“These, too, belong to us,” Albert Einstein on Immigrants and Diversity
I had to steal this. I first heard about it on Open Culture and then I went directly to Speeches of Note, where they found it.
It is a remarkable speech by a remarkable man — and immigrant — Albert Einstein, celebrating diversity in lyrical terms. And if we ever needed a brilliant man’s words on that subject, we need them right now, here in Trumpland.
It gets a little sentimental and somewhat sketchy in the middle. Are Black folks only to be celebrated for their music? And are immigrants and “Negroes” really “step-children” of the nation? Well, as he explains, that’s what we were often called.
And he mows down the “immigrants are taking our jobs” argument very eloquently, as he continues. So consider the America he was addressing, and try not to wince too hard.
Let’s get right to it:
From Albert Einstein, offered at the World’s Fair in New York, 1940:
It is a fine and high-minded idea, also in the best sense a proud one, to erect at the World’s Fair a wall of fame to immigrants and Negroes of distinction.
The significance of the gesture is this: it says: These, too, belong to us, and we are glad and grateful to acknowledge the debt that the community owes them. And focusing on these particular contributors, Negroes and immigrants, shows that the community feels a special need to show regard and affection for those who are often regarded as step-children of the nation — for why else this combination?
If, then, I am to speak on the occasion, it can only be to say something on behalf of these step-children. As for the immigrants, they are the only ones to whom it can be accounted a merit to be Americans. For they have had to take trouble for their citizenship, whereas it has cost the majority nothing at all to be born in the land of civic freedom.
As for the Negroes, the country has still a heavy debt to discharge for all the troubles and disabilities it has laid on the Negro’s shoulders, for all that his fellow-citizens have done and to some extent still are doing to him. To the Negro and his wonderful songs and choirs, we are indebted for the finest contribution in the realm of art which America has so far given to the world. And this great gift we owe, not to those whose names are engraved on this “Wall of Fame,” but to the children of the people, blossoming namelessly as the lilies of the field.
In a way, the same is true of the immigrants. They have contributed in their way to the flowering of the community, and their individual striving and suffering have remained unknown.
One more thing I would say with regard to immigration generally: There exists on the subject a fatal miscomprehension. Unemployment is not decreased by restricting immigration. For unemployment depends on faulty distribution of work among those capable of work. Immigration increases consumption as much as it does demand on labor. Immigration strengthens not only the internal economy of a sparsely populated country, but also its defensive power.
The Wall of Fame arose out of a high-minded ideal; it is calculated to stimulate just and magnanimous thoughts and feelings. May it work to that effect.
Amen, Albert.
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