Nativism and Language

So I'm reading this book on American nativism, called Strangers in the Land by John Higham. He establishes three main patterns of American nativism, anti-Catholicism, a fear of political discontent (anti-anarchism), and racism. As we move from European immigration to immigration from other parts of the world, nativism takes a bent towards racism. It's an interesting book, although I have no one to discuss it with - I'm surprised at how isolated I feel not having any classes this semester. One would think that working at a University would allow you to come in and discuss big ideas with people, but it seems around here I get weird looks like, "How can you go home and read when you haven't filed the TPS report?"

I'm curious about the ties between nativism and language. So far, the only real mentions of foreign languages have been in the discussion of the literacy test that anti-immigrant factions tried to pass in Congress, but even that was not well-described. From this book it seems as if the literacy test made sure that the immigrant was literate in his or her own language, but that seems as if it would be difficult to administer - I mean, how many Americans at the time spoke Russian or Italian? I guess the recent immigrants did - and there lies the irony of having recent immigrants administer a literacy test to would-be immigrants, designed to keep them out of the US. The book also discusses Hearst and his attemps to influence immigrants towards Republican politics through the control of foreign language newspapers.

Outside of those two issues, it seems as if the language immigrants spoke is little discussed. I guess many lumped together Irish and Italian, one group speaking English and the other not, so it seems as if language mattered little. Was one group more quickly assimilated than the other, though, due to language? How did these immigrants learn English? And although perhaps its a more recent issue, the whole idea of "English Only" legislation seems to be powerfully tied to these patterns of nativism. We're no longer concerned about anarchists, but we are concerned about terrorists, and there's a push and a pull on both sides at once for more language skills in the populace and a need to control the language people speak.

Obviously there is a book here. A dissertation? I don't know. I feel as if I might be moving towards writing one part of it, which is why I picked up this book to begin with. It's time to focus on some of these historical patterns and see how they have impacted individual education programs, to tie together the cultural and historical trends with how insitutions decide to impliment, fund, etc educational programs.

It feels so good to write, to exercise free thought, in an environment where I feel circumscribed. I need to write, to read, to think in order to be happy.