The 1890s may seem remote to us, but the population distribution for both of these groups is not much different today than it was in the 1890s. The effects of who are ancestors were and where they came to America to live continue to have an impact now on who we are and where we live.
The share of the U.S. population that is white is aging and dwindling and is projected to no longer comprise the majority of the population around 2055.
Asia, not Latin America or Europe, is now the biggest source of new immigrants.
The number of individuals who profess affiliation with a form of Christianity is declining, and more people than ever before (22.8%) are claiming to be unaffiliated with any particular religion. Those who are unaffiliated now exceed Mainline Protestants (14.7%) and Catholics (20.8%), and they almost equal the number of Evangelical Protestants in America (25.4%).
These diverse and changing demographics and perspectives potentially present challenges and opportunities America must address in order to remain one nation. How can such a country stand united when it is comprised of so many divergent parts?
Whitman carried out a heated campaign against Bishop Hughes, “this cunning, flexible, serpent tongued priest, who has had the insolence to appear in the public forum” and to advocate for Catholic schools (“Sectarianism” 43).
Bishop Hughes, Whitman claims in one especially overblown attack, “uses his pontifical robes to cover the blackest, most traitorous heart in the broad limits of the American republic” (“The Aurora” 60).
Whitman attacked others in the media: “several of the most presumptuous and ignorant newspapers in the city have taken up the cudgels in defence of the Hughes party—those who desire to overturn our admirable system of public instruction. We have nothing to say to these ninnies” (“The Schools” 54).
strongest terms” because the bishop’s efforts risk “the people’s true interest”(“Sectarianism” 43, emphasis added).
“The Aurora, we imagine, . . . needs no certificate of it character for courage. . . . We have nerve enough to face the fire of battle, and stand by our cølors, and peal out the rallying cry to the last, in support of any cause which we sincerely believe to be holy and patriotic. . . . [W]e neither fear this cunning, selfish Hughes, nor any of his wretched gang” (“The Aurora” 59, emphasis added).
This was not what a sophisticate and cultured poet was at that time supposed to look like, and his poetry celebrated the everyday working-class individual, who he routinely connected to America, rather than focusing on nobles, the rich, and the elite. “One’s Self I Sing” (available here) and and “I Hear America Singing” (available here) are good examples. Notice that in “One’s Self I Sing,” he makes an important claim: “One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, / Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.” Rather than using the “we” of his newspaper days, he is focusing on the “I” and the self, but in doing so he is claiming that for America, the celebration of the individual self is what can join the myriad selves together. This shift is coupled with a generosity of tone and spirit not equalized in his earlier writing. For Whitman, faced with the challenge of how to represent a pluralist America as one nation, the solution was not to construct one shared perspective but instead to celebrate the multitude of individual selves, because the self contains the multitude.
As we begin working through reading Elizabeth Acevedo’s Poet X, I want to keep the above in mind. What challenges does Poet X suggest are presented by growing up today in America? What opportunities are presented? Does Whitman’s poetry offer any suggestions for today for navigating the cultural controversies of our contemporary period?
Whitman, Walt. “Sectarianism and Our Public Schools.” The Journalism, edited by Herbert Bergman, Douglas A. Noverr, and Edward J. Recchia, vol. 1, Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 42–43.
—. “The Aurora and the School Question.” The Journalism, edited by Herbert Bergman, Douglas A. Noverr, and Edward J. Recchia, vol. 1, Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 59–60.
—. “The Schools, March 15, 1842.” The Journalism, edited by Herbert Bergman, Douglas A. Noverr, and Edward J. Recchia, vol. 1., Peter Lang, 1998, p. 54.