Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
-Emma Lazarus (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 212)
I recall hearing this last stanza of Lazarus’ famous poem repeated (and probably mildly butchered) in an elementary school pageant sometime in the vicinity of 4th or 5th grade, but I was actually shocked by its contents when I encountered it again this week after all these years. I was confounded when I considered its words and its sentiments for the first time as an adult, for you do not hear the words of this poem often outside grammar school. Upon reading the poem for my Church History class at Union, in the context of ethnicity and religion placed around it by historians Gaustad and Schmidt, its epic sense of sentimental hope and noble destiny prompted me to ask some expanded questions about religion, politics and freedom at the time this notion was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal (around the mid 1830s). Interestingly, they turned out to be the very same questions I often find myself asking about our country’s modern mantras. I probe these words ascribed to “Miss Liberty” in light of both Lazarus’ intentions in speaking for America then, and the intentions of the powerful relgio-political voices who speak for America now.
Who is she talking to?
In its entirety, Lazarus’ poem reads:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Lazarus makes it clear that she is speaking on behalf of a collective America embodied and personified by Liberty, but she is addressing someone outside the borders of the United States with an imperative to “give me your...” In her context of a lineage of Jewish immigrants who found refuge in America after the violence of European expulsion and diaspora (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 212), Lazarus seems to be exulting Europe in particular, and the tumultuous “ancient lands” across the world in general, to send all those they would think to abuse instead into the arms of the “Mother of Exiles.” But it strikes me as odd, and rather foreboding, that we would choose to greet the exhausted immigrants who were finally and excitedly entering the harbor of the free new world by calling them “wretched refuse.” Who exactly is she speaking to in this manner? Was she the first generation of a long line of immigrants who promptly forgot that they themselves were in fact immigrants too, and hence felt entitled to make assumptions about those who came later? Regardless of her intention, which I cannot know, this problem is obviously rampant today as Americans fight to close our borders indefinitely and create even more difficult immigration standards and procedures.
Today, America still asks other lands to “give me your...”. We fill in the blank with trade, natural resources, and acceptance and assimilation of our ideals. We also still ask to be given the poor, the tired, the huddled masses and the wretched refuse, but not so that they might actually set foot across the threshold of our “golden door.” Rather, we do so that we might outsource the jobs we do not want to pay a minimum wage for in the United States, such as product assembly, sewing and telemarketing, but we ask that they remain huddled on their own teeming shores. Instead of the “Mother of Exiles” ready to take in and purportedly nurture and empower the disenfranchised and downtrodden, we are the “Monster of Exports” ready to exploit desperate people as cheap labor, treating other humans like automatons made solely for mindlessly producing things. They are, after all, “wretched refuse,” or at least that’s how the story was told and that story was literally placed on a pedestal. It clearly still lives in our collective memory and breathes in our nation’s current policies and our ongoing immigration rhetoric and debate. If we get away with calling immigrants such names on our national monument to freedom and to our history of immigration, why not employ this naming of the ‘other’ via strategic degradation of humans to justify our unrelenting global capitalist expansion? We can now “embrace” those poor and tired without having to accommodate them at all. However, in juxtaposition to our “give me your...” mentality, it is notable that we no longer ask these “ancient lands” to keep their “storied pomp”... we now typically ask them to suppress theirs and adopt ours instead, whether in the form of religion, government, language or fashion.
In the mid-1800s, much of the “body of Christ” was divided by ethnic factions within. As the immigrants arrived, they came with the (rightful) expectation that no one and nothing would get in the way of their desired religious practices, and they were determined to practice ethnically pure traditions and doctrines within their unique versions of Christianity. It was the case that “while religion often reinforced ethnic cohesiveness, ethnicity sometimes challenged the unifying dimensions of religion. Ethic loyalty created social community at the same time that it threatened or shattered theological and ecclesiastical community.” (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 209) Specifically among Catholics, the various ethnic sects (i.e., German vs. Irish) vehemently opposed the traditions and beliefs of other ethnicities rubbing against or dictating their own traditions, festivals and beliefs. Today this ethic division still exists, but flares up more around national political policies than around sect conflicts of tradition. For instance, there is a contingent of right-wing conservative Christianity that can look past denominational divides and tradition discrepancies, to unite in their oppressive stance toward immigration. This wavering and blurring of a universal Christianity that loves it neighbor as itself, is just as alive today as it was when “true catholicity was one thing, but too much Irishness quite another.” (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 211) It seems that not just in the 1800s, but even more strongly today, our religious loyalties and the doctrines we will support or deny all depend upon who we are talking to.
What is she promising?
Interestingly, Lazarus never reveals in her poem any specific information about what is on the other side of this “golden door.” She says that Liberty will lift her lamp beside it, but there is no promise that her light will reach beyond. She does, however, allude to implicit preference for the tired, poor and homeless. From this angle, these words actually sound like something Jesus might say. For a moment, it sounds as if our spokesperson the Statue of Liberty is sharing Jesus’ preferential option for the poor, as some like to call it.
While Jesus never talks about religion as a concept per se (he usually referred to the scriptures or prophets), and most certainly did not have the word “Christianity” in his vocabulary, he promises healing for those who need it most. Unfortunately today, we seem to have reversed Jesus’ priorities. Some modern Americans who are obsessed with identifying themselves as religiously devout Christians, completely reject the teachings of Jesus that promote social justice, even for the foreigner and sojourner, over and over again. We see it today in the refusal to help the poor afford health care, and also in our deportation policies. Jesus was a beacon of hope to help the lost and forgotten of all types find their way through the darkness. I think it was for this reason that Jesus called himself the “light of the world.” It is simultaneously fascinating and disturbing that Wikipedia tells us that the original, official name of the Statue of Liberty sculpture was “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
What is the premise?
There was a promise implied in the words of Lazarus’ poem to the tired, poor and homeless, but on what premise? Oh, the irony that was unleashed when I looked up the poem and realized it is named “The New Colossus.” Lazarus was attempting to describe how this new land was UNlike “the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land.” But in her presumably innocent and hopeful naming of the Statue of Liberty as the “new” version of the old understanding of humanity embodied in the Greek god Helios (who busied himself with circling the earth in his sun-chariot), rather than bestowing upon this land an untarnished persona of its own, she was speaking more truth to our destiny than she could have imagined back in 1883. Our Statue of Liberty was conceived in an attempt to “replace” the memory of an imposing Greek statue of a conquerer who fastened his feet to all the land within his reach. The statue was erected roughly sometime around 280 BC and portrayed the wealth, power and status of the Greek island of Rhodes, and was erected in its harbor to honor their dominion over sea and land. (7wonders.info) This statue fell in an earthquake a mere 56 years after its construction. Our statue, imagined as the antidote to the reign of empire honored by Colossus, has not fallen for well over a century, but our nation, in a sense, has fallen into an imperial mood.
This nationalistic dominion even reached over into our desire. As department stores proliferated in the 1850s and beyond, the industrial economy churned out more products, and the advertising industry was created in order to convince new Americans that they needed and wanted them. By the early 20th century, “an urban consumer culture had arisen in which advertising, show windows, and colorful displays multiplied and in which satisfying desire through shopping and buying became a primary pursuit.” (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 236) This changed the notion of the “pursuit of happiness” for all time, and also challenged universal religious messages. One merchant noted in 1912 that this challenge “speaks to us only of ourselves, our pleasures, our life. It does not say, ‘Pray, obey, sacrifice they self, respect the King, fear thy master.’ It whispers, ‘amuse thyself, take care of yourself.’” (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 236-237) Hence, consumerism began to make itself known as the universal American religion, and everyone was certainly encouraged to practice it freely. This is just one example of how the premise of the promise was a mirage of American freedom... we believe we are free, but are really quite easily dominated by the devices which benefit some, leave others destitute, and equally capture and imprison our imaginations and energies.
A Very Tricky Entrance
The Liberty State Park website (libertystatepark.com) reminds visitors that the “Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island unfold[ed] one of this nation's most dramatic stories: the immigration of northern, southern, and eastern Europeans into the United States. After being greeted by the Statue of Liberty and processed at Ellis Island, these immigrants purchased tickets and boarded trains...that took them to their new homes throughout the United States. The Terminal served these immigrants as the gateway to the realization of their hopes and dreams of a new life in America.” The language used to re-create the American immigrant story makes it sound as if every immigrant upon arrival was ushered in style and comfort off to their pre-existing, awaiting “new homes” in beautifully manicured subdivisions. The myth is propagated today as if there was never a need for a social gospel to arise, to help these immigrants manage the “ills and pains of social dislocation and change,” and to save them from the horrendous industrial labor conditions, the rampant poverty and the resulting health, housing and education crisis conditions. (Gaustad and Schmidt 2002, 232) The website goes on to say, “As the railroads and industry declined, the land was abandoned and became a desolate dump site. With the development of Liberty State Park came a renaissance of the waterfront. Land with decaying buildings, overgrown tracks and piles of debris was transformed into a modern urban state park. The park was formerly opened on Flag Day, June 14, 1976, as New Jersey's bicentennial gift to the nation.” The fact that we allowed the ruin of the land where immigrants entered our country speaks to how much we ultimately cared about it. It could be easily assumed that the only cause for remembering it and renovating it was to make money off of it as a tourist attraction. Whatever the intentions behind the abandonment, ruin and later renovating, from the perspective of entering immigrants, things were not what they seemed.
This illustrates the same irony I find in the Statue of Liberty herself: the fact that the formal greeter of immigrants into the New York Harbor, and the representative face of liberty established in the early 1800s, was a “mighty woman with a torch.” However, at that time women were still far from being able to vote and scarcely were recognized as having any worth in this “land of liberty.” In other words, the threshold can be dressed up, even romanticized with the shining face of a beautiful woman in a noble stance, but somewhere on that icon is hidden a message that harolds you upon your arrival as garbage, and continues to treat many as such throughout their stay. The United States and its brand of freedom, religious and otherwise, was and still is a pretty great idea, but the pull of human nature with its bent toward self-service, ethnic preservation and self-righteous religion seems to see to it that we are hardly able to fully develop, much less sustain, this great idea. In 2010 it appears that the electric spirit originally intended to thrive in the liberty offered by America remains “imprisoned lightening” in the torch of a mighty woman who still keeps “silent lips” to this day.
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