“The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan……… Very many American lives have been lost.” – George Takei, They Called Us Enemy

Who gets to be American?

Less than a millennium ago, the land that would come to be known as the United States a few centuries later was inhabited by a little more than a hundred million people that we now dub “Native Americans”. Of course there was a wide range of hundreds of tribes, each with its unique and distinctive lifestyles and traditions. Most of them had a similar belief that land is owned by the Great Spirit and a blessing. People should not view it as their own property and only take what is needed.

Now let’s fast forward several centuries later to the present-day. The scene looks much different. There is a new group that has replaced these indigenous peoples and is now deemed to be the “real Americans”. Although there is quite a diverse population. However, one major group of people is still dominant. This group is quite hard to determine because it depends on who you ask. This gets extremely complicated. Is a first-generation British-American less “American” than a fifth-generation American whose ancestors immigrated from Scandinavia a century or so ago? How about a French immigrant who has adopted Anglo-Saxon standards and cultural norms? However, for the most part, these are Protestant Anglophones of Western-European descent. This is the ethnic-group dubbed to be the contemporary “Americans”. 

Now what about members of other groups? Those who are not of western European descent, or European descent at all for that matter. Those who do not have white skin, blond hair, or blue eyes. “Colored” people. Many of them may hold official citizenship whereas others may not. Many of them only speak English and were born here or even have multiple generations of ancestors who were born here. Many of them were immigrants who were able to successfully assimilate. Many of them had to enter the country illegaly and remain undocumented. Many consider themselves more American than anything else, many do not.  Some might consider themselves more patriotic than others.

But who? Who gets to be American?

One day, I went on a day trip with my family to San Diego. We entered a shop to ask for directions to what I think was a museum, or maybe a restaurant. I was too occupied and stunned with the following encounter to even remember. The clerk was a white man, probably nowhere above 65 or so. He asked this Japanese-American woman where she came from. She cheerfully replied, explaining that she came from no less than a two-hour drive away from there, up in Orange County. But this was not the answer he was looking for. So he continued with, “Where are you originally from.”  I held in a small chuckle as I realized what he meant by this question. The woman was no more than 20 years old, meaning she must’ve been born sometime when there were nearly as many Asians in the United States as there are today. She patiently explained to him that she was actually a fourth-generation immigrant and her great-great-grandparents were born in the United States. He still could not take that for an answer and kept pressing in a somewhat passive aggressive manner until she decided to just ignore the question overall. She seemed to not feel offended. I only felt one thing at the time. I felt that the conversation that I had just witnessed was quite bizarre, because Japanese-American presence in the United States has been so long established. They have been here so long that they had to endure through those years of oppression in those internment camps. Same with Chinese-Americans, and just Asians in general. I do not understand why he was so confused over the fact that her family has been in this country for generations and why it was such a difficult concept for him to grasp?

What did I learn from this experience? What I learned was that people will not use how much you have been assimilated to measure how “American” you are. People will not use your English proficiency to measure how “American” you are. People will not use your citizenship status to measure how “American” you are. People will not use how many generations your family has been in the country to determine how “American” you are. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how you look. Your skin color. Your race.

But who gets to be an American in my eyes? To me, an American is anyone who genuinely feels connected to the country. Anyone who has developed some sort of partiality to the country whether it is by residency or by heritage. Anyone who supports the values of liberty which this country has been built on. Anyone wants what is best for the rest of the American people. That is a true American to me. I am a true American.