I’ve heard people say that America is still a young country, and is still developing it’s own identity, politics and culture. What do you think of this statement?

26 comments

  1. We do seem to re-invent ourselves every decade or so. We are young compared to the rest of the world

  3. It’s idiotic. The United Sates is one of the oldest republics in the world. Older than Russia in its current state. Older than France in its current state. Older than Germany in its current state. Older than Italy in its current state. Etc., etc., etc.

  4. We have a very distinct identity and culture.

    And even if we didn’t, we put our flag on the moon. Case closed.

  5. Its not that we are still developing our own identity, its that we aren’t so tied to an old identity.

    We evolve. We grow.

  6. From a government perspective, no, one of the oldest.

    From a culture perspective, true, because even if Germany has had a new government in my lifetime, Germans have culture and historical influence from at least roman times if not further back

  7. The US is really not a young country. We’ve been around with the same government for almost 250 years now. Very, very few nations have that long of a history. Look at Europe. Two hundred years ago, Germany and Italy didn’t exist. 80 years ago, they were Nazi and Nazi allied states For centuries, Austria was ruler of a continent spanning empire, but it’s been a small country with little international clout for the last hundred years. People in those places can trace their roots without leaving their geographic area, but as an American whose ancestors came from Europe, my culture is every bit as old as theirs. People don’t become blank slates when they immigrate. They carry their culture with them. America has simply changed in different ways than the cultures our ancestors came from.

    There is no country in the world that is not always changing and constantly developing and redefining its identity. The US looks slightly different as it does so because of our history of immigration and of our culture welcoming influences from other nations. But we’re drawing on the same method of culture and knowledge passing down through the generations as the rest of the world.

  8. That’s highly outdated sentiment. It was far older than the European empires circa WWI. With those empires now broken up and decolonization having taken place everywhere else, America’s pretty old as far as governments go.

    USA is older than Italy, politically speaking. You can say Italy has 2000+ years worth of continuity of civilization, sure, but at the time America was still ‘young’ Italy was in like 30 pieces.

  9. Our *government* is not young.

    Our country didn’t exist 250 years ago, which can’t be said for most of the examples on here. We skyrocketed from a few million people to 330 million people in the span of less than three centuries.

  10. It’s true that America is a young country, and it’s true that it’s still developing its identity/culture (culture develops all the time as well as identity), but it shouldn’t be used as a way to argue that “America has no culture.”

    I just recently made a post addressing this argument

  11. Our current government structure is about 250 years old. Our culture and identity has been developed over 400 years from cultures that people brought with them or already have here. Neither our cultures nor most other cultures are the exact same over centuries. They evolve over time.

  13. It’s usually made by someone already steeped in US culture. I think it’s a “fish have no word for water” kind of thing. US culture is ubiquitous and people kind of forget it’s there.

  14. America has more culture than any other country i can think of. Its not an old culture, but name any country with more box office hits or songs in the top 20 right now.

    And to all the people in the comments, America has one of the oldest governments, but the country itself is one of the newest

  15. In my experience, these comments mostly come from Europeans trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The colonial immigrant nations (USA, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, etc) are fundamentally different from the European Ethno-Nationalistic States. The US will never have a concept similar to what it means to be ‘French’ or ‘German’ because our national identity is not tied to our ethnic identity.

  17. On the scale of Human civilization? Absolutely. We don’t have the storied history of most old world nations and peoples, but we absolutely do have a culture and story of our own. We’ve packed a lot into such a little time, I feel.

  18. I find these arguments confusing.

    I mean, say, someone is from an “old culture”, but doesn’t attend the milllenia-old churches, go to the centuries old theater or opera, doesn’t engage with the decades old literary culture etc. He rides in a modern vehicle on the way to his modern (probably office, manufacturing or retail) job, watches a movie or TV show made in the last decade (at oldest), and does it again the next day. I don’t think, at that point, the “old culture” thing affects him on the individual level.

    There’s a weird fallacy where, because people live next to a bunch of old buildings, they believe that they, themselves are an “older culture”. Some countries pull this weird rhetorical shell-game where “They’re” 3000 years old, but any criticism is deflected by “Them” also being such a young country.

    And I suppose, I could argue that the the PRC (est. 1949) or Fifth French Republic (est. 1959) are younger than some of my living relatives, and thus still have a metaphorical soft-spot on their heads compared to the US (est 1776). But it seems disingenuous to do both at the same time.

  19. I think that’s an incredibly naive eurocentric view that not only assumes that different political entities over time in the same place can be assumed to be a single country and also that culture and history in America didn’t start until Europeans arrived.

  20. It’s still shifting and changing, sure. The only other option is stagnation.

    Tell me Europe or Asia were the same a century ago. Try to tell me Africa was the same with a straight face. Politically, socially, economically, religiously. Shit changes, whether the name and political boundaries are old or new.

  21. We are a young country. We’re not even 300 years old, and are only about 4-5 generations removed from slavery.

    We have our identity and politics, but we’re not near as “seasoned” as many older nations are. I feel it’s a big reason why we’re in the midst of such an anti-intellectual movement right now, and are so piss-poor at drawing on our history to learn from our mistakes.

  22. We have identities. We have our own politics. We have our own culture. We’re not even that young.

    People who say we lack any of these things is not saying something about America, but how they wish to place themselves in relation to Americans: above us.

    If an American says this, I get a similar implication. You’re not more sophisticated than the rest of us because of that time you went on vacation in Barbados 🇧🇧, Deborah.

  23. Identity, politics, culture are very messy at the present time. People have to start like each other again when we used to lbe 30 or 40 years ago. If we get lucky we do not have see another civil war in America.

  24. We may be a “young country” what ever that means but we’re not the only ones. Literally all of Latin America are young countries too. Yet they’re always considered to have a recognizable culture but yet the US & Canada doesn’t because of “settlers & immigration blah blah crap” Argentina was literally “built on immigration” too. The US is not guilty in this it’s time to move on from that subject when everyone opens a book and learns history. The US was also independent longer looong before Latin America was anyway.

    A trip to Texas, New York, and California would be the perfect example of pure American culture

  25. All countries are continuously developing their identity, politics, and culture. America is no different.

    Currently, America is going through a bit of a tumultuous cultural period, one where our political “leaders” and mass media corporations are using hot-button cultural issues to divide us into camps. My hope is that we’re able to come out of it stronger and more aware of the poison these people are peddling. In the midst of it, though, it’s frustrating at best.

  26. I think it’s not so much its youth but its founding documents that makes the culture constantly evolving. Nation of immigrants that still supports lots of internal immigration. People bring their culture and identity with them. It gets subsumed into the US cultural mix, but a portion of what they brought influences the mix itself.

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