PERSPECTIVES: Facing up to social and political isolation (02/26/06)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Facing up to social and political isolation

I was in the fifth grade back in 1957 when I missed school on January 7 because our family was celebrating Christmas according to the Julian calendar. The next day, my homeroom teacher angrily rejected my father's note requesting that the absence be excused and announced to the class that I would never be accepted to a major American university because I had cut school and that transgression was now on my permanent record and would follow me the rest of my days. I burned with shame.

I wasn't the only one who remembered that. At our 20th high school reunion, one of my best friends from grade school mentioned the incident as one of the creepiest moments from all our years in school.

Ever since, I've paid attention to references about pressures exerted on immigrants (and Native Americans) to succumb to the assimilation process known as the "Melting Pot." Those pressures were pervasive.

I mention this in light of James Webb's "Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America," a terrific book about one of America's predominant ethnic groups. Their culture goes back to before the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a wall separating the untamed and unconquerable Scots from the rest of Britain. Many generations later, in the 18th century, hundreds of thousands of them immigrated to America.

Combining strains of acute individualism with a strong military tradition, the impact of the Scots-Irish has been huge. They've given us country music, NASCAR racing, fundamentalist Christianity, trailer parks, the National Rifle Association, a preponderant number of America's military personnel and the army of truck drivers who haul America's goods and produce. They constituted half of George Washington's troops and an overwhelming majority of Confederate soldiers (95 percent of whom owned no slaves at all). Their ranks included Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Gens. Stonewall Jackson, John Pershing, Douglas McArthur and George S. Patton, along with Presidents Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton; cultural figures like Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Elvis Presley, Robert Redford and Merle Haggard.

The author of "Born Fighting" is pretty distinguished himself. One of the most highly decorated Marines in the Vietnam War, Mr. Webb became assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. He's also written six novels, is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and taught literature at the university level. Now he's the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia.

Yet, for all the contributions his people have made, Mr. Webb laments that "... modern America has forgotten who they were (and are)" and feels that, "My culture needs to rediscover itself." And why is that? Because, he writes, "those who cannot articulate their ethnic origins are doomed to a form of social and political isolation." Wow!

In contrast to the Scots-Irish, whose history has "been allowed to melt into obscurity," Ukrainians in America, by and large, have a good sense of who they are. Going back to the turn of the last century, we've maintained choirs, Saturday schools, dance troupes, youth organizations, summer camps and seasonal traditions. In the process, the community keeps generating events that foster social interaction. Without exaggerating, I've easily been to a couple of thousand concerts, festivals, parties, weddings, christenings, conferences, funerals, dances, etc. in my 50 or so years, and I have a couple of thousand friends and relatives - distant ones and close.

Politically, the community has also been extremely active, organizing around the goal of Ukraine's independence. For nearly a century, politicians recognizing the value of a highly motivated, well-organized ethnic group paid lip service to their dream until, astonishingly, in 1991 it became a reality. Today, Ukrainian Americans are players, lobbying Congress and successive administrations to support free elections in Ukraine, approve NATO membership, lift Jackson-Vanik restrictions, win nominations to the federal court and approval for projects like the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland.

Along the way, many Ukrainians, to be sure, have succumbed to the Melting Pot and are Ukrainians no more. On the other hand, I see a lot of really neat people who have become Ukrainians by choice, through professional dealings with Ukraine, as partners in "mixed marriages," etc.

America has been a wonderful country where people from everywhere exercise the freedom to be whoever they choose and do just about anything they want - not always without a struggle to overcome racial, ethnic and social prejudices. Ukrainians are among those who've benefited from being American, and we've contributed in turn, above all by helping to win the Cold War once the conflict had been reduced to a nuclear stalemate, by weighing in on the critical battle for "hearts and minds." That dramatic story, which culminated in the independence referendum that sealed the fate of the Soviet Empire, is still waiting to be told.

As for my humiliation in the fifth grade, that was a long time ago. Now, I'm at the age where I read the death notices every day. On occasion, I recognize a high school classmate; a lot more often, it's one of the parents. And I find it interesting how many are buried out of one of Cleveland's Ukrainian Orthodox or Catholic Churches. I had no idea when I was in high school that so many of my classmates were just like me, only more successful at concealing their roots and blending into the broader culture, the one the Scots-Irish, and others, helped create - one that permitted freedom of expression even as it encouraged conformity and "melting" into the new amalgam.

Ironically, those pressures became so powerful, they consumed the very ones who created the culture. Now James Webb has written a book to try to rescue them. A lot of Ukrainians never bought into the Melting Pot and, now having the means of articulating their ethnic origins, are happily doing so.

By the way, I did end up going to a major American university, my fifth grade teacher notwithstanding. Our family celebrates Christmas on December 25. Our children speak Ukrainian. Our son plays bandura; our daughter writes pysanky (Easter eggs); both dance for Kashtan and go to Ukrainian Saturday school. Many of my friends are Scots-Irish. I love hillbilly music.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: fedynsky@stratos.net.

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