Hyphenated America

I'm supposed to be teaching a text in a few hours in am 11th grade class called "Hyphenated America". So, as usual, I decided to actually read through it about 5 minutes ago.

Now, I've never been your super enthusiastic, "GO MURIKAH," red, white and blue-bleeding patriot, but having been raised in a country, you can't avoid a little sense of pride or at least national identity. So when I read the article for class today, I was a little less than thrilled to have to be presenting it.

Within the first sentence, America is described as "retaining a strong flavor of intransigent non-cooperation." The very next sentences describe all Americans to consider the US "the best country in the world", but even beyond that, apparently every American believes, in comparison to other Americans, "he is better." By the third paragraph I have been informed that Americans "speak not a word of any language besides English and have never been farther east than NYC or father west than Chicago." Eventually the entire text is capped off with this gem of a paragraph:

Some Americans believe that foreigners really do speak English (they study it in school, you know), but refuse to do so out of prejudice. The delusion that "they're just like us except for their language, food and clothing" comes from the reality that nearly all Americans descend from foreign immigrants. Thus people in other countries aren't really aliens, they're just potential Americans, or rather, potential hyphonated-Americans.

Aside from the sweeping generalization that all Americans behave and think this way, the article seems to be written less to inform and more to mock. Now, I can't say that I haven't said more or less everything in this article about some people, but it's the equivalent of picking on your brother or sister - you're allowed to do it, and sure, it might be true to some extent, but you'll be damned if anyone else picks on them.

Never does this text approach the question of why we, but no other countries, have this culture of "hyphenation". Never does the author discuss address any positive reasoning behind the hyphen.

But I think I've just been inspired for my lesson plan: have the students re-write the article in with a positive tone and reasonable sense of understanding.

Oh, and by the way, the text comes from a book titled The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans published in London.