I understand that the United States advocates civic nationalism in contrast to European ethnic nationalism, but do you think that a Mexican child born in a Texan detention facility really counts as “American” as a great great great grandchild of a Yankee minuteman. And I don’t mean legally (I’m aware of the birthright citizenship), I mean in general and in the eye of the public.
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Nobody gives a fuck if your family went back to Colonial times.
You could not be born here at all, immigrate, and 100% be as American as anyone else.
Yes, to anybody but a white nationalist they’re both Americans. 14% of the US population is Latino.
Obviously people with different experiences will often view the world differently. But as far as I’m concerned, as soon as someone becomes a citizen, they’re an American. End of story.
No one really talks about their families being here since colonial times (at least not in my area). The only time that might come up is if people talk about their family history and when they immigrated here. As far as kids who are born here while their parents are seeking asylum, yes, they are American. If you are born here, you are American. I don’t think anyone really thinks that people are less American because their family immigrated to the US in 2010 or 1810.
American for me is a binary. You are or you aren’t. I’m not grading people as more or less.
Those people will have different experiences and backgrounds, sure. But that great grandchild will also have vastly different experiences from other Americans that can trace back to the colonial period.
To me you either are American or are not American. If you have citizenship you’re American.
In New England there is sort of an ethnic distinction, people who are descendants of colonial English settlers are called Yankees (there are sub groups too, Boston Brahmins, Swamp Yankees, etc.) but it’s not that important. They’re sort of like an ethnic group just like their Italian, Irish, French Canadian, and Portuguese neighbors.
There are some societies of people who are colonial descendants: the Daughters of the American Revolution are probably the most famous. They mostly just do charity work and maintain historical sites.
As for immigrants, it’s really a matter of personal preference. I was born in Ireland to an Irish father and an American mother, and we moved to the States when I was ten years old. I don’t consider my ethnicity to be American but I am an American patriot and I identify with being an American as well as an Irishman. Most Americans would not make the distinction between a 2nd gen person and a colonial descendant in terms of American-ness, the ones that do usually have a racist axe to grind.
No.
One side of my lily white family came to America from England sometime before 1750. The other side the same thing except one Irishman who showed up around 1855.
I’m no more American than my friend whose parents immigrated in the 1970s from Mexico.
If we’re talking about the stereotypical “default” American, it would probably be a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). But for the vast majority of the public, someone who finished taking their citizenship oath 5 minutes ago is just as American as they are.
There are no degrees of American. If you are an American, you are as American as anyone else. The American baby born in a Texas detention facility is every bit as American as the descendants of Thomas Jefferson.
Anyone who feels otherwise is fundamentally wrong. There are White supremacists who feel that you basically need to prove that all of your great great grandparents were non-immigrant White Americans to be an American (which is easy for many of them because many of their great great grandparents were siblings) but they are wrong.
Babies born in the United States are blank slate Americans. They will grow up and adopt whatever particular culture they grow up in.
There’s no such thing as American ethnicity unless you’re Native American.
Everybody else is an immigrant or their family immigrated, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the country.
No, unless we’re counting like Indigenous tribes, but even then they’d probably self-identify as being ethnically their particular tribe
And yes absolutely a Mexican child born in a detention facility is every bit as much an American as a rando descendent of a minuteman. Someone who decided to move here for that matter is just as American
People might use it as a talking point or a getting to know you fact, but that’s as far as it goes.
For instance, three of my four grandparents were first generation Americans. I have a coworker who is herself first generation. Aside from it being an interesting factoid, we are both equally American.
What everyone’s trying to say here is that we (or the vast majority of us) don’t spend any time worrying about “how much” American you are. It’s binary — you are or you aren’t. And if you were born here, you were born here, end of story.
Yes, that Mexican child is just as much an American as anyone else who was born here. There are no ‘degrees’ of American citizenship.
Yes, absolutely. That’s pretty specifically how it works.
My family goes back to colonial times. It’s a neat story but doesn’t mean shit in the world.
Anyone born here is American.
I think it is important to distinguish between ethnicity and citizenship when talking about this.
Said child of Mexican immigrants born on American soil is 100% an American by citizenship. That also makes them 100% American generally if you ask most non-racist Americans.
Ethnicity is a little more difficult to define in the American context compared to most of the world. Most Americans see the term “ethnicity” to be more closely related to the term “ancestry” than they do to the term “culture”.
Ancestrally, most of the people who identify as “American” have majority ancestral routes in the British Isles, especially in Scotland and in Scotland by way of Ulster (Scotch-Irish). For most of these individuals, the immigrant ancestor, who came to this land long before this country was formed, has been long since forgotten. They may know that their ancestors probably came from somewhere in Europe, but their family’s immigration story has been lost to history long ago, so they feel little to no connection to “the mother country”.
Culturally, I might argue that most white Americans (with a few exceptions) form a single “white American” culture (which is not currently exclusively race-segregated, but which historically has been, leading to a difference between black and white American cultures). There is an argument that is sometimes made that since America was founded for the benefit of white people to the detriment of black people and other racial minorities, that “American culture” is a correct name for the culture which is pushed by a white-dominated society, but I feel like that thinking is a little weird if we are aspiring to create a society in which Americans of all races have equal claim to the label “American”. After all, if when the word “American” is said and the picture conjured up is always of a white American, that kinda seems like a problem.
I personally consider myself to be ethnically White American. The vast majority of my ancestors came to this land before independence, and my most recent immigrant ancestors came to this land in the 1850s. Neither I, nor my grandparents have ever met an immigrant ancestor, and the difference between the cultural experience I had compared to that of the average white American is very little. Despite the majority of my ancestry coming from Germany, Czechia, and Switzerland, I do not really feel any sense of camaraderie with those countries any more than I do with any other country. To me, my country and the land of my family’s heritage is America. I cannot legitimately claim to be a hyphenated American by anything but very very distant ancestry.
But in general, to answer the main point of your question, in this country, a “true American” has to do with citizenship and citizenship alone. If you are an American citizen, you are a true American. If you are not an American citizen, you are not yet a “true American” (though non-Americans deserve fair treatment too!). It is a pretty simple equation.
We all understand that we are all immigrants or our parents or grandparents or grandparents are immigrants. Anyone born or moved here and got citizenship is American
There is no degree of American. Either you’re an American by birth or naturalization or you’re not an American.
This is one of the great things about the US. Other countries are so xenophobic.
I’m not sure birthplace really matters that much. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a good example of an American role model who wasn’t even born in the USA. Hispanic Americans born anywhere in the US are most certainly Americans to the greatest extent. To state otherwise would be viewed as racist in most cases
Not yet, but I think one is in the process of being born. We’re now a couple generations out from the death of miscegenation laws and marriages between members of different ethnic groups are absolutely skyrocketing.
My grandparents generation all married not just within the same greater ethnic group (white), but also within their own nation’s ethnic group. So for example, the Italians didn’t marry the Irish very often. It happened, but it was rare.
My parents generation expanded out a bit more. They all largely just married within that greater ethnic group. So maybe the Irish and the Italians are marrying now. Some interracial couples, but they’re rare.
These days? Something on the order of 20-25% of marriages are interracial marriages. Mixed race kids are more and more common and I think we’re finally starting to enter a period where “tracking” ethnic affiliations is going to start getting incredibly difficult, if not impossible except for those newest immigrants and the increasingly smaller percentage of people who just happened to continue to marry people of the same ethnicity.
You do occasionally hear someone say that their family came here on the Mayflower, and in touristy places actually being from there is something of a badge of honor. I have a friend who’s like a third or fourth generation Key Wester and is very proud of that because there really aren’t many people who can claim that. But people aren’t super serious about it and anyone who treats you differently over how long you or your family has been here needs to get their head screwed on straight.
Americans are not nearly as focused on genetics and birth rights and lineage as everyone else.
My Mom was born in the UK to Polish parents and immigrated here when she was 4. My Dad was born in Iowa and his family has been here for generations . They’re both equally American. There are no degrees of American. You either are or you aren’t. As soon as you take that oath (or are born), you’re one of us. End of story.
Edit: used the wrong word for my Dad’s family history
The law says if they’re born here, that’s all there is to it. I will say that the Mexican-American child will get a lot of racism for his situation in certain parts of the country. If there was going to be an American ethnicity, it would be the tribes and confederations that were here before Europe knew the Americas existed.
My family talks about where our ancestors came from, but we don’t identify with those countries at all. I have two direct descendants (brothers) who were Hessians and fought in the American Revolution. They stayed. I guess, they technically became American after the war was over. We have some pretty good documentation on it as well. We were very lucky those papers were saved.
My family loves genealogy and the history of where we descended from. We are American thanks to long dead people who made the choice to fuck and move. That’s how we see it, anyway. We have no ties or culture to those countries at all.
Yep. American is American. Doesn’t matter if it was 10 generations ago, or last week.
Many Americans feel really, really strongly about this. Even the majority of the racists will shut up and let it go when people they’re talking about are here legally. I mean, I’m not saying that they’re not still racist, but it’s interesting that they often frame their arguments around legality, and usually begrudgingly let it go when someone is like “Yep, I’m an American citizen.”