DEMETRIOS IS NOW JIMMY

The NATIONAL HERALD, May 26, 2007, book review section "BOOKS"  [The National Herald is a weekly publication with its head offices in New York, NY and Athens, Greece]

    In this issue we review four non-fiction books dealing with the immigrant experience.  They include Growing Up Greek In St. Louis by Aphrodite Matsakis;  My Detroit: Growing Up Greek and American in the Motor City by Dan Georgakas;  "Demetrios Is Now Jimmy:" Greek Immigrants in the Southern United States, 1895-1965 by Larry Odzak; and Remembering Newark's Greeks: An American Odyssey by Angelique Lambros.  Through these books, you can vicariously [participate in] the immigrant experience. 

    Several themes emerged from these books....immigrants faced virulent prejudice when they came here at the beginning of the 20th century. They worked at backbreaking menial jobs to put bread on the table and help their families back in Greece.  (We didn't become one of the best-educated and wealthiest immigrant groups overnight.)  The immigrants struggled to transmit their Greek heritage to the younger generation, a generation that sometimes fought against the old-world ways and rebelled against going to Greek school.  Most of the immigrants (not all) realized the dream of finding a better way of life for their families in America and became respected members of the community.

    I invite you to read these books...

     "Demetrios Is Now Jimmy" follows academic conventions. The author sorts through a considerable corpus of scholarly works on immigration and ethnicity, whose citations are dispersed throughout the book.  A readable account, the book provides useful archival information and oral testimonies on regional history.  Comparative in scope, it dedicates whole chapters to immigrant adaptations in cities such as New Orleans, Birmingham, and Tarpon Springs. Furthermore, a chapter exploring the "Formation and Development of Greek immigrant Communities in the American South" includes discussions and comparisons of the cases of Atlanta, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Raleigh, and Mobile.

     The book discusses the transformation of the Southern Greeks from immigrants to ethnic Americans through "selective adaptation."  The argument here is that immigrant adaptations must be seen as a process of acculturation, not wholesale assimilation.  A key to the selective retention and inter-generational transmission of ethnicity was the early establishment of ethnic and religious institutions.  To this end the author discusses the changes that defined two prominent institutions, American Hellenic Educational and Progressive Association (AHEPA) and the Greek Orthodox Church, up to the mid-1960s.  A chapter entitled "Fraternal Bonding and Conservatism: Jimmy Joined AHEPA" situates the establishment of AHEPA and its subsequent development within the region's racial politics.  Another chapter, entitled "From Byzantine Rites to Civil Rights," discusses the transformation of the Greek Orthodox Church in the South from immigrant to ethnic.

     ..... A particular research question animates the author's project.  The primary goal is to test the hypothesis known as the "Southern variant" of the Greek immigrant experience.  First proposed by sociologist Charles Moskos, the hypothesis states, "Greeks in the South achieved residential and economic upward mobility faster and in greater proportion than Greeks elsewhere in the United States."  Odzak builds on empirical evidence to prove that this hypothesis is true in regards to self-employed immigrants but not the working class.  He compares the "ratio of Greek-owned businesses ....to the total Greek population" in Northern cities to corresponding data in Southern cities, concluding that the percentage of self-employed immigrants was higher in the South.  He also cites the early "Greek family formation in the South," and the Southerners higher rate of immigrant intermarriage with whites as further evidence of mobility.  The author believes that the "Southern variant" was caused by a combination of factors.  They include the importance of "timi" (honor), which prodded them to succeed in the workplace, the relentless presure to asimilate, the acceptance of those who assimilated as "white," and the smaller numbers of the Greeks in the south, which discouraged the formation of immigrant enclaves.

     ..... One of the author's contributions rests in showing how erroneous it is to explain ethnic success on the basis of cultural values alone.  The discussion makes it clear that one must account how other variables in the host society - institutional and everyday racism for example - may propel some groups to the path of upward mobility, while barring this opportunity to others...... The fresh perspective is that in racially segregated regions  it was the immigrants who were seen as the solution to a growing demand for service businesses, not local racial minorities.

     ..... The author sets himself the ambitious goal of covering 70 years of Greek immigrant adaptation in the South.  But his discussion of the second and third generation is way too general and often sketchy.  The aim to identify historical patterns and to paint history with broad strokes occludes particular events, everyday situations and minute incidents that do not fit the general pattern. ..... A number of questions could guide future research.  Did sectors within the immigrant community in the South (women, the working class, or wage laborers who eventually became small business owners, for example) hold alternative visions of success?  Did they resist racism and its cultural counterpart, 100% Americanism, embracing alternate visions of a socially and economically just American society?