What a Difference a Hyphen Makes

The United States of America has always been considered the great melting pot. Nothing made an immigrant family more proud than to have their children and grandchildren be considered "true" Americans. My, how times have changed.

Now, of course, the immigrants and minorities have discovered the great value of the hyphen. By simply adding a hyphen to a physical or cultural characteristic, like African-American, Latino-American, Asian-American, you, by virtue of "equal opportunity" and "affirmative action" legislation, get special privileges. What started in 1964 as Equal Rights went haywire a few years later when certain classes of people were given a "leg up" instead of a level playing field. More and more classes of people, understandably, wanted in. Who wouldn’t want to be able to get government help to get something everyone outside the group had to work hard for? The number of groups with hyphens got longer.

What’s most difficult to understand is how any race or group of people would willingly allow any government, with the sweep of a pen, to declare they are incapable of success, that they do not have the mental or physical capacity to achieve their life’s goals without government assistance. "Affirmative action" states, without ambivalence, that certain people, by virtue of their race, color or creed, are destined to fail if they try to live their lives simply by doing what the rest of us unhyphenated Americans must do. It can only be that the perqs are just too good to pass up. Hmmm.

No doubt some people (most likely the ones who hyphen) will find this attitude racist or biased in some way (it is not). Fortunately, there also appears to be a growing trend of hyphenated people, led by the likes of Bill Cosby, that agrees that the government has no business telling a people they can’t succeed without handouts. They’ve realized that entitlements weaken a culture by lowering the expectations of those who are told they are incapable of handling everyday life without help. They’ve recognized that a soft underbelly on one group makes for a soft underbelly on the nation, and is dragging us all down.

Instead of the melting pot, the United States is becoming a ragged collection of separatist groups, each one trying to gain advantage over the other, the divisive example set by our government with affirmative action. What we should be striving for is a level playing field again.
There’s only one way out of this mess. We need to set a limit to the number of generations allowed to use a hyphen.

Naturally, the first generation that arrives here are welcome to distinguish themselves with a hyphen, just as the Chinese-Americans, the Irish-Americans, and the Polish-Americans did in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their children, too, should have that right if they wish, assuming both parents have the same origin. But by the time we get to the third generation? Drop it. You’re an American. You have every advantage being an American offers. It doesn’t guarantee wealth and success, only hard work can do that. But it does mean you are on a level playing field with the rest of us, who were thrilled to drop our hyphens, and thus any preconceptions or stereotypes about us, generations ago. Isn’t it time our government did the same?