One of our little discussion tangents on Friday was when St. Olaf saw its first "diverse" (I put this in quotation marks because this is such a convoluted use of the word.) students. However, I think the precedent question is not when St. Olaf saw its first extra-Caucasian student, but when St. Olaf saw its first "normal" student, i.e. a Yankee. Obviously Olaf was an ideal school for Norwegians, and other extra-Anglo Europeans easily could have found more in common with the Oles than the Carls across the river, but it must have really been a turning point for the college when a Yankee first moved in. Because that signifies that it has achieved objective value as an American learning institution institution and become more than just a school for immigrants.
I might get to explore this issue further as my own Ole (and perhaps this Ole too!) wrestles with the concepts of Anglo, American, and (non-Anglo) immigrant.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating angle on the question of how "American" the school becomes and when. From the outset the goal was to provide an American program, but you are quite right to wonder about the appeal of an American program provided by immigrants. No doubt the desire to be recognized as up to American standards drove many of the improvements in the program as well as such things as the organization of the cookbook I mention in my article.
You are also correct that discussion of "diversity" in relation to the 1920s, for example, is odd: 1) because that was not a goal and 2) because what would have been regarded as diversity seems odd to us. I wonder, however, if we do recognize significant differences between more recent immigrant groups such as those from several Spanish speaking nations or from various East Asian nations? Would we regard Korean-Americans as essentially the same as Japanese-Ameircans? Would they do so?
LDL