Dwain Northey (Gen X)

What Do People Mean When They Say “I’m American”?

Whenever I hear someone pound their chest and declare, “I’m American,” I find myself wondering what exactly they think they’re saying.

Seriously. What does that mean?

If your ancestors arrived from England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, China, Mexico, India, Nigeria, or anywhere else on the planet sometime in the last few centuries, then “American” isn’t really an ethnicity. It isn’t a tribe. It isn’t a bloodline. It’s a passport.

The only people who can honestly claim their ancestors originated on this continent are Native Americans. Everyone else, including my family and probably yours, came from somewhere else. Some arrived willingly. Some were dragged here in chains. Some came seeking opportunity. Some came because famine, war, persecution, or poverty left them no choice.

America is not a single people. America is all the peoples.

That’s what makes this whole conversation so strange. The same folks who insist they are “real Americans” are often standing in a country that exists because wave after wave of immigrants showed up and mixed their cultures together.

Look at our food.

People love to talk about “American food,” but what is it?

Pizza? Italian.

Tacos? Mexican.

Hot dogs? German.

Hamburgers? German.

Barbecue? Influenced by Native, African, and European traditions.

Apple pie? The apples aren’t native here, and neither is the recipe.

Chinese food became Chinese-American. Mexican food became Tex-Mex. Italian food became New York pizza and Chicago deep dish. Every culture that arrived brought ingredients, techniques, and traditions, and America threw them all into a giant culinary blender.

Our national cuisine is basically a potluck.

The same thing applies to language. We speak English filled with words borrowed from French, German, Spanish, Native languages, African influences, and countless others. Even the place names around us are a patchwork. Arizona, Massachusetts, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, and hundreds of others tell the story of different peoples leaving their fingerprints on the map.

Our music is a fusion.

Our architecture is a fusion.

Our holidays are a fusion.

Our traditions are a fusion.

America isn’t a pure culture. America is what happens when cultures collide, cooperate, argue, borrow from each other, and eventually create something new.

So when someone says, “I’m American,” perhaps what they mean is that they share a commitment to the ideals of the country—democracy, liberty, equal protection under the law, civic participation, and a belief that people from different backgrounds can coexist under a common set of rules.

That’s a definition I can understand.

But when the phrase is used as a way to separate “real Americans” from everyone else, the logic falls apart. The country itself is a mashup. The culture is a mashup. The people are a mashup.

The United States is the world’s largest ongoing group project.

That’s the whole point.

You can trace your roots to Ireland, Mexico, China, Italy, Nigeria, India, Germany, Lebanon, Vietnam, or a hundred other places and still be fully American. In fact, that’s the most American thing imaginable.

Maybe that’s what frustrates me about the chest-thumping version of patriotism. It often pretends America is one thing when history shows it’s the exact opposite. America has never been one people. It has never been one culture. It has never been one cuisine, one language, one religion, or one ancestry.

America is the experiment.

America is the mixture.

America is the argument.

And maybe being American isn’t about where your ancestors came from at all. Maybe it’s about accepting that none of us got here the same way, none of us share exactly the same story, and yet somehow we’re all trying to build a future together anyway.

That’s not weakness.

That’s the entire American story.