ABSTRACT
Rather than proceeding with a political examination and explanation of the topic of immigration as it relates to race and ethnicity, I approach the topic by looking at the cultural backdrop of what immigrants face when immigrating from one’s native home (by birth, citizenship or longevity) to another. As a communication scholar with a background in language, I focus in large part on how the origins and historical development of the term “immigrant” and those related to it help us to better understand the tensions that immigrants and members of “host” societies confront when the issue of their “foreigness” and otherness – especially as it relates to one’s racial, color and ethnic identity – takes center stage. One might view my aims in this piece in light of W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic concept of double consciousness or Frantz Fanon’s assertion that the black man’s destiny is white. At bottom, both of these ideas are the essence of the immigrant reality – questions about adaptation, acculturation, acceptance, rejection and racial/ethnic/cultural assimilation. The essential issues surround-ing immigration, though highly political, are at base questions about racial and ethnic identity and survival, dominance, acquiescence, fusion and change and the related motivations, consequences and implications involved. So I proceed first with an examination of etymology, embracing Fanon’s claim that “mastery of language affords remarkable power,” for both the immigrant and, in our case here, the student and scholar.
