A Summary Of Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner

The first Thanksgiving was believed to be a feast after the first harvest; The Native American Wapanog tribe taught the first settlers to cultivate vital crops and sustain off the land1. Thanksgiving is an American holiday that values this union and cooperation between immigrant groups; the term “Native Americans” designates the very first immigrants2. The influx of immigrants gave birth, shaped, and developed American society. But immigrant groups, in modern context, have been politically and socially exploited. This may not have been as extreme as colonization, slavery, or exclusion, but a more discreet and covertly nativist ideology exists up to today: the fear of the rising immigrant population demoting White-Americans to a minority3.The view that immigrants were detrimental to society was expressed in the publication of many historical political cartoons. Thomas Nast and G.F. Keller both express their views that condemn and support this xenophobic culture, respectively; Nast utilized labeling while Keller, irony. The use of the analogy of Thanksgiving, in addition to other techniques, expresses the differing views on immigrants, and whether or

Keller uses racial stereotyping in “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” to implicitly show the disastrous effects of their inability to assimilate to American society. The only African-American depicted is a servant.12 The oriental is eating a rat, the Netherlands immigrant eating frogs, the Polish man eating sausages.13 At the head of the table is a white man, awaiting for the “proper” meal of thanksgiving.14 Eating foods from their country of origin indicates the refusal of immigrants to assimilate. Ultimately they would not be able to accept American ideals15, like democracy: undermining the foundation of American society as agents of anarchy16. The crowd outside further advocated for stringent limits on immigration; The acceptance of a few immigrants would trigger the influx of more migrants, causing more