Don't Tell Me How American I Am
Don't Tell Me How American I Am
Life, liberty and the pursuit of identity.
I have lived in the US for less than a decade and I speak with an unmistakably British accent.
Yet, I’m a better American than you.
Here’s my logic:
Two thirds of Americans couldn’t pass the US Citizenship test. I aced it.
The average American has been to 17 states. I’ve been to 37.
34% of Americans didn’t vote in the last presidential election. I am well-informed in many federal, state and local issues. And I vote, frequently.
So who are you to question my American-ness? Or anybody else’s? Shouldn’t identity be in the eye of the beholder?
What is ‘Being American’, anyway?
The United States of America - a nation founded by immigrants - is embroiled in anti-immigration chaos.
Put them in cages. Build the wall. Shut the border. Deport them all. We can’t let them into our country. America is full.
We must protect our country and her ideals, right?
But, written on The Statue of Liberty herself:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
As a nation, we have a bizarre preference for interpreting ambiguously-written documents of guidance from hundreds of years ago as runes of irrefutable truth.
So, it’s easy to see how politicians of both parties could get tied up in knots about how we should approach immigration and citizenship.
Most Americans agree that they are happy with folks ‘going the official route’ for immigration. Alas, decades of the aforementioned political wrangling has turned the process into an untenable bureaucratic nightmare.
There are 4 different paths, simple on paper:
Lawful permanent resident of five years (make a US company money for a long time)
U.S. military service member (help the US in a war)
Child of a U.S. citizen (be born in)
Married to a U.S. citizen (marry in)
Once you’re one of these, all you need to do is:
Submit a form.
Pay a sh*tload of money. (the cost is being jacked up again this year)
Wait. (9 months if you’re from the UK, 20 years if you’re from India or China, forever if you’re from a Muslim country and the wrong president is in)
Pass the citizenship test, promise you’re not a commie, agree to fight in loosely-justified wars and wave your tiny stars and stripes outside a soulless office building.
That’s it, you’re in! Full acceptance as the newest American Citizen!
Except, not quite.
Get ready for bemused looks. They come when you answer patriotically to the thinly-veiled 'where are you from?' questions.
Brace for awkward glances. They will come when you position as American without some other identity hyphenated before it for the comfort of the ‘natives’.
Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, even the African-Americans that built the place in forced servitude get their fully-earned American-ness subtly downgraded with a hyphen.
As a ‘British-American’ I get a front row seat to the most delicious irony borne of these interactions. Immediately after they dilute my American identity, some of the staunchest guardians of it proceed to tell me how their family is Irish.
Any excuse to pour insane amounts of food coloring in your rivers and drink Guinness once a year, I guess.
Addressing The Undocumented
I need to address so-called ‘illegal immigration’. Almost all of this is fueled by demand.
American businesses, pursuing the American dream, readily employ undocumented immigrants. Someone who swims the Rio Grande and can’t find work has very few options other than to go back.
It’s a great example of how the government cannot save you from problems you create yourself. Want the US to win the ‘war on drugs?’. STOP BUYING THEM!!
In our reality, immigrants are spending the best years of their lives fueling the fires of the US economy. They should have clear paths to citizenship, even if they weren’t documented when they crossed the border. Just like the pilgrims before them.
Behold that truth to be self-evident.
George Washington Was British
People write and tell American history in such a one-eyed way.
Who sailed to these lands, brave and intrepid explorers? The pilgrims, glorious Americans-in-waiting!
Who ransacked and pillaged native villages, spreading disease and death? The evil British settlers.
Who created order and democracy on these shores, building the land of opportunity? The American founding fathers!
Who imposed and enforced terrible and unfair taxes leading to revolution? The evil colonial governments, established by…err….the British.
The chameleonic American identity is the ice cream glistening gloriously next to the soggy-bottomed apple pie of its history.
This patriotic propaganda manifests magnificently for me each 4th of July. Colleagues awkwardly ask me what my plans are. How might I feel? Do I even celebrate?
Because, remember, WE BEAT YOU IN THE WAR!! (Back when we used to be cool with guerilla warfare.)
How soon we forget that the very definition of revolution is a government being overthrown or replaced by its own citizens. This was largely Brit-on-Brit action.
Of course, the French aided it. American revolution presented significant naval advantages to them. This was especially true before the Napoleonic wars. Those wars were a matter of far greater global concern at the time.
They don’t mention that in any books in American school libraries. At least not in those that still have any books remaining in them.
On the 4th of July, 1776 (note the British date format), lightning did not strike people and make them love eagles, Halloween, and putting corn syrup in all food.
So, how else could we track the formation of the American identity?
Digging a little deeper (aka the first page of Google) I find this:
Scholars say the first three US Presidents: George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all had British accents.
Just like me!! Am I one of the most American Americans there is? Hell, yeah.
Or “gosh, yes”, as the founding fathers would have said.
To borrow the well-intended (but ultimately insulting) observation that’s regularly made of me, no wonder everything they said sounded so intelligent.
The accents should be no surprise, though, as identity has always been glacial. It moves imperceptibly but also relentlessly and with great force. What it means to be American has always been changing and will continue to change.
The great American pot has always been melting (like the glaciers) and will continue to do so. Each new citizen brings their own identity to add to mix. Each ingredient is fully incorporated and plays an equal part in the recipe, just like all the ingredients that preceded it.
All Americans are created equal, however or whenever they become a part of the great experiment.
Freedom Of Identity
George Washington fought for the right for American citizens to define and iterate their identity.
That includes me. Not only the last 9 years of assimilation - my whole 9 yards.
It also includes Billy-Bob from Mississippi. He preferred math to civics and has never left his beloved birth state. The awful state of donor-driven politics in this country has beaten him into apathy.
Dissent was the foundation of this nation. Even with the influence of the hundreds of millions of citizens since then, dissent remains a critical element of its identity. We have the freedom to choose how to show it.
You don’t need to be a better American than me to know that.
The fusing process goes on as in a blast-furnace; one generation, a single year even—transforms the English, the German, the Irish immigrant into an American.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1876