The American Future: 4/4 - What is an American?

The American Future: A History, by Simon Schama
Highlight

Friday 31 October
9:00pm - 10:00pm
BBC2

4/4 - What is an American?

Schama's essays in US history are as frustrating as they are brilliant. Tonight he holds forth on the history of American immigration, a troubled subject that he brings alive as only he knows how. Yet the ponderous pace sometimes makes you want to yell, "Get a move on!" With a bit more oomph in the storytelling, this could, you feel, reach a far larger audience. And it deserves to, because his account of race-hatred episodes from the 19th century is eye-opening, reminding us of the horrors endured by Hispanics and Chinese immigrants on their way to becoming accepted as Americans. "Time and again, America's whites have feared the change that immigrants bring," observes Schama, "even though it's immigrant sweat that has made America." And nothing could illustrate that better than his vivid account of the Chinese labourers who built America's railways and their shameful, stomach-turning treatment.



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