Friday, January 23, 2009

Immigration song 1920's

I just had a friend of mine e-mail me a You Tube video-song, with words flashed upon the screen. It seems immigration has had it's problems for a long period of time.
This is a video and song about immigration that was very popular around the late 1920's and early 30's. Remember, this song is from another era when politically correct was not present and prejudice was accepted. The website for this video is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_z5ad1mg8

2 comments:

  1. I listened to this song and enjoyed listening to it. Mainly because, it's funny to see how the mindset of America has changed over the years. During that time, they told Immigrants that they better shape up and take the US as their home otherwise they can leave, but now we allow people to say that they are from another country without having been born there or lived there, or even visited there. For example, an "African-American" is what a black person is called yet I would venture to say 98% of the black population in America hasn't been to Africa. What's wrong with just calling yourself an "American?"

    I think that if an immigrant wants to be an American and live here then they should grasp our culture and leave theirs behind. This is the only country in the world that allows immigrants to influence how the country is run and that's wrong! We need to stop being so soft and catering to these people and make them grasp our culture so that we don't lose "our" country. Because at that point we won't be the "United States" of America we should just have little countries, like the Country of Mexifornizona - Mexico, California, and Arizona together! That's just my opinion though.

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  2. I will admit that sometimes America gets a little silly nowadays with how much we try to cater to everyone, like you should probably learn English out of courtesy for this country, but honestly, "our" culture is their culture. American was created as a "melting pot" of many different people and places, we accept everyone's culture in to allow more flavor to our own. That is part of America's beauty. If everyone left their culture behind, we wouldn't have a culture. We destroyed our original culture when we slaughtered the Native Americans in the creation of the United States.

    I am not saying they should cling to their old ways, and reject America's ways. That's not right either, because there would be little reason to move here if one was not going to embrace it. As an immigrant one should be open to change, but not required to forget the past, and what their ways meant to them, and what it could bring to America, even that that is only in terms of expanding knowledge. Living in America, we as the people and as the immigrants have a role, perhaps responsibility, of being open minded to try, or learn about, new things, and develop ourselves as people.

    And by the by, every country, not just the United States, has cultural difference in different regions. It's human nature to be affect by those around us, and we can't all live in the same spot.

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