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suburbia so “strange” is not immediately apparent, but it has something to do with the idea that immigrants had to consciously “become white” in order to move into the mainstream of society, and in doing so they bought into ideas of white supremacy, turned their backs on African-Americans, and failed to place themselves in the vanguard of the proletariat for a revolution against capitalism. Apart from the title, Ellis Island barely makes an appearance in the book, but serves as a

convenient symbol for Roediger’s ideological tract.

For historian Matthew Frye Jacobson, the memorialization of Ellis

Island is tied to the troublesome idea of America as a “nation of immigrants.” This idea is problematic because it excludes from our national mythology those black Americans and American Indians not

descended from immigrants. Just as bad for Jacobson, “the immigrant

myth and immigrants’ real-life descendants contributed to the swing

vote that rendered the Republicans the majority party in the electoral

realignment beginning in 1968,” an outcome that he abhors. Jacobson

implies that the arrival of European immigrants was a bad deal for civil

rights. Channeling Malcolm X, he writes: “We didn’t land on Ellis

Island, my brothers and sisters—Ellis Island landed on us.” Another group was also feeling left out of the whole “nation of

immigrants” celebration. To describe the United States in that way,

says political scientist Samuel Huntington, “is to stretch a partial truth

into a misleading falsehood.” Huntington is speaking for white AngloSaxon Protestants, whose ancestors, he argues, were settlers, not immigrants. On a similar note, the author of a history of Plymouth Rock

argues that, as they visit the Ellis Island museum, “the descendants of

Pilgrims do not have to be told that this is a society to which they need

not apply.”

These criticisms suggest another question about the rehabilitation

of Ellis Island. As the federal government originally created the inspection station to exclude undesirable immigrants, is the National Park

Service now practicing another kind of exclusion in its celebration of

the immigrants who came through there?

In the years since, the National Park Service and the Statue of

Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation have made great efforts to be historically inclusive. “It doesn’t matter whether your family arrived on the

Mayflower or recently got off the airplane from Honduras,” explained

Gary G. Roth, the National Park Service’s project manager for the immigration museum. “Ellis Island is a symbol of four hundred years of

immigration. The story of it all is told here, including that of Native Americans and of forced immigrations, the slaves who were brought

here against their will.”

In 2006, the foundation began fundraising for a project entitled

“The Peopling of America Center.” The new museum will show “the

entire panorama of the American experience,” and look beyond the

traditional tale of immigration, which excludes those brought over in

slave ships and native peoples residing on the continent prior to European colonization. As if to emphasize the inclusive nature of the project, as opposed to the allegedly narrow and exclusionary nature of the

current museum, which focuses almost exclusively on Ellis Island immigrants, the center’s motto is: “It’s About All of Us!”

E LLIS ISLAND’S ICONIC STATUS is ever-present. When the online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade launched a new advertising campaign, it chose as its theme the celebration of America’s independent spirit. To embody that spirit, it picked Ellis Island immigrants. “When immigrants came to Ellis Island they carried a dream,” intoned the company’s spokesman, Sam Waterston: “Work hard and opportunity will follow.” The company’s newspaper ad featured Waterston standing next to a large photo of an immigrant family standing on Ellis Island and looking at the Statue of Liberty, as well as a copy of the famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In big letters, the