My Impromptus column has a host of issues today, as is its wont, starting with ballet and ending with golf. One of the issues in between is an old one: What does it mean to be an American? Last week, I was in Washington, and passed the Japanese-American memorial, near the Capitol. I saw these words:
Japanese by blood
Hearts and minds American
With honor unbowed
Bore the sting of injustice
For future generations
In my column, I reflect on this a little bit, and quote Peter Schramm, the late political scientist. He was a friend of NR, a friend of many of us. Wonderful and invaluable guy. With his family, he got out of Hungary, when he was ten. Before they left, his father told him, “We were born Americans, but in the wrong place.”
I have known others who feel just the same way. Some of them have been able to gain citizenship in our country, some have not.
Anyway, after I wrote my column, I thought of Francis Fukuyama, another political scientist. I podcasted with him earlier this year, talking about his life and work. Some of his family was interned during the war, in Colorado.
When Frank was growing up in New York, he didn’t know a single other Japanese American. School could be pretty rough (smart as Frank was), with kids calling him a “Chinaman” and so on. They demanded to know, “What are you?”
Frank consulted his father about this. And his father said, “Tell them you’re an American.” That was the fact. Said Francis Fukuyama to me, “If America doesn’t have a creedal identity, then I’m not an American, and I believe I am an American — so I have a big personal stake in this.”
And by “this,” he meant the question of what it means to be an American.
Before I leave, let me publish one letter on a subject that I have been thinking about, and writing about, a lot lately: the effect of wokeness — the scourge of wokeness — on the arts, and on music in particular. A reader writes,
Hi, Mr. Nordlinger,
I’m reading your article from today on wokeness (having listened with enjoyment to your appearance on the Remnant podcast), and one statement hits close to home. You mention music departments and their downgrading of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, et al.
This fall, I will be starting a DMA [in a particular branch of music at a particular university]. I’m incredibly excited for the program, but during the interview process I was lightly castigated by a faculty member for mentioning that I hope to spread a love for Western classical music. I don’t think this was her actual opinion, but the opinion she thought we need to have to succeed in these times. She said that the music program had recently held off a push to dissolve all orchestras and most of the choirs because they are too “Western-centric.”
As I felt during my master’s studies, I just hope I can get in and out without breaking some unwritten code and before someone decides that my program should not exist. I believe my professors feel as I do, but have no idea about administration.
Anyway, I appreciate your writing on music and politics both. Keep fighting the good fight.
Thank you. And you too. You too.