While James and I were living in Spain last year, we obviously worked with Spanish people. In Spain, everyone is of Spanish heritage and identifies as Spanish. However, in the melting pot of America, not many people identify as “American.” If you ask an American what their nationality is, they will likely say Irish, German, Asian, Italian, Mexican, or some other country or mixture of countries. Me personally? I’m an Irish/Scottish/French mix.
Funny Story
At James’s school right before spring break, he was excitedly telling his Spanish co-teachers about our upcoming trip to Italy because he’s Italian and couldn’t wait to see his country of origin. Typically, Americans identify with other nationalities while most other countries identify with the country they’re from, which causes a cultural gap that can be difficult to understand. So his co-teachers naturally said to him, “But you’re from America and you don’t speak Italian, how are you Italian?”
Imagine someone from another country telling you they’re not actually from that country, they’re from a country they’ve never seen before. Confusing, right?
How Americans Identify Their Nationality
The misconception is that Americans are all one people, like people from more uniform countries. And yes, people from America are American, but they also identify with their parents’, grandparents’, or great-grandparents’ culture. People are hesitant to give up their traditions and beliefs and conform to others, which causes a lot of conflict within the great country of America. Some people have parents that migrated to America from other countries, some people’s families have been here since Christopher Columbus came over with the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and still others were here well before Europeans came exploring. There are different levels of “American” and what nationality really means.
James still considers himself Italian American and I consider myself just American. There’s no wrong way to identify yourself, but it’s interesting to see the diversity within the Great Melting Pot. These vast differences give America a cultural identity and history that’s much different from Europe’s history, for example, but interesting for someone interested in studying anthropology, or people and their relationships.
A New Way of Thinking
I had never thought about how people identify before I went to Spain and James had this interaction with his Spanish friends. Then I thought to myself, who’s right and what’s wrong? I thought long and hard about this and even enrolled in a multicultural class at Rutgers University where we discussed issues such as this at length.
It’s impossible to get everyone in America to agree, which is what tends to cause a lot of America’s internal problems. However, everyone shouldn’t have to agree. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. The best way to keep peace in this struggling nation is to accept the different beliefs, values, and traditions that each person identifies with and explain to others who aren’t familiar with such a melting pot country why everyone is different and identifies with outside nationalities.
How you do you identify yourself? Comment and tell me!
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P.S. You might also enjoy 6 Biggest Misconceptions About America and Biggest Challenges for and Expat
I’ve never considered myself anything but American. My heritage is mostly Norwegian, German, English and Jewish.
I like how you put that. I understand why people consider themselves other nationalities, but I also only consider myself American, with European heritage. It’s interesting!