We're All Americans Now
After the attacks of September 11th different slogans designed to bring people together around a common foreign policy began to surface. One of them was, "we're all Americans now". Simultaneously, this phrase attempted to acknowledge something about our collective past and make a reconcilliatory overture. The slogan acknowledged that the US was something of an apartheid state but that the urgency and magnitude of this new threat was reason enough to set aside the normal operating parameters and grant temporary citizenship to those previously, and historically, denied it. I found this particular appeal to nationalism the funniest because it illuminated the ridiculousness of the American facades of democracy, meritocracy, freedom...you know the rest.
Like some ground floor Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) offer that comes along offering YOU ground floor access to a venture about to take off in a major way. This time it was the War On Terror. And like a typical MLM, the people at the top made all the money and the folks at the bottom (us) footed the bill with money for our schools and what could have been (and could still be) a universal healthcare plan to cover everyone.
But I digress. Regarding being American...now. I don't consider myself an American. At least not in the sense that you're bound to hear on any of the major news outlets and most of the 'alternative' ones as well. American is usually written and said, meaning white.
But what if you're not white?
Next time you hear that public opinion among Americans says this or that, ask yourself if non-whites or anyone not within the middle-class (or above) white heterosexual archetype, feels the same way. Like anything, this isn't monolithic, but I think you'll surprise yourself just by asking yourself this question. Actually go further and ask non-whites and you might be surprised at how 'American' public opinion actually means the public opinion of white folks in America and is quite irrepresentative of the experiences and thoughts of non-whites.
The Power of Language
First I should point out that white folks are the primary target of this linguistic tactic of mislabeling whites as Americans. The effect of mislabeling is the fostering of tumultuous relations between whites and blacks and the disruption of whatever even or positive relations there are.
It goes like this.
Americans is meant to signify 'whites'. However, when asked about that pointedly, most whites will say that to them American means everyone. So when whites encounter non-whites they expect them to hold opinions at least somewhere close to the place where 'American' opinion or belief lies.
- there is a spectre in the white American public imagination of the extreme, unreasonable and irrational black person with whom rational discourse is an impossibility so don't even try.
The use of the term 'American' in actual reference to white thought and perspective sets a psychological dismissive predisposition toward the true experiences, ideas and opinions of black folks as they lie outside of the hegemonic box created by predominantly white media and academia.
So, Who Is An American?
This question shouldn't suggest a contest of patriotism or nationalism but instead rights and true equality. When we begin to honestly address historical issues of housing and job discrimination, land theft, wealth usurption and other forms of oppression that historically have and continue to create the very different realities and the prisms through which those realities are viewed and lived-only then will we truly be able to honestly describe ourselves as simply Americans.
