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Amazing true American History

By Chris Colcord

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-02-03

Whenever I get overly depressed by the terrible divisiveness and mean-spiritedness that seems to permeate life in the United States now, I try to remember the oddball, surprising stories from our nation's past that prove that there has always been a spirit of tolerance in this country, no matter how removed from that ideal we often seem. Even before this country established its sovereignty in 1776, people were already trying to figure out how best to get so many different cultures and races to live together without actually killing each other.

My favorite story deals with the standoff between Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch West India Company in 1654. Stuyvesant was the Director-General of the New Netherland colony in America, which included New Amsterdam (later New York.) In 1654, Stuyvesant — a famously intolerant and bigoted man — wanted to expel Jewish refugees from New Amsterdam, but the board of the Dutch West India Company (his bosses) nixed the idea. Some of the board members were Jewish, for one, but the Dutch had also learned an important lesson: religious tolerance was not only fair and just but it was also eminently pragmatic. "Tolerance was more than an ideal. It was good business," wrote Pete Hamill, about the incident in his book Downtown. The board basically told Stuyvesant: You're just gonna have to figure out a way to get along with these people. Whatever prejudices, hatreds, jealousies you may have, well, that's too bad. This is business; figure it out.

It's still astonishing to me that this was three and a half centuries ago. But that's the remarkable history of New York, where they have indeed been trying to figure this stuff out, ever since Minuit bought Manhattan from the Lenapes. It's one of the great inherited qualities we got from the Dutch, this spirit of tolerance, and its influence eventually found its way into the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing the freedom of religion.

One would think, then, that if our country displayed such a remarkably enlightened attitude toward tolerance in 1654, surely by 2018 we would have attained a level of acceptance and cultural understanding unmatched by any other society in world history, right? Well, one would think. Congressman Steve King, of Iowa (a Republican, shockingly enough) has a decidedly different viewpoint. Last December he tweeted out, "Diversity is not our strength." He then quoted (admiringly) Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban: "Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one."

King's comments were soundly criticized by many, including other representatives, but well, he's still a Congressman, isn't he? He still has his supporters. I imagine that if he had made his comments in 1654, he would have been roundly censured by the Dutch West India Company. But not in 2017, and not by the U.S. Congress, which made zero moves to rebuke him. And it's pretty clear, as 2017 has dredged into 2018, that there's a lot of people who share King's opinion.

But boy, I don't know, maybe it's because I happen to be a fan of, oh, every major American art form of the past 300 years that I see the value of mixing cultures. I love the story of Master Juba, the African American dancer that Charles Dickens called "the greatest dancer known" when he saw him perform in New York in 1842. Juba combined traditional African dance with steps he learned from the Irish, the people he saw everyday. Here's how Pete Hamill described what came from the mixing of the two cultures:
"In 1844, Master Juba was matched with a young Irish dancer named John Diamond, who was himself a rising master of the percussive Irish dancing of jigs and reels (as seem a few years ago in the show Riverdance.) They drew huge racially mixed crowds to the Chatham and Bowery Theatres, and as they merged Irish and African rhythms, blending them, topping them, adding steps, 'cutting' each other the way jazz musicians would do at jam sessions a century later, they invented what came to be known as tap dancing."
"Other dancers, theatrical impresarios, and the audiences took notice. This was something new. It wasn't Irish. It wasn't African. This new form of dance could only have been forged in America, and specifically in New York. Form those friendly contests and extraordinary performances came, years later, Bojangles Robinson and Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Gregory Hines, John Bubbles and the Nicholas Brothers, Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Jerome Robbins, and thousands of other dancers and choreographers who might never have heard of Master Juba and John Diamond."

If it seems I'm relying heavily on the words of Pete Hamill and his book Downtown well, there's a reason for that. The book is a joyous, nostalgic celebration of Hamill's hometown, and it's like a balm to me in hard times, for it has such boundless optimism about what his country has been and what it could be. It's clear that Hamill loves New York and loves America, and his stories serve to remind everyone that this great experiment of a country was forged by the very forces that King derides. (I'm sure if King would read the account of Master Juba, he'd feel a tiny bit of remorse: "Gee, no Fred Astaire? No Gene Kelly?" And about the others, he'd probably think, Who Cares?)

I visited New York City in 2014, staying in Astoria, Queens, and it was extraordinary; the city is incredibly diverse. Walking the streets is a heady experience, you hear so many different languages that it feel like Babel. We stayed near the are referred to as "Little Morocco," because of the massive numbers of Africans and Muslims, and of course the shops and restaurants were fantastic and exhilarating to behold. And though I know that to Midwesterners, Queens is the big, bad, evil city full of immigrants, its crime rate is lower than Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, and its been rated as a more comfortable city to live in that Sioux City, Iowa, which is represented by Mr. King. And the property crime rates are significantly lower, too.

What gives me hope about our country, oddly enough, is those very restaurants I visited in Astoria. The clientele was everybody, not just ex-pats: whites, black, Asians, Jews, Hispanics. It seems everybody is a little more adventurous about food now. Maybe it's simply that whatever the differences, good food is good food, and people know that instinctively. Recently I visited Southwest Florida and was shocked to see my Trump-supporting uncle joking with the Thai owner of the restaurant that he loves. Maybe that's where it starts, simple as that: an appreciation for the food can lead to a greater understanding of the culture. I don't know, maybe I should quit underestimating Americans. It's in our blood, after all: the spirit of tolerance.