Immigration: Something To Prove

Photographs by Augustus Sherman, Ellis Island Collection









Here are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

--E. B. White


What this country needs, has always needed,  is people who feel they have something to prove.
The boy who has grown up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, white, Christian, son of an Ivy Leaguer, bound in the same direction may, or may not have that need. If he does, you have to wonder why, what happened in his home.
The Jewish kid from Chevy Chase, that's a different story. The Black kid, even more.
Every human being has to have the world explained to him, and some do not like what they hear and try to shape it differently.
They, likely, are the people who make the most difference.
This is not a new observation. Literature, particularly cinematic literature, is full of characters who were strivers, from Michael Corleone to Rocky Balboa to Rhett Butler.

My recent favorite is Barack Obama.

The Phantom wonders whether or not the same thing applies to nations. Do we get flaccid if we get successful, when we get points for simply being WASPy?  Do we need that fire in the belly which can only come from people who were not born on third base?

Teddy Roosevelt had the fire, despite or because of his privileged background. But most of our leaders needed some experience with defeat to temper their steel.  
Is the same true for nations?