MISS PATRICIA M HEFNER ([email protected])
Sun, 24 Jan 1999 01:06:12, -0500
One big time reason some Americans think of themselves as "Italian-
American" or "Polish-American" or whatever is what you might call
"ethnic intolerance". Most early Americans were Protestant and of course
they spoke English. Then immigrants who were different started to come
in--the Irish Catholics, the Italians, the Poles, the Greeks, the
Russians, the Slovaks, and of course the Jews came in. Each of these
groups stuck together and weathered a storm of prejudice stirred up by
hate groups like the precursors of the Ku Klux Klan, the "Know-Nothings"
and later on, of course, the Ku Klux Klan themselves. Here in Birmingham
in the '20's a KKK guy really lost it and went to the local Catholic
cathedral. He shot everyone on the grounds, including several priests.
So the people kept their culture to a certain extent, even when they
became U.S. citizens because they had to stick together in self-defense.
There have been several ugly incidents lately with the hate groups going
after Asian immigrants. I hope we can stop this insanity, but it's not
likely to go away, unfortunately.
Pax,
Patricia
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