Americas

My thanks to Thesaurus whose post "Only in America" has made me realize that my problem with "America" is the very word itself. There is no such thing, it is only a calling into being of an imaginary people who then buy into the idea that they are a people. Having recently marched in an anti-immigration parade, networked with academics, and spent time at "Home" with my blue-colored neighbors, I now recognize that the United States of America is misnamed. Rather, it should be the United States of Americas. My neighbor, a furloughed worker at an autoparts factory has less in common with my academic co-workers than he has in common with the Korean autoworkers who assembled my car. Likewise, my co-workers have less in common with the "Mexican"-"Americans" who work in the kitchens of multi-box chain restaurants than they do with Ghana's professoriate. Maybe the Marxists are right (and this coming from one who would define Marxism as that which lies at the oozing-bottom of the trash heap of history), it's not the language you speak or the God you worship. It's the rung of the ladder from which you sit, stand or hang. Could it be that for all our talk of equality, America truly has second and third-class citizenships?