Thanksgiving is as known for being a day to delicately navigate talking to relatives with vastly different political beliefs as it is for overeating. And the hot-button topic certain to be on everyone’s lips will be what do about Syrian refugees. If it were up to 25 Republican governors and the US House of Representatives, the answer would be to keep them out.
This is ironic. Today’s Syrian refugees today don’t look, sound or worship like us, but the Pilgrims that landed on Plymouth Rock 400 years ago also didn’t look, sound or worship like we do – and certainly neither looked, sounded nor worshipped like the native inhabitants of America do.
They brought Calvinist determination to this country, and we celebrate that, but that determination came pre-packaged with bigotry and narrow-mindedness. What came to be known as the Protestant work ethic was driven by the same zeal that caused some of the British exiles who landed on American shores to persecute anyone already here, or who came here after, who wasn’t like them. We praise the Pilgrims’ work ethic as part of our American DNA, but rarely acknowledged the work ethic and determination of the people who already lived here, nor what the Pilgrims and those who came after them did to destroy the indigenous people they met.
Though we may never know exactly what transpired on that first Thanksgiving, let’s never forget that it was the Native Americans’ land – and that they brought the food. If we continue to celebrate the Pilgrims, or even just use them as an excuse to eat too much pie, we and our lawmakers should acknowledge that turning our backs on Syrian refugees is akin to turning our back on our own foundations.
While it’s true that the Pilgrims weren’t exactly fleeing a war-torn country, they were leaving a homeland where they were fined, jailed and sometimes even executed for their views. Calling themselves “saints” or “the godly”, the Pilgrims were religious separatists who argued for a complete break from the state-run Church of England, which ran them afoul of the law and the king.
After a decade of exile in the Netherlands that saw “sundry of them taken away by death” and their children tempted by “the great licentiousness of youth in that country”, the Pilgrims partnered with financial backers in England to help them outfit the Mayflower for the long voyage. In return, they agreed to work for the company to repay their debts. Then they sailed across the pond, exploited the locals and paved the way for the America we have today.
Though their behavior in “the new world” was far from saintly, the Pilgrims were still refugees. But today’s conservatives – some of whom would go so far as to float the idea of World War II-style internment camps for Syrian refugees or registration lists for Muslims – can’t stomach the idea that if the Pilgrims were to show up today, the Republican Party would turn would them back at the border. They actually were a lot of what conservatives are mistakenly accusing Syrian refugees of being.
One argument against the Syrians is a misguided belief that all Muslims want to impose Sharia law. But the Pilgrims actually did impose their religious beliefs on the country. Even if Syrian refugees wished to do the same – which is ludicrous, seeing as they are fleeing the strictures of the Islamic State – it would be impossible.
Ben Carson has wondered what sinister reason lies behind the reason that so many refugees are single men. Forget, for a moment, that Carson is demonstrably wrong; more than half are women, and more than half are younger than 17. Carson’s fear would’ve applied to the Pilgrims: many of them left wives and children back home to test out life in an unknown land.
Did this make them sinister? No, it made them smart. Half the company of the Mayflower died the first winter. Syrian refugees are also facing incredible odds, and some are doing it alone. That doesn’t make them terrorists.
Come to think of it, maybe the English settlers should have been kept out. Despite whatever good feelings led to the Thanksgiving tableau between the Pilgrims and local Wampanoag tribe, the uneasy relationship between the English and the Natives ultimately dissolved into warfare with the many Native Americans on the losing end. As more Puritans, and then many others, arrived in the New World, even more zealotry took hold. Those who deviated from the religious or political norm were banished and dissenting views were silenced.
Do I really think the Mayflower should have been turned back at Plymouth harbor? I’d hate to give up Thanksgiving (it’s not Columbus Day, after all), and for my own sake – as I’m descended, like about 10% of the population, from passengers on that boat – I’m glad they came. Despite the fact that I don’t agree with everything the Pilgrims did and believed, they are the bedrock of this country in all its imperfection.
Four centuries after the Mayflower, America continues to evolve. I would like to think that despite our immense economic and racial problems, we are working toward a better, more just society. We may never be the saints the Pilgrims claimed they were, but if we turn our backs on people like the Syrians, surely we will be sinners, hurting not just them but our own country.