Kieran Healy is a Professor of Sociology at Duke University. I really don’t know much about him, though he seems to have written a bunch of interesting articles and writes a blog. I found an intriguing quote from his latest blog note in an email newsletter of Alan Jacobs and followed up by reading Healy’s essay on the process of becoming an American citizen. Appropriately enough (and deeply appropriate for our times) it is entitled American.
In his essay, he reflects on what one learns and is tested on in the citizenship exam that one takes to become a citizen. I found his reflections both encouraging in their content and deeply troubling when compared to the reality of our current federal government’s approach to immigration.
I was captured by the portion of the Healy essay that Alan Jacobs quoted:
I know the nationalities of my fellow oath-takers because of the next stage of the ceremony. This was the Roll Call of Nations. I did not know this was going to happen. Every country of origin represented was announced in turn. As your country was named, you were asked to stand up, and remain standing. Afghanistan came first. Then Algeria. The last person to stand, immediately to my left, was from the United Kingdom. There were twenty seven countries in all, out of only fifty or so people. For me this part in particular was enormously, irresistibly moving. It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth — as you please — that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is.
Wow. That’s what I learned growing up in the heartland of America. It’s inspiring. And that’s why the present treatment of so many where I live in LA County is so horribly depressing and awful and unAmerican. This drumming up of conflict by deporting contributing members of our community is just not what America is about. It divides us and induces fear. It’s wrong in so many ways. Iranian Christians dragged out of church to be deported? A student deported as he graduates high school? A resident of 47 years detained to be deported? The stories from torn-apart families are piling up; it’s horrifying to witness. And it’s even bad for those who are empowered and ordered to arrest and detain these people who are not criminals. It is not the American in which I grew up and learned American values.
And I haven’t even begun here to evaluate what is happening by uniquely Christian standards… Read American.