I am going to explain this from the perspective of a child because that’s what I was when the ABC miniseries Roots first aired in January 1977. I know I watched a significant portion of the series although it’s possible my parents decided at some point that it was too disturbing for a seven year old or that it was time for me to go to bed. I have ideas in my head about what the show looked like, the settings, the feel of it. I obviously have more information stored up in my memory banks that’s not a recollection of watching the show but of what I learned about it subsequently when studying history or culture or just hearing people talk about it.
What I recollect more strongly than the actual program is the reaction to it. It spurred a nationwide enthusiasm for people (including white people) to search their own genealogies. This was discussed in my elementary school and it drove my parents and I think some of their siblings or cousins to do some research. At one point, I was presented with a huge piece of paper that needed to be folded many times for storage. And it traced back my family’s ancestors for several centuries. At different times, I’ve made reference to this document on my blog only to receive an email from one parent or the other explaining that I’d gotten some detail wrong. I might get a detail wrong now, too, but the most memorable fact uncovered was that we had ancestors who were on the Mayflower and that one of these people actually fell off the ship mid-voyage and had to be rescued. I remember reading a blurb about this fellow in some small New England museum and feeling a strange mix of amusement and shame.
The truth is that most Americans, including me, have almost no knowledge of their own family history beyond the great grandparents. This is especially true for people whose families arrived here in the 19th-Century or earlier. If not for the Roots miniseries, I doubt I’d know almost anything about my family’s early history.
Since Stephen Miller is the driving force behind the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies, people have been looking into his genealogy and they’ve discovered a few interesting facts. Here’s one:
Together [E. Randol Schoenberg] and [Rob] Eshman followed Miller’s mother’s side…back to Wolf Lieb Glotzer and his wife, Bessie. That couple arrived from Belarus in 1903 with $8 to their name, escaping anti-Semitic pogroms. In an instance of what today would be called chain migration, they were joined by their son Natan and Wolf’s brother Moses, and eventually by another brother, Sam, who changed his name to Glosser. Sam Glosser was the maternal great-grandfather of Stephen Miller.
It’s quite possible that Miller didn’t know this himself, and if he didn’t that wouldn’t be unusual in our strange culture.
Here’s another fact, from his father’s side of the family:
A photo of Nison (aka Max) Miller stares out from the screen, sullen and stern, in faded black and white. “Order of Court Denying Petition” is the title of the government form dated “14th November 1932,” to which it is attached, the one in which Miller is applying for naturalization as an American citizen.
And beneath the photo, the reason given for his denial: Ignorance.
Nison Miller took the test again, passed, and became a U.S. citizen. Parts of my family beat Nison by more than three hundred years, but one of my uncles went to the same Santa Monica high school as Stephen Miller― a high school where I would later unwittingly play pick-up basketball nearly everyday for two years.
I believe one of America’s strengths is at least partly a happy side effect of our own ignorance about ourselves. We don’t develop our own sense of identity based on who or where we came from because we generally have only the vaguest knowledge about these things. There is even an advertisement for DNA testing on television right now that riffs on this, with a man who thought he was of German ancestry finding out that he was completely wrong. Because we don’t have a centuries-long idea of our identity, we can’t harbor centuries-long grievances. And because were so anti-tribal in this sense, we find it much easier to integrate new people into our societies and see them as equals.
On the other hand, since specific knowledge is lacking, visual queues probably take more precedence in how we form in- and out-groups. We may not know whether we’re Scottish or French, but we know that we’re white and that person over there is not. In a more tribal society, the descendants of Irish or Italian immigrants would remain in the out group possibly forever. In our society, these people are now as white as anybody else and intermarry without a moment’s thought.
In other words, racial thinking does the work that genealogical knowledge does not. And that creates a barrier to integration for the non-white immigrants that predominate today. That’s certainly how Stephen Miller thinks. When his ancestors arrived here, they were not considered white. They weren’t exactly welcome, either, at least by most Americans in most areas of the country. But I know how Miller grew up because I spent so much time on his high school campus. My friends (who were all Jewish) and I played basketball with Iranian Jews who had fled the 1979 revolution, Japanese-Americans, Indian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, black Muslim guys from Compton or East L.A, and Christians of all colors and backgrounds. Just like my friends, a guy like Miller could pass for “white” because of his complexion and (like my friends) he was accepted as white because no one cared. We didn’t so much relish or celebrate our diversity as take it for granted. But West Los Angeles and Santa Monica are nothing like most of the country where groups don’t mix so thoughtlessly or with the same frequency.
Miller was an oddball in that environment. In high school, he complained about Spanish speakers. That English was relatively new to his family did not occur to him. That his family was relatively new to America did not matter to him. He thought of himself as a member of the in-group and sought to cast others out. He may not have known that his father’s family fled a pogrom in Belarus in 1903, but he did not care what others might have been fleeing in their homelands before arriving in Southern California. America, even Los Angeles, was for white-looking English-speakers, and everyone else was an infestation.
I don’t want to psychoanalyze the guy, but I do believe that there must be some insecurities that drove the formation of his worldview. Even without ever knowing about my own Mayflower roots, I grew up with the privilege of not having to ever think about my heritage or appearance or religion and how these things might hold me back or arouse suspicion, fear, hostility or hate. If I felt these things at all, it was only because my “group” had been on the top of the heap while slavery and Jim Crow were in full swing and while the country was being cleared of Native-Americans. I knew some people feared or harbored resentments against whites, but I also knew this was never going to present significant obstacles for me in my life. I don’t think Jewish-Americans will ever be able to have that same degree of confidence in their place in our country, and that may help explain why Miller clings to his privileged place and is so eager to deny it to others. If so, his disposition is still a massive outlier within his community.
What I find tragic is that Miller is threatening the very strengths of our country that made it so easy for his family to integrate and for him to grow up feeling that he was part of the “true” America. In order for him to have this self-image, he had to be ignorant of his own past, but that’s precisely what he was allowed to be because we don’t really care about people’s past.
That’s what makes us great even if that’s also what makes us think in such racial terms. Miller is the perfect example of this. No one cares about where he came from or why, so he can walk right in and close the door behind him.
One of your best. I had posted the article about this and hoped you’d put your thoughts to paper. Thanks.
Great post. Small footnote: E. Randol Schoenberg is the grandson of the great twentieth-century composer Arnold Schoenberg [“Randol” anagrams to “Arnold”], who emigrated to the United States from Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
Also, Miller’s background and character seem not unlike those of another Trump favorite, Roy Cohn.
Never noticed that Randol was an anagram! Looking now, I see his father, Ronald, was another. He was also president of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust from 2005 to 2015.
Yes, and Ronald, together with his siblings Lawrence and Nuria (widow of composer Luigi Nono), were also very active in the running of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC. It broke my heart when they had a falling out with the University in the mid 1990s and moved the materials to Vienna.
I don’t think Jewish-Americans will ever be able to have that same degree of confidence in their place in our country,…
Feeling just a little short of being fully integrated, I would concur. This despite some of my ancestors being here since the 19th century. I have at least one coworker who would not hesitate to remind me.
My great-great grandparents came here first, I believe late 1800’s or early 1900’s from southern Italy. Grandfather changed his last name from “Scipioni” in order to “integrate”. My great aunt is really into this sort of stuff and has traced stuff whenever she goes to Italy. I find it interesting in some sense — tracing it directly back to Scipio Africanus. But in the end these people are long dead and I have no connection to Italy or being “Italian-American”.
I think one thing that’s worth recognizing with this history and with the history of “whiteness” in the US is that they might not come for those of us who are (for now) safely integrated first, but they will come if we let them attack migrants first.
There have been some very specific and powerful forces in this country who cared where people came from and genealogy has long been weapon-ized to support arguments of legitimacy.
As When the Irish Became White points out, American history is almost cyclical with one former “other” being bestowed whiteness by brutalizing the next “foreign element” coming off the boat. Pre-1964, the Miller’s of America achieved their “whiteness” by becoming foot soldiers pushing the door closed.
The civil rights act and voting rights act broke the pattern as conservatives suddenly needed Midwestern urban Euro-Americans to win elections. Almost overnight they declared Polocks, Hunkie’s, Czechs, etc. “White.” The move is a key historical racial dynamic than no economic re-vitalization of the Rust Belt is going to solve.
My own family history bares this out: My grandfather wasn’t white, my father became conditionally white between 1964 and 1968 as long as he voted GOP, and, as a kid, I was white as long as I laughed at the jokes directed at me.
OT: Utah’s current governor, among others, also claim that same overboard Mayflower pilgrim as his ancestor. He also claims Butch Cassidy, so take it for what it’s worth.
“Almost overnight they declared Polocks, Hunkie’s, Czechs, etc. “White.”
What is a Hunkie? And is this same thing as “honky”?
From Wikipedia:
“A derogatory American slang term for immigrants of Rusyn, Hungarian or Slovak descent, originating in the political status of the homeland of many such immigrants, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
Funny story, years ago an artist commissioned to do a bronze Steel Worker statue engraved “Hunkie” on it’s back pocket. He was shocked at the outrage directed at him when it was revealed in front of an audience mostly of Hungarian and Slovak decent.
He mistakenly thought was a term of endearment used by the community itself and sanded the word off.
While the term “hunky” could be and was applied indscriminately to almost any slavic nationality, according to the Hungarian foundry workers I knew, it was directly referring to Hungarians, was most often used by Austrians and Germans and was definitely reason for blood on the floor.
This was at the turn of the last century.
Magyars, Hungarians are not slavic. My understanding is the word derives from “Bohemian” although it applies to any slav. And, yeah, the black word “honky” does come from “hunky.”
When I was a young engineer fresh from college, I got a starting job in a refinery as an inspector attached to a crew of 4 or 5 other inspectors. The rest of the crew were older guys, 40’s or 50’s, who had previously been weldors or pipefitters or whatever. These guys all called each other Hunky So-and so, most of them being slavic. Kind of like the black guys on shows like The Wire calling each other nigger.
Oh, just remembered:
“Bohunk” = “Bohemian” if that heps.
I know of no Jewish-American adults who are not acutely aware that their forbears arrived in the U.S. not so many generations ago, and of their forbears’ struggle to integrate.
It is impossible for me to believe that Miller is ignorant of his ethnic roots, or even is in denial about them. I think, instead, that he likely long ago found some way to rationalize for himself his depravity.
This kind of rationalization–which requires a total vacuum where there would otherwise be, in a humane person, simple empathy or compassion–is perhaps the most impressive among the many cognitive contortions performed by our friends on the right.
I’ve come to think that empathy and compassion are hard-wired out of them.
In another vein, I can only begin to imagine how all this right-wing screaming about immigrants must sound to a Native American.
I’ve come to believe this is true of at least 47% of Americans. I wonder if it was any better before 9/11. I don’t think so, but it was better hidden.
No Mayflower ancestors here. Early 20th Century immigrants from the schtettle. One thing I got from my Jewish heritage that Miller seems to have missed is: “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” This passage is repeated numerous times in slightly different forms throughout the Torah.
Why do I get the impression Miller never cracked a Torah in his ugly life.
Very thought provoking write-up of how to view Stephen Miller’s animus towards immigrants. I wonder how he feels about northern European immigrants were they to present themselves at US borders seeking asylum.
Reading it, I could not stop thinking that Miller was elevated to a position of importance by Jeff Sessions. Had he not had that stepping stone, he perhaps would not have gained entry to DJT’s inner circle.
So some thought must go towards Jeff Sessions and his racial animus, which is much better documented!
Great blog post Booman.
It 2018 and America is engaging in genocide and ethnic cleansing. I guess killing off American Indians wasn’t enough for trump and his gang.
“visual queues” — in context kind of queute, but don’t you mean “visual cues”?
Booman,
You say about Miller “That his family was relatively new to America did not matter to him.” That’s where you’re wrong.
One set of grandparents of mine came here from Belarus in 1905, five years later than his, the other from Ukraine in 1914. That gives me a perspective a bit different from yours.
Almost all my relatives from the generation before my parents spoke English with an accent. Most of them were happy to speak Yiddish. Some of them barely spoke English at all. As a child, when I encountered a person over 60 in my neighborhood that spoke English without an accent, I thought it was odd.
When I got interested enough to ask questions — and yes, this was the time of Roots — I found enough older relatives who could tell me about the old country and the family — people who had come over and some who never had — in considerable detail. I also had some knowledge of our native language, which eventually improved to the point that I could speak fluently. Even so, I don’t know anything beyond my great- great grandparents — but where we came from, that pretty much gets you to the Middle Ages.
So my point is … That Miller’s family was relatively new to America fucking well DID matter to him. His whole life is about denying it.
It matters to me too. I loathe Miller and people like him. I could never write about such a person in the measured terms you do here.
Sorry, I meant “1908”.
Landsmann! Or maybe I should say Paisano!
We’re cousins. My siblings and I are also related to the fellow who fell overboard off the Mayflower, John Howland. The well-reviewed children’s book about him says he was a teenager at the time, but if Wikipedia is right, he was in his 20s. I’d be interested to know why you felt ashamed that you were related to him.
Your account of your pick-up games is very heartening. Maybe it’s different for teenage boys doing informal sports, with the common gender and sport interest acting as binding elements — there was certainly some kid ethnic tribalism floating around when I was in grade school in the near suburbs of NYC in the 50s. No violence – but the Italian kids lived in a different apartment complex (as it happened – no systematic design in it, AFAIK) than the non-Italian kids, and though we all mixed carelessly at school, if we non-paisans walked by their street after school, they expressed turf consciousness by throwing pebbles at us.
I’m very far from being mental health pro, but doesn’t Miller strike you as someone with possible physiological personality problems?
. . . reunite!
Miller is in the mainstream of a poisonous river that we’ve had going in our nation for a long time. It was before our time but we dehumanized the Cherokee nation under Andrew Jackson, and forced the people essentially to hike from the Carolinas to Oklahoma.
This smells little different from the moving of people of Japanese ethnicity from their lives and homes to concentration camps.
We use wrong words. We call Miller a conservative, which is an insult to conservatism. (there’s a lot of that going around nowadays). We have words like “detention”, when what we’re talking about is kidnapping and hostage taking. That’s what Miller champions, nothing less than a collection of crimes. He and his crowd are vicious and obscene.
Of course Miller doesn’t care where he came from I just hope that he will continue to deny any part of his past and heritage, lest he associate himself with me, or with any American for that matter.
. . . all that way if they survived the trek.
12-50% got “relief” from that ardor . . . by dying. So there’s that. (Looks like the Andrew Jackson racists were about as competent at tracking the fates of their victims as the Trump/Miller/Kelly racists: re: mortality estimate ranging from 2K to 8K out of ~16k.)
Also, I’d posit that the “long time” that poisonous river has flowed here extends back before nationhood to 1492.