Hyphenated-America

Suzi-Huntington

A Tangle Of Squabbing Non-Nationals

We’ve all heard the term “hyphenated America,” which has been around since the 1890s. Oddly enough, according to most writing style guides, it’s no longer fashionable to use a hyphen. The term was originally coined as an epithet and used against Americans of foreign birth, starting with German or Irish Americans who called for US neutrality during World War I. With the exception of Native Americans, aren’t all Americans foreign by definition? None of us were here until our ancestors emigrated and became naturalized US citizens.

My own ancestry goes to Europe (Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Spain and France, among other places), so does that make me a European American? Nope. I’m simply an American. As one family member used to say, “You’re a Heinz-57 kid, family came from all over this world.” I’ve never presented myself as anything else — I’m a hyphen virgin — I didn’t even hyphenate my name when I got married.

Hyphens used for personal identity are stupid. Most families have become so diluted in their genealogical makeup the idea of claiming you’re a fill-in-the-blank-American is unsettling. Take our president; he’s our first “African American” president — except he’s actually an African-European-American, though we only seem to be focused on one side of his lineage. The only logical explanation I can come up with is: it gets attention and special treatment … and, apparently, it got votes. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he’s the first black president, but that would be politically incorrect and it would still ignore his European heritage.

I have a friend who was born in South Africa (he’s white) and immigrated to the US a number of years ago, therefore he’s African American. Yet, when he called the Department of Commerce to inquire about applying for assistance as a minority owned business, he was told he qualified as minority, until he told them he was white. Kind of makes your brain hurt, doesn’t it? Race, ethnicity and nationality are losing their individual meanings and are starting to blur into one thing: color. By the way, do white African Americans have to check “white” on applications and other forms? We’re losing our objectivity to adjectivity. The word before the hyphen has gone from noun to adjective.

Another shining example of this exists in the new term, “Muslim-American.” Really? We don’t refer to other religious beliefs in this manner; we don’t write about Christian- or Catholic-Americans. Hell, I can’t even find anything on Atheist-Americans. Is this new hyphenation an attempt to soften the typical knee-jerk reaction some have with the Muslim religion, given the acts of 9/11? Perhaps. But just as there are extreme Muslims, there are extreme believers of other faiths.

Extreme religious beliefs right here in the US say it’s okay to kill doctors who perform abortions, have numerous wives, abuse children, withhold medical treatment, and the list goes on. I readily admit I’m sometimes guilty of thinking disparaging thoughts about Muslims as a whole. Of wondering: How do I tell a moderate from an extremist? How does all this apply to us (cops)? We work in a world where many calls for service are on the slippery slope of subjectivity and bias.

We’ve all been to similar calls, the ones where the reporting party puts us in the middle of the profiling shit storm — the vague “there’s a suspicious looking black or Mexican or Asian male in the neighborhood” call. Of course, it’s you who is accused of racial profiling when you dare to stop the guy wandering the streets. Profiling is not a dirty word; it’s been done for many years. The FBI has some of the best profilers in the world and guess what? Race is part of the equation. You don’t hear white guys getting all grumpy because they’re the most likely people to be serial killers, do you? Anyone who labels himself as a hyphenated anything is already setting the stage for perpetuating the problem, and a red flag should go up.

Diversity and sensitivity training exacerbates the problem too. I want to meet the elitist twit who assumed cops must all get out of bed every day and say, “I think I’m going to pick on ‘fill-in-the-blank.’” There are so many protected classes; practically everyone could fit into one category or another. Instead of bringing us closer and creating a more cohesive society, it’s made it more divisive. In all my years on the street, it was almost always the person I was dealing with who decided to take things to the hyphen-zone. As Woodrow Wilson once said, “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

Only three things should ever really matter in a cop’s eyes: is this person a victim, witness or suspect? America’s in desperate need of finding her oneness right now, her citizens need to start thinking beyond the ends of their own damn noses. It’s your job to continue being fair and objective in your dealings with a society hell-bent on keeping themselves separated by dashes. Hard? You bet. If it was easy, anybody could be an American-COP.