As an American Studies major we learned the meaning of E Pluribus Unum (out of many one) that was on US coins and bills. It seemed profound. I had a professor who told us that these days people no longer felt that this saying was still appropriate but rather America was more like a chunky stew, as it was becoming apparent that not all the parts were melting evenly.
The older I get, the more I realize that many hyphenated Americans had never really melted down into something that has become an American. They make it easy for people with a political agenda to pit groups against one another and they exploit their prejudices to stop people from finding common ground. We as a people are constantly being inundated with propaganda which downplays our common humanity.
People demonize: the poor, the gays, the urban, those who aren't religious enough, those who are to promiscuous, the Muslims, the foreigners, the liberals, the unions, the feminists, the teachers. These groups are presented as being less “American” - whatever that means. Constantly one group is pitted against another and then many American are left wondering why we our standard of living has declined and our best days are behind us. Don't worry there will be another group thrown up before us so we'll have someone else to blame.
Once again I think back to E Pluribus Unum and I wonder if we have ever really become one: Italian-American, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Brazilian-Americans, Cuban-American, Chinese-American. Too many of these groups have never totally left their past behind and they continue to see things from only the perspective of the ethnic group they came from.They might rail against foreigners but what they really mean is every foreigner who doesn't come from the same ethnic group that I do. In fascist countries the importance of always having a scape goat was apparent to the regime. This was summed up in the famous quote by German World War One hero and submarine commander Martin Niemoller,
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
Niemoller
It was also a strategy used in the south for years to divide poor whites from poor blacks, as the power structure told poor whites that they might be getting treated shabbily but at least they weren't black. This was summed up quite nicely by Bob Dylan in the song he did after Medgar Evans Death "Just a pawn in the game." The second stanza from that song:
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
Dylan at the March On Washington A Pawn In The Game
It was something that Gilded Age industrialists understood as they replaced one ethnic group with another who already had animosity toward the first group. In an earlier railroad strike the railroad directors would even bring in the national guard from Philadelphia to break a strike in Pittsburgh because people from those two cities didn't really get along. As Howard Zinn wrote in The People’s History:
There were 5 1/2 million immigrants in the 1880s, 4 million in the 1890s, creating a labor surplus that kept wages down. The immigrants were more controllable, more helpless than native workers; they were culturally displaced, at odds with one another, therefore useful as strikebreakers. Often their children worked, intensifying the problem of an oversized labor force and joblessness; in 1880 there were 1,118,000 children under sixteen (one out of six) at work in the United States.
The homestead strike
This is why even the mention of class warfare scares the hell out of the ruling class: just as it did in the South pre-slavery or South Africa pre-apartheid. The ruling class can count and they know that they need allies which is why they spend so much time finding new scape goats for people who are willing to work against their own interest. The French Revolution and The Russian Revolution were really two legitimate class wars that they know didn’t end so well for the ruling class in those two countries.
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