The Problem of the Ethos of a Polish Emigrant − a Few Remarks Concerning American Polonia

Abstract

In the introductory part of the article the author points to the main difficulty in defining the ethos an emigrant. This difficulty is due to the social and occupational differentiation of emigration and also to a generational distance from the country of origin. In different social groups an ethos (i.e. the socially accepted and assimilated in a given society norms regulating the preservation of its members) can be different. Apart from that, the ethos of the Polish Community in America, like any other's, is a variable reality, though there are constant elements in it. There are here Polish traditions and a system of values acquired in America. The ethos of the Polish Community in America can be traced in such domains as: work and its fruits, its attitude to religion, an attitude to the social life and its institutions (such as ethnic organizations and country).

The attitude towards work and its fruits is one of the most conspicuous elements of the Polish emigrant's ethos in the United States, which distinguishes him from a fellow-countryman in Poland. This sort of attitude stemmed out of an unquestioning, necessity to safeguard a future for oneself through hard work, of confifence to the stable financial politics of the country (of settlement) and to the value of money. The subsequent, essential element of the Polish emigrant's ethos in the USA is the religious life. Despite the changes in church ritual, the essentially devout religiousness of Polonia remained and it constitutes its unalterable sign. Nowadays, in this ethos it is not the country of origin and its State which matters, but a friendly relationship with people from the mother country and sensitivenes to the Polish cultural heritage. A total loyalty to the new fatherland is connected with it and this loyalty creates the Poles an acceptable ethnic group.