unlike the post-World War II Italian family, these immigrants are often persons of color who identify not with the mainstream of American society, but their identifiable segment of that society. These issues are compounded by the specter of home-grown terrorism raised since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Since the 1950s, the American population has grown from 151 million to over 300 million people living in the United States as of 2006. Growth in the Asian (currently four percent of the population) and Hispanic communities (fourteen percent of the population) between 2006 and 2050 is expected to represent the bulk of the expansion of the American population. Cooke's implicit melting pot analysis could not have foreseen the growth of both groups, each with a non-English language heritage.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Brownstone, David, and Irene M. Franck. Facts about American Immigration. New York: H. W. Wilson, 2002.

Ueda, Reed, ed. A Companion to American Immigration. Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

Web sites

Glendon, Mary Ann. "Principled Immigration." Harvard Law School, May 25, 2006. 〈http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2006/05/25_glendon.php〉 (accessed June 6, 2006).