American Identity Draft
America: Undefined Land
In Creating America, Joyce Moser and Ann Watters suggest that, “In understanding American Identities, we need to come to terms with unity and division, with separateness and common grounds.” In other words, for understanding American society one must understand its contradictions and the irony they represent. For thousands of years humans have emerged themselves in the constant quest of finding who they are as individuals and ultimately as a society. This constant quest has become more complex as the years pass, especially in America, where a multiple combination of people from different cultures, races and religions coexist. This coexistence has kept the American self-image compelling to others and thus bringing more individuals to the nation. For understanding a nation as a whole one must understand its individuals, and since America does not have a set standard of what one must look like in order to declare themselves as Americans, one can only conclude that the American Identity remains undefined, even after taking and analyzing all the contradictions.
Even though American Identity cannot be well-defined, terms such as “Melting-Pot” or “Mosaic” are still used to describe this nation society. A Melting–Pot by definition is a pot where different materials are melted and mixed together. As a metaphor it is used to describe all the different people who came together to formed America and became one. A “Mosaic” is used in the same context as well, and it only differs in the broader aspect of a more multiculturalism adaptation. Both terms come close to describe the diversity that the United States is composed of; however, both fail in the idealism that assimilation of this culture take place, and since there is no set standard of an “American” or even a set culture, immigrants have nothing to assimilate to begin with.
There has always been the notion that what is America, if not a nation of immigrants? And in reality that is the case.
In Creating America, Joyce Moser and Ann Watters suggest that, “In understanding American Identities, we need to come to terms with unity and division, with separateness and common grounds.” In other words, for understanding American society one must understand its contradictions and the irony they represent. For thousands of years humans have emerged themselves in the constant quest of finding who they are as individuals and ultimately as a society. This constant quest has become more complex as the years pass, especially in America, where a multiple combination of people from different cultures, races and religions coexist. This coexistence has kept the American self-image compelling to others and thus bringing more individuals to the nation. For understanding a nation as a whole one must understand its individuals, and since America does not have a set standard of what one must look like in order to declare themselves as Americans, one can only conclude that the American Identity remains undefined, even after taking and analyzing all the contradictions.
Even though American Identity cannot be well-defined, terms such as “Melting-Pot” or “Mosaic” are still used to describe this nation society. A Melting–Pot by definition is a pot where different materials are melted and mixed together. As a metaphor it is used to describe all the different people who came together to formed America and became one. A “Mosaic” is used in the same context as well, and it only differs in the broader aspect of a more multiculturalism adaptation. Both terms come close to describe the diversity that the United States is composed of; however, both fail in the idealism that assimilation of this culture take place, and since there is no set standard of an “American” or even a set culture, immigrants have nothing to assimilate to begin with.
There has always been the notion that what is America, if not a nation of immigrants? And in reality that is the case.