I was at a roundtable last week on Americanization and an interesting issue came up. We were talking about how schools no longer do much of a job of patriotically Americanizing anyone, American kids or immigrant kids. I noted that limiting immigration was necessary in such an environment because, however poorly the schools are doing in this regard, American kids at least inherit a certain amount of American-ness from their parents, whereas immigrant parents are bringing their kids to school specifically to be Americanized. Linda Chavez disagreed, saying that the level of future immigration is irrelevant because, without rolling back multiculturalism and racialism in society in general and the schools in particular, the grandchildren of today’s Americans will be no more American than the grandchildren of today’s immigrants.

My question, and I don’t mean it sarcastically, is does anyone agree? It seems to me clear that, given equally deficient efforts at Americanization, the children and grandchildren of Americans are more likely to grow up with a sense of patriotic solidarity with their fellow Americans than those of immigrants. This is not only because of family memory (of the Depression or a cousin having served in Vietnam or whatever) but also because when people start wondering about their identity, the people from American families will look back to what they see as their history (something we may already be seeing with the surge in sales of popular books on American history), whereas people with recent immigrant backgrounds are naturally less likely to react in that way. Also, however bad our schools have gotten, it’s worth noting that the schools where immigrant kids are concentrated are even more in the thrall of post-Americanism (if not outright anti-Americanism), whereas the suburban and rural schools where kids from American families are more likely to go are not quite so far gone.