Roots vs. Mobility and the fight for the American Unconscious

Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection? The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there. But every one of us, except the Negroes forced here as slaves, are descended from the restless ones, the wayward ones who were not content to stay at home. Wouldn’t it be unusual if we had not inherited this tendency? And the fact is that we have. But that’s the short view. What are roots and how long have we had them? […] Only when agriculture came into practice - and that’s not very long ago in terms of the whole history - did a place achieve meaning and value and permanence. But land is tangible, and tangibles have a way of getting into few hands. Thus it was that one man wanted ownership of land and at the same time wanted servitude because someone had to work it. Roots were in ownership of land, in tangible and immovable possessions. In this view we are a restless species with a very short history of roots, and those not widely distributed. Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need. Maybe the greater the urge, the deeper and more ancient is the need, the will, to be somewhere else. 

Please excuse the long-winded quote. It’s from John Steinbeck’s non-fiction about America, Travels With Charley, first published in 1962, and possibly one of the most eloquently articulated passages about roots and mobility in American culture - as it was at the time. 

Mobility has been a dominant cultural paradigm in American culture for a very long time. It still dominates, to a certain extent. But the pendulum swings the other way, too. The story of mobility, movement and restlessness is instrumental in and perpetuated by some sort of existing power system. Essentially, mobility is a myth. I like myths, they’re fun to pick apart. Steinbeck’s brief but succinct evaluation of mobility and rootedness takes mobility as self-evident. “But OF COURSE we’re a mobile people! And here’s why…” The historical evidence may go a ways to explain why we’re mobile, and why the story of mobility resonates so powerfully with Americans, but why do we keep telling this story, over and over again?

Yeah, it sells cars; and “progress,” the close sibling of “mobility,” promotes status anxiety … but let’s be more intelligent than that. 

Americans are obsessed with mobility, but more and more, they’re (we’re) also obsessed with rootedness, origins, heritage and permanence. Genealogy and family tree services have boomed in the last couple decades. The question “Who do you think you are?” now refers to a question of the past rather than one of potential. For the Great Meritocracy that is the United States, this is quite a development. 

The questions this change throws up are quite significant. Dominant myths usually play some sort of important role, having some purpose in our minds beyond being a nice story to tell. So, if mobility was a dominant myth, what role was it playing? What, in effect, was it covering up, or disavowal was it facilitating? And if mobility was a story that allowed us to ignore some other unconscious component of our national composition, what does a change like this imply? 

First off, I’d argue mobility, or a lack of roots or rootedness, helps Americans unconsciously both create and control a lack of race. There are many, many races populating American soil. But many multiples does not equate a negative singular. Ask anyone what the American “race” is, and you’ll just find blank faces, or perhaps some PC regurgitated muttering about “melting pots” and “multiculturalism”. I’d argue the culturally dominant “race” in America is still caucasian. Or let’s just call it “white”, for now. “White” is a total misnomer, and of course, there are a lot of other contributing influences over the American contemporary gene pool than North-Western, Anglo-Saxon Europe. But most of the “America” portrayed within and outside of the nation’s borders, happens to be played out by “white” people. 

So, simultaneously, we play out our culture as “white” people, but continue to say, “we have no origins, we have no roots, we have no race… we are, in all this hubris, claiming “we’re above race.” “Look at us with our token Black guy in the White House!” Is America a so-called “post-race” nation? Americans are more obsessed with race than virtually any other nation of people. This isn’t to say Americans are racist, but race, in all its dimensions, is almost constantly on the American mind. 

—- With every paragraph, I’m infuriatingly aware I can’t do this topic justice in a single blog post… but I’ll press on. —-

In a quick leap of the unconscious mind, “mobility” connotes “lack of roots.” And if roots imply a sort of racial heritage and origin, mobility essentially facilitates the myth of the post-race nation. We come from no-where and everywhere at the same time. 

But what of rootedness? We suddenly find ourselves wanting to come from somewhere! Mobility has slowed to a near stand-still… both social mobility and physical mobility. Americans have stopped going places (both meanings). Forget travel; this isn’t about travel, this is about where we call “home.” And it seems American culture has cast its collective gaze backward, inward, indeed to its roots. This seems severely at odds with the myth of mobility. Americans have been predominantly united not by where they came from, but the idea of where they’re going. We might have all come from somewhere different, but the journey has brought us together. 

So what happens when “journeys” just stop making sense? We’re just not going any where as a nation, or as a culture. Yes, individuals may still go places, but as a whole we’re collectively slowing to a halt. We’re more grounded, more obsessed than ever with land and property and permanence. We’re more rooted. Social mobility is almost non-existant in reality (though - as a myth - is still pumped out through our media and popular culture). Perhaps we’ve land-grabbed all we could, now we’re just obsessed with hanging onto it. 

What happens now is we start looking for other ways to connect with each other.No longer united by the journey, roots start making a lot more sense. Race, heritage, genealogy, family trees start getting emotionally profitable. 

But as a nation of people relatively ill-equipped to talk about race (for centuries dominated by either overt or latent racism, an un-intended consequence of our surrounding cultures), this throws up all sorts of interesting new artefacts about cultural identity. We’ve been disavowing race (and racism) for generations… it’s not going to be an easy transition. Our roots have always been there, but we’ve tried our best to ignore them. Now, we’re doing our best to ignore the fact mobility just isn’t what it used to be. 

We’ve been going through a period of transition for a couple decades now, we’re much less finding our collective identities through wild-west cowboys and road trips (what remain are of the world of parody and absurd comedy); and far more looking for America in our heritage. As we become less-connected to some imagined genetic “purity” the more important that imagined lineage becomes in our collective unconscious. 

I fear some Americans will (and do) take this cultural shift as an excuse for latent racism to become overt. 

Humans, as social animals, will always look for connection, even if connection comes at the expense of division - because we’re also tribal. 

At the risk of this becoming a book… and because I can’t do this topic justice, I’m going to stop. 

Image via i.klee