Thanksgiving Spirit In Limited Supply With Modern Americans

By Stuart Chipman

Each year, on the last Thursday of November, when autumn sets the trees ablaze and the first snowflakes begin to paint the landscape, most of the United States sits down to celebrate, watch a football game, gorge on turkey and gorge a little more on pie. Then, they waddle over to the couch and flop down into a tryptophan-induced coma to rest up before the most vehement shopping day of the year. 

But rewind. Back at the dinner table, though there is a regrettable loss of focus in this area, many families still make a point to express their gratitude for the unearned privileges they and their ancestors have received, hence the name of the holiday. 

But when did this noble tradition start. Rewind some more. In 1621, a group Wampanoag, in their infinite hospitality, saved the lives of a group of ill-equipped colonists who had sentenced themselves to starvation with their lack of knowledge of their environment. 

Everyone who attends elementary school learns this in history class. Thanksgiving is a time not to just give thanks in general, but to celebrate hospitality, acceptance and generosity. Or at least it ought to be. Unfortunately, the hospitality the colonists received did not start a domino effect; the horrible exploitation that followed did. As Squanto was thanked for his hospitality by being tossed on a slave ship to Europe, the spirit that started Thanksgiving was turned into the spirit that has dictated the history of immigration in the United States.

America, for any group of first-generation immigrants besides those first colonists, has hardly been the land of dreams. Instead, Africans, Irishmen, Germans, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Asians, Pilipinos and Latinos have been welcomed with animosity, racism, abuse and exploitation. The last immigrants to the U.S. to be met with a warm welcome were those settlers received by Native Americans. Promptly thereafter, the genocide of nearly 12 million American Indians had effectively established the rule of the white man. So long and thanks for the food. 

Since then, the United States has accepted more immigrants than any other nation in the world. The brutal trials that each generation of new American immigrants endured makes the U.S. appear to be some global fraternity with a horrible induction ceremony. Indeed, most immigrants would gladly down a few shots and take a naked lap if that would earn them status as an American. Instead, they endured cotton fields, long hours in the hazardous factory, life in the shanty-towns or abuse by the long arm of the law, and still that was often not enough. There is no longer any benevolent tribe of Wampanoag waiting to deliver them a feast. The only relief that immigrants to the U.S. can hope for is that another group would succeed them and inherit the contempt of society. 

A recent receptor of this contempt is the Latin American immigrant. Despite the benefits they bring with them – paying far more in taxes than they use in services, doing work that native-born citizens usually consider too dirty or too dangerous (the hotel industry in the Southwest would collapse without immigrant labor) and boosting the economy by lowering the dependency ratio (most immigrants are in their prime working years between 18 and 65, and do not depend entirely on social services) – despite this, people still create a repertoire of derogatory names and myths for Latin Americans, and our government agencies reflect that animosity.

I spent Thanksgiving last year at my brother Gordy’s house in Lansing. My family ate dinner and then everybody over the age of 25 promptly fell asleep, and Gordy and I waltzed around his neighborhood carrying our remaining Thanksgiving cheer between us and sharing it with his friends from El Salvador. I spoke few words in English all night as I celebrated with some of the most hospitable, kind and pleasant people I had ever had the pleasure of meeting. I thought at that moment, this is what Thanksgiving is all about: Hospitality between cultures.

A few weeks ago, Immigration and Naturalization Services burst into the restaurant where these Salvadorans worked – guns drawn, cussing and swearing – and hauled them outside to the parking lot where they laid them face-down on the pavement and chained them together before putting them in the back of a van and bringing them to Detroit.  

Some of these immigrants have been in the U.S. for over 20 years, received mortgages to buy homes, been legally married in the U.S. and had children who were in school. The first had come as political refugees and made trips to the Immigration Services building in Chicago as frequently as possible to bring the rest of their family to the U.S. One by one they came, documented and legal. They worked 50 to 60 hour a week at a popular restaurant and a tortilla factory saving money. Nobody knew why they were being arrested. The INS is the only law enforcement agency that does not need a warrant to arrest people or search them. 

For whatever reason this family was arrested, the treatment was barbaric. This country was built and survives on immigration. Immigrants do not “take our jobs,” NAFTA does. They are not any more prone to violence or criminality that than the domestic population, statistics that show an incredibly high crime rate among undocumented immigrants are usually including their working as crime, and we all know the horrible effects that pool-cleaning, housekeeping and landscaping has had on California – mainly clean pools, clean houses, and pretty lawns. This story is just an illustration that the spirit of Thanksgiving is only celebrated on one day a year. I challenge Americans to match the unwavering hospitality of the people we treat so poorly.