“There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.” Thus spoke former President Theodore Roosevelt, addressing the Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Columbus Day 1915.
In Roosevelt’s time, the concern was political loyalty. Since ethnic identity became fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s, hyphenated Americans have been seen more as advocates for special interests than as potential traitors. Nevertheless, some, to remove any doubt, drop the hyphen. Myron Kuropas’s pioneering 1991 monograph on our people in the United States is titled “The Ukrainian Americans.” The Ukrainian National Association does likewise. “Ukrainian” is simply an adjective describing “Americans.”
Today, with a resurgent American nationalism endorsed by the president, the objection to hyphenation seems based on the need for socio-cultural cohesion in a fragmented nation. Some thinkers also stress the psychological importance of being rooted in a particular place. Children of displaced persons whose jobs require frequent moves may find this difficult to appreciate – though we may also long for it. Others emphasize the value of a shared history, which has forged a common American culture and mentality. Conservative commentator R. R. Reno has pointed out that “America is a community of memory and habit of mind.” (First Things, May 2017, p. 65). Can one belong to two such communities without succumbing to schizophrenia? Can one emulate both Kozaks and cowboys?
Most of the speakers at a conference held in New York last September 21 would have said yes. Marking the 125th anniversary of the organized Ukrainian American community, and specifically the UNA, the assembly was part of the Ukrainian Historical Encounters Series. It featured panels on cultural, religious, academic and economic life. The presentations by representatives of organizations serving our youth (Plast, “SUM,” “Ridna Shkola”) were especially encouraging. We were left with a sense of being not “hyphenated,” but unified. For as one speaker put it, being Ukrainian can be a way of being American. In this respect, the U.S. is different from Europe, with its exclusive “blood and soil” identities. “Ukrainians,” said one speaker, “are the best Americans.”
Is this what our immigrant forebears expected? The chief aim of the first two “waves” was a better life, and identity was probably not a question for most. The political exiles of the Third Wave might have resented the effectively genocidal nature of their expulsion, for the realists knew that their progeny would become American. Few could have expected to return, and even after 1991, few did so. Those who have tried to help Ukraine sometimes found that there, they were seen as clueless (and gullible) Americans, while in America, they were not always regarded as “real” Ukrainians.
Is hyphenation, then, an effective strategy? A college classmate of mine, son of a Polish diplomat, embraced an unambiguously American identity. He became a National Security Council staff member in the White House, advising the president on East European affairs in the crucial 1980s. I suspect he did more for Poland than if he had spent his time learning to speak Polish or dance the “Krakowiak.” But others have combined ethnic activism with professional success.
With or without the hyphen, being “Ukrainian American” can be just a matter of ancestry. Citing available statistics, Oleh Wolowyna, who simply uses the term “Ukrainians,” finds that there were about 700,000 such persons in the U.S. in 1980 (defined as including those of mixed origin who list “Ukrainian” as their first or second ancestry). As of 2010, this had risen to over 931,000, and may now be approaching a million (Oleh Wolowyna, “Atlas of Ukrainians in the United States,” 2019). This is obviously due to the Fourth Wavers, who have swollen our ranks since 1988. Even considering that some of them must have joined the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora, this would still lead one to expect that our community organizations would have grown over the past 40 years.
For any that have not, the obvious culprit is “assimilation.” One aspect of assimilation is intermarriage. Close to half of all Ukrainian Americans are descendants of “mixed marriages” (Wolowyna, 77). True, even in ethnically mixed families, Ukrainian identity can be passed on from generation to generation. Today, however, one cannot assume that this will happen. Three-generation families under a single roof, which used to facilitate cultural transmission (especially when both parents were working), are becoming rarer. Having children late in life increases their distance from culture-bearing grandparents. Besides, more Americans stay single. Those who do marry tend to do so late, with few if any offspring. Community organizations that presuppose the traditional Ukrainian family may have to rethink their strategies.
At the same time, the logic of a liberal society gradually removes the authority of the family as well as of the community and the parish. Children are no longer compelled to cultivate their “roots.” How many will voluntarily spend their Saturday mornings in Ukrainian school and their Sunday mornings in church? The one remaining authority, the state, has no compelling interest in perpetuating hyphenated identities.
Whereas in the past, ethnic neighborhoods (“ghettoes”) reinforced Ukrainian identity, in recent decades Ukrainian Americans have migrated out of the old urban enclaves in the Northeast to the South and West. More now live in the suburbs. This spells sparser settlement. Whether the Internet can make up for the resulting atomization is an open question. A virtual community is no substitute for face-to-face fellowship.
Nevertheless, last year’s New York conference was encouraging. Perhaps place does not matter so much. Perhaps one can be physically in the U.S. but mentally and spiritually “in Ukraine.” Can a culture be both local and global? Even the hyphen, after all, is a connector. Connection is, by its very nature, relational. And relationality is the key to cultural and spiritual as well as physical survival.
Andrew Sorokowski can be reached at [email protected].