Letter from a black immigrant to a white one

This letter is inspired by Jacobson’s quote in the Introduction: “The saga of European immigration has long been held up as proof of the openness of American society, the benign and absorptive powers of American capitalism, and the robust health of American democracy.”

Dear Mr. O’Malley,

First, I would like to congratulate you on coming to this country with absolutely nothing and turning it into a whole lot of something. You’ve made quite a name for yourself here in America, and I admire that. But I’ve got to ask you why it is that only a European immigrant can be the poster child of the American Dream? Why is it that African women and men coming to this country were hardly considered humans, while you and yours are valorized as the epitome of the American capitalist system? We, the hard-working black women and men, were only included in the fantasy of the American Dream after the Civil Rights Movement, after the whitewashed, saintly U.S. government liberated us and gave us our supposedly inalienable rights. This myth that consumes the American imagination—the myth that anyone can climb the ladder from poverty to wealth—is limited to those who can prove their whiteness. You and your European brothers and sisters have become the model of a true American success story, while us dark-skinned citizens are portrayed as criminals and bums. You forget the barriers to success that are positioned directly in front of people that look like me as you climb your way up our backs just to get a taste of fancy cocktails in spacious corner offices. All immigrants deserve to be appreciated, not just the ones who can claim to be free and white.

-Mr. Jones

Questions:

1) Why do we take so much scientific fact for granted? If supposed infallible science regarding race, sex, etc. has been proven arbitrary and downright wrong, what other scientific “facts” should we be dubious of?

2) Why is there rarely a notion of essentialized whiteness, when there is so frequently a notion of an essentialized blackness, one that is either imposed upon black Americans or assumed by black Americans as a political tool? Is it because white people have never had to fight for rights as a group that we have never been subjected to an essential white identity? Or is there a negative notion of whiteness that embodies wealth, masculinity, and privilege and greatly disadvantages poor, non-masculine, underprivileged white Americans?