Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Thursday said that the U.S. has a “responsibility” to insist that those who immigrate to America “assimilate” and “integrate.”
“There is nothing wrong with saying, ‘If you want to come to America, you should want to be an American,'” he said in a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington, D.C. “There is nothing wrong with saying that English is our language, and we’re going to teach American exceptionalism to our children in civics.”
“I’m tired of hyphenated Americans,” he continued. “We’re not Indian-Americans or African-Americans or Asian-Americans. We’re all Americans.”
Jindal, an Indian American, also noted earlier in his speech how important it is that children learn about American exceptionalism in history class, hinting at the controversy over the “negative” AP U.S. History exam.
“What would happen if the federal government were defining making standards for how we teach American history to our kids?” Jindal asked while bashing Common Core standards, which currently only cover English and math curriculum. “Under this administration, American history would be all about victimization. It wouldn’t be about American exceptionalism, the way that you and I learned about why this is the greatest country in the history of the world.”
