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| Paige Brewer Class of 2015 |
One of my professors this semester spoke this statement
during our class, “Youth in Jewish Fiction and Film.” We had just finished
discussing Philip Roth’s The Plot Against
America, a story of alternate history in which on the eve of World War II,
Americans elect the aviator Charles Lindbergh instead of Roosevelt as president.
Lindbergh was famous for his ardent isolationism during World War II, and in
the novel, he conducts a series of anti-Semitic reforms throughout the country
on a campaign to “Keep America Out of the Jewish War.” The story is told
through the eyes of Philip, a young boy growing up in a Jewish family and
community in Newark. Amidst the anti-Semitic chaos surrounding him, Philip
struggles with his identity as both American and Jew, reminding us all of the
struggle for any minorities that exist outside America’s cultural norm to find
a home in society.
I couldn’t help but recall an article I read while
researching my senior honors thesis. In “Language, Culture, and National
Identity”, historian Eric Hobsbawm states:
The concept of a single, exclusive, and unchanging ethnic
or cultural or other identity is a dangerous piece of brainwashing. Human
mental identities are not like shoes, of which we can only wear one pair at a
time. We are all multi-dimensional beings.
I referenced this quote during class, acknowledging the fact
that Philip chose to title the novel The
Plot Against America rather than America’s
Plot Against the Jews or something like that. This is because, I argued, Roth wanted to draw attention the real
“plot” against America—the idea that the only people who really “belong” in
America are those of a single racial, ethnic, and religious tradition, and that
all other groups should either be expelled or relegated to the bottom strata of
society. This plot, or what Hobsbawm calls a “dangerous piece of brainwashing”,
is what makes The Plot Against America
so timely. Our country has struggled to be welcoming and equally accessible to
all types of Americans, and despite many positive reforms, current events prove
that we’re still struggling.
I fell in love with American history early on. By second
grade, I had memorized three-fourths of the American presidents in order. In
seventh grade, I asked for the musical 1776
for Christmas and can still sing along to all the songs. What had really
captured my heart, though, was a cultivated myth that instilled in me images of
strong and moral leaders who had created the best country possible for me to
call home. They’re called founding fathers
for a reason—they had forged for me a political and cultural family.
When I entered high school, I was captured by new
images—those of Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sergeant Shriver, and
the like. From their stories, I came to believe that there was a part of this
American family devoted to improving society and the world at large, motivated
by altruism and a strong moral compass.
All the lives and stories I learned remained with me as I
started watching the news and thinking more critically about social issues. How
could my ideas about the heroes of American history match up to what I was
seeing on the news? What about our imperialist, colonial past—and our
xenophobic, American-centered present? What about our historical mistreatment
of African slaves, Native Americans, and immigrants—and our present
discrimination against blacks and Latin Americans?
My professor’s response to my comment about The Plot Against America was, “The quest
for purity is inherently violent.” Most systems of socialization, including the
American one, attempt to create a purity of thought in society. Purity is
attractive and easy to digest. That’s why we teach it to children in schools.
That’s why during scary times like war, we hold onto it.
But as I’m learning more about relations between
peoples—whether between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the Russians and the
Ukrainians, or the police officers and rioters in Ferguson—I continue to see examples
that support my professor’s statement. The purity we try to implement or
maintain results in a system of violence. We create and promote this system when
we consider our society and ourselves as “pure” and foreign others as impure.
Not only do we hold ourselves to expectations we can hardly fulfill. We isolate
ourselves from “different” others and fail to see how they can improve our
world.
Paige Brewer is a senior McConnell Scholar studying political science and philosophy. She is from Wilder, Ky.