If some fool or bigot asks you, "Are you an American," you can answer instantly. You know how to answer: a) born in the United States, or b) born to a citizen of the United States. The end. The problem is that, for some time, a segment of fools and bigots do not agree. They are traitors.
First, some background. After the Reconstruction and through to World War II, America was at work trying to figure out what it meant to be an American. As late as the 1960's, "What America means" was a top project for some folks, and "What America means to me" was a top school assignment. (For pop culture, think of "America" by Simon and Garfunkle, "Easy Rider," and the battle over what America is present in "Coming Home" and "Deer Hunter.") There was a great deal of talk about what the "American character" was. There were all sorts of symbols and myths that were glue-sticked onto this narrative. You will recognize, I feel sure, Pilgrim Fathers, Cowboy, Pioneer Mother, Wagon Train, Inventor, and Industrialist with a Better Idea. There was also the Rustic with Values (Sergeant York, Atticus Finch). These types all sat atop two dominant assumptions that had emerged by the end of the 19th century: Ragged Dick self-improvement (and UVA allows you to read and be inspired by the tale online for free), and the Melting Pot.
In order to define The American and convince ourselves that we're cowboys or convince Europeans that we are Gary Cooper, we must first have two ideological assumptions. The first is the belief that any child may grow up to succeed. This is the Ragged Dick thesis (from the Horatio Alger novel by the same name). Little Ragged Dick works very hard and is modest, clean, and sober, and with his hard work comes to the attention of his master, who promotes him, and then his wise management helps him put $100 in the savings account, and, just as the economy turns sour, he saves a drowning child of a rich lady.
Only if you have the myth/belief of upward mobility without prejudice can you either offer the melting pot or tell the world that your national character is in the wandering worker out on the plains or that Europe's cast aways are noble disguised by class. This assumption, that any individual may be prince in pauper's clothing, and that the clothing is often imposed, is vital to all else. (It is also a cornerstone of liberal thought. Liberal thinking is predicated on the improvement of humanity. You are likely to believe, with me, that people are not naturally bad, or that they are not incurably bad, that we can and must help, because there is an outcome of helping.) (If we cannot tell the world that all are equally able to rise, there is no reason to give up ethnic enclaves and language barriers. If there is no chance to succeed inside the other culture, then there is no reason to go there at all.)
The melting pot is the idea that Americans are not white, black, brown, German, Slavic, Irish, English, Spanish, Finno-Ugaric, or anything else, because America, like Australia, is a land of indiscriminate immigration, that a single identity is forged by melting together all the others. Now, folks have argued about the melting pot and whether one gets to keep one's parades and customs and language or not, but these are arguments about costuming, not arguments about the body. A really fine history and summation of the state of play of the arguments by Laura Laubeová can be found here. However, whether we argue for "ethnic stew" or "melting pot," the majority agree and take as an element of faith, politically and ideologically, that nationality is not ethnicity in the United States.
The most unAmerican thing you can do is not refute or confound the Horatio Alger myth, although that is second. The most unAmerican thing you can do is undermine pluralism. I wish to argue in two phases that we have treasonous speech and act going on these days, some of it televised. One treason is coming from those who wish to call people of different ethnicities "different" in citizenship. The other, I will argue separately, is in people trying to generally create class by any means possible (themselves damning the Horatio Alger myth at its basis).
In A Tale of a Tub Jonathan Swift points out that the English (and we) have the libel laws backward. He said that the ancient Greeks encouraged satirists to name names of officials who could be derided, as the injury to one man was of little consequence, but if anyone dared to satirize humanity, or the nation he would face the harshest of penalties. After all, saying that Rupert Murdoch is a bad person is one thing, but saying that humanity is a festering sore and we can expect no better, so we should ruthlessly exploit, only encourages people to be like Rupert. Similarly, saying that Charlie Rangel is a bad man is one thing, but saying that there even is such a thing as Black Americans who must share anything with him, much less saying that a group is bad is worthy of the pillory.
I say that in advance because we have a lot of libel, a lot of treason, going on. We have discourse intended to, or at least effective at, persuading one group of people that a vast swathe of Americans aren't "real" Americans, aren't "like us," can't be expected to be as good. Therefore, it is wrong to have compassion, to listen, or to mix.
There are some glorious things about Americans and America. Sometimes, although not often, our ignorance says something very sweet and affirming about us. When the Serbo-Croatian War took place, we were mystified. When it went Boznia-Croatia-Serbia, we were even more confused. ("Triumph of the Lack of Will," the title of James Gow, sounds about right.) Our official policy was paralytic, and our public did not know what to do.
Our people looked at one another and said, "Don't these people speak the same language? They're intermarried, right? They live next door to each other and have for a century? What the heck?" I was reminded, when that happened, of the time my cousin pulled out a whiskey bottle with ice tea in it at the dinner table as a prank. My grandfather smiled, eyes wide, and my other cousins gaped, but my grandmother had never seen a whiskey bottle in her life, and so she wasn't shocked.
When the genocide in Rwanda happened, we were not merely stunned by the genocide, but also by the reasoning. (Today, we on the left like to say that the US and NATO "ignored" Rwanda. We might be right, but let's not discount the astonishment factor.) "Different... tribes? Same country, language, schools, but different... tribes?" We didn't know that tribes existed in nations. In fact, I would venture to guess that most Americans either think that Africa is all tribes and jungle or that no tribes exist now.
I had a frustrating discussion with a Russian. I was speaking of Sakharov. He said, "He was not Russian. He was a Ju. (Jew)" I asked if he lived in Russia his whole life. Yes. Did he speak Russian? Were his parents born in Russia? Did he go to the same schools as everyone else? Yes to all of these. "Then he was a Russian," I said. "No," he said patiently, as if I were a four year old, "he is not Russian. He is a Ju."
I hope you find these things puzzling, but I am sure that you see what they have in common. In most of the rest of the world, people define "nation" by ethnic grouping, even where the nation-state would seem to militate against such a thing. In economic and Marxist political theory, we used to say, "Then there was the rise of the nation state in the 19th century, and it..." Apparently, the rise of the nation state didn't. Apparently, the ethnic state never went away, especially when and where the nation state was imposed by conquest or colonialism.
One of the reasons that Afghanistan is failing is that Karzai is leading the Pashtuns. We imagined one thing -- a federal government. He imagines another: his ethnic group triumphing over the other tribes. So long as he runs a tribal state, he will foster eternal war or genocide. We say, "How can you have drug lords and war lords in the administration? How can you tolerate corruption?" Well, our questions are good questions, if one's objective is democracy and full representation. If one's objectives are, instead, family, clan, and region based power, all of those things he has been doing are logical. So long as we remain ignorant of the degree to which people in the region identify not as "Afghanistani," but "Pashtun" or "Tajik," there is a miscalculation.
However, when I say that we need to know this, that does not mean that we should do more than know it. We should know it and know that we reject it. We must be comfortable saying that we are better than it, that we founded our nation on a rejection of it. That our nation has drawn people for its whole history based on promising to erase tribalism and to extend citizenship no matter the class or caste or color or group is a testimony as great as its wealth, which would have lain dormant otherwise, of the value of our American ideal.
When a presidential candidate says that mosques are not protected under the U.S. Constitution because muslims are unAmerican, that is treason. When the advisers and heroes of leading Republicans are calling a religious practice an enemy nationality, it is a crime. When a Fox News contributor endorses the idea of Latinos being not American because of their ethnicity, that is treasonous. When people anywhere in the U.S. propose that there is an American color or name or name ending or language, then that person is committing treason against the nation she or he claims to love.
When a skinhead or "white nationalist" says that he has a right to deal with "Americans" but the people at court are "Jews," that fool is also a traitor. When a freak panics over "multiculturalism" or when a fool, off on on television flips over the "white twilight," that person is being treasonous and rejecting one of the chambers of America's heart.
Nor do the unthinking critics in easy chairs get to qualify and say, "Well, I'll let 'em in after they've lost all their differences." A person cannot say, "Just learn good English like me, and then you can come." There is no, "Once you fit in, you're welcome." Nor can some soft bigot argue, "This is a Christian nation, and your funny prayer rug stuff is at war with me. Just drop that, and you're a patriot." You're not mixing very much, if you demand that all the ingredients taste the same before they're put in the bowl.
Pluralism, which is, incidentally one of the claims set forth in Jefferson's argument in the Declaration of Independence, when he says that George III would not let Americans expand immigration policy, is not "come in and bolster our sameness." It is a positive ideology, not a passive one. It is not "we accept everything and value everything equally." Rather, it is, "We accept all who accept all; acceptance is what we demand."
Because there is no American "blood" or race, people whose families have been here two hundred years or three hundred years or two years are just as likely to be unAmerican, Mr. Dobbs, Mr. Bollert, as that man who makes you nervous on the plane.