Polish-Americans and the Bicentenial

Abstract

It is good time on the eve of 200th Anniversary of USA to look back on the history of his people. The sojourn many immigrants in this land has not been an easy one. Many Americans sow the Poles and other Eastern and Southern Europeans as brutish anti-democratic ignoramuses, as strike breaking supplanters of honest American labor, as the advance guard of anarchism and as the mindless Robots of the Pope's conspiracy to take over Protestant America.

It turned out that the Polish immigrants was less dangerous than the Americans had supposed and he could be allowed to slip silently into the Melting Pol which many Americans so fervently hoped actually existed. They became the kindly, gentle, slightly comis fellow, who with his citizenship papers cluthed reverently in his work hardened hands, burbled heart warming, patriotic cliches in his broken English.

This image persisted right through the 1950’s. In the 1980’s this image changed, though most Americans know almost nothing about Polish-Americans history and cultures in this country or in Europe nor do they know anything about the life, hopes, fears and belifs of the communities they established in this country. They are culled “Racists”.

At the same time the moovement of „Ethnicity” is starting and with it a renaissance of the conscience of the own Polish-Americans interest. The revival among the Blaks and among the ethnic minorities of a new sense of self respect and willinguess to act forthrightly in their own interest has disturbed many WASP, who will try to beat they down again.