“From start to finish I found no strangers. If I had, I
might be able to report them more objectively. But
these are my people and this is my country. If I found
matters to criticize and to deplore, they were tenden-
cies equally present in myself. If I were to prepare one
immaculately inspected generality it would be this: For
all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our
sectionalism, for all of our interwoven breeds drawn
from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a
new breed. Americans are much more American than
they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or
Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian,
Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American. This
is not patriotic whoop-de-do; it is carefully observed
fact. California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin Ger-
man, yes, and Alabama Negroes, have more in com-
mon than they have apart.And this is the more re-
markable because it has happened so quickly. It is a
fact that Americans from all sections and of all racial
extractions are more alike than the Welsh are like the
English, the Lancashireman like the Cockney, or for
that matter the Lowland Scot like the Highlander. It is
astonishing that this has happened in less than two
hundred years and most of it in the last fifty. The
American identity is an exact and provable thing.”
Excerpted from “Travels With Charley”, author, John Steinbeck.
Publisher: Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd. Street,
New York, New York 10010, U.S.A.
Islander.