During this time of conflict over immigration, being of immigrant stock and being an octogenarian has a benefit. It offers 20/20 hindsight.

I have witnessed the generational waves from my Czech grandparents, parents, my “Czech-Irish” marriage, the birth of two daughters and grandkids. A beautiful evolutionary set of cycles.

There is another set that I’ve lived and also taught as a high school teacher. It’s referred to as the cycle of dominant American cultural themes. This four-part set of waves came into focus during the early 1900s when the idea was to make good WASPs (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) out of all immigrants. Their cultural characteristics were to be considered embarrassments.

Our “melting pot” idea sort of worked to the 1940s, but by then there were too many coming off the boat, and America had to shift gears. The newest wave just didn’t fit the melting pot image, particularly the Irish and Italians, so America shifted to a new image – “the salad bowl” – reflecting the impact of diversity.

There was a new theme, a third wave, that ran from the 1950s to the ’90s called cultural pluralism, the idea being that we were Americans with our differences, not in spite of them. We needed to learn to co-exist with our competing gender, ethnic and racial differences.

President Gerald Ford developed the concept beautifully during a Thanksgiving Day speech in 1975: “Our nation draws its strength from people of every creed, of every color, of every race – Native Americans and people from every nation in the world who for two centuries have come to share in the rewards and responsibilities or our American republic. Let us join in giving thanks for our cultural pluralism. Let us celebrate our diversity and the great strengths that have come from sharing our traditions, our ideas, our resources, our hopes and our dreams. Let us be grateful that for 200 years our people have been dedicated to fulfilling the democratic ideal – dedicated to securing ‘liberty and justice for all.’ ”

The most recent theme, one that we have been making progress through since the 1990s, has been labeled multiculturalism or, lately, multi-perspective. We’ve witnessed this in all forms of media when we hear the elements of diversity in their own voices – a much more personal communication.

It’s not easy. The immigration situation today is not easy, but we Americans have a way of evolving in the best interests of human values.

(Charlie Stepanek of Concord.)