Jonno Marlton #4: Too American?

Anderson categorizes the Creole Pioneers of the Americas as being distinctly different from their homeland.  In describing the Creole Pioneer, Anderson explains that “the accident of birth in the Americas consigned him to subordination,” despite the unifying cultural factors that still existed.  I have always thought of my American-ness in relation to my Australian-ness.  I am more American than I am Australian.  I have lived here longer, I was born an American citizen (I wasn’t naturalized in Australia until I was three years old,) and I speak like an American.  The family I know best is American.  Or rather, they are Virginian. 

            Thinking back to Anderson’s description of the first American settlers to be born away from their homeland, I know for certain that my family can relate.  I feel a very strong tie Colonial Virginia because my Virginian family to this day prides itself on our colonial ancestors.  Thomas Nelson, whose son was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was given the land that my grandmother and her brother still own and inhabit in 1717 by the English Crown.  The truth of the matter as I can gather is that they were just handing out land back then and getting 3,000 acres in Virginia that soon after it was discovered was exciting, but not as impressive as it sounds now.  We also have a governor in our family.  John Page, the man who led Virginia after the Capital moved from Williamsburg to Virginia.  In fact the original land for the Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg was donated by a Page ancestor of mine.  His grave is there today. 

            England for us, in a way, is home with a capital “H.”  Virginia is a unique place because of its language, which to this day is still heavily influenced by the speech patterns of the four distinct colonizing forces.  My family has made an effort to track itself back to its origins to make a stronger claim to Virginia.  It’s funny how an understanding of our former English-ness makes us more Virginian, which makes us more American.  Anderson talks about the importance of Newspapers by offering the example of Benjamin Franklin.  Print media is important to my family’s “legacy,” but in a very different way than it is to those who still claim Franklin.

            Turning quickly to The Colored Museum, we can see that George C. Wolfe highlighted the struggle of African Americans by portraying the mid-Atlantic slave trade in an occasionally humorous manner that reasserts just how painful the slave trade was and is to our culture.  The line, “from your pain will come a culture so complex” speaks to me as being the point of the “Celebrity Ship” skit.  Back to my ancestors.  Thomas Nelson Page, the “famous” author in my family wrote novels about Virginia.  I have not yet read anything from the man who many members of my family say make us more Virginian, but I do know what he wrote about.  He wrote books after the Civil War (still in the 1800s) glorifying pre-Civil War Virginia. 

            Look, I have been indoctrinated to think of myself as about as American as you can get.  And I really do feel it…almost (my Aussie-ness gets in the way) but I know that some of my family feels it.  We got here almost “first” and we have had the same land for almost three hundred years.  We owned slaves, we fought in the civil war, we suffered from immense poverty that came from the agrarian collapse at the beginning of the 20^th Century (if not before.)  We were here “first” and we suffered.  So we are American.  But we weren’t here first, and we caused a lot of suffering.  Maybe that’s what makes us American.

***When I say family, I mean my extended Virginia family.  The views I have loosely expressed in this essay are not those every family member and I am generalizing to help you gain access to my mentality.

***In identifying my “American-ness,” I realize that I have come from the “whiteness” that everybody uses as the measuring stick for access to society.  Professor Aguas made the point that we all align in relation to this concept.  Orpheus McAdoo, the man whom Professor Thelwell discussed on Thursday, is a great example of someone who was using his understanding of “whiteness” to gain access to the system.  But, through his brand of uplift politics, he was able (I hope) to bring whiteness and otherness closer together.