What makes us Americans?

by Sam Hazo
December 1999/January 2000

A few years ago, I was discussing with a class of college seniors how important it was to be accurate in both their spoken and written words. "Suppose," I asked, "that someone wanted to know your nationality. How would you answer?" One by one the answers came: Slovak, Croatian, German-Irish, Italian-Lebanese, Greek, Jewish, English-Swiss and so on.

Only one student (the only black student in the class, by the way) said, "American," which in fact was what everyone in the class was. When I pointed out that only he was accurate in his answer, the rest of the class said I had loaded the question since I asked them to identify themselves by nationality. My response was that nationality meant and means only one thing - the nation to which a person owes allegiance and of which he or she is a citizen.
They persisted by equating nationality with ethnic heritage, eventually settling for hyphenations like Italo-American, Polish-American, Irish-American and the like.
Finally, I asked them what they would write in the space marked nationality on a passport or how would they respond if they were in France or China and had to identify themselves by nationality? Silence prevailed at that point, and the discussion ended.
http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/355/27/

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