What’s your ancestry? If you said, “American,” you’ve got company.
In the 2000 census and since, more than 20 million people said their origin was American. Those who so answered are heavily concentrated in greater Appalachia, Florida and Texas, have a strong populist streak and share cultural ties that frighten outsiders: “To be perfectly blunt,” wrote Nate Silver, identifying your origin as American is “a pretty good proxy for folks that a lot of us elitists would usually describe as ‘rednecks.’ ”
Yet it would be a mistake to confuse the self-declared ethnically American (call them American-Americans?) with the Confederacy. The areas where American ethnicity is claimed are also the ones that rebelled against the rebels, such as West Virginia, which was so pro-Union that it seceded from Virginia in 1863.
In his new book, “Native Americans: Patriotism, Exceptionalism and the New American Identity,” James S. Robbins also teases out some other surprising details from what you might dismiss as the Waffle House or NASCAR slice of the country. For instance, a lot of the self-styled ethnic Americans are urban or suburban, not rural: The areas surrounding both Dallas and Atlanta are home to more American-Americans than any other ethnic group.
Demographers have been vexed by this widespread insistence on American origin. In the 1980 census, which specifically asked respondents where their people came from “before their arrival in the United States,” anyone who persisted with answering “American” simply was not counted. “To choose ‘American,’ you have to be a rebel in a way,” says a professor quoted by Robbins, who adds, “That was precisely the point.”
At the moment, when a mammoth immigration bill is working its way through Congress, to describe yourself as ethnically American is to invite being called a xenophobe or worse.
But it’s really about believing that where you came from doesn’t matter; it’s who you are going forward.
“We are not threatened by ethnic backgrounds now,” Michael Marsden, provost at Eastern Kentucky University and a resident of the state where a plurality identify as American-Americans, says in the book. “I think we realized that we can be different but, at the same time, the same.”
Adds Robbins, “Families and peoples that have been in this country for one or two or four centuries should not consider themselves to be from someplace else.”
For many, ties to the Old World are so attenuated that they no longer have any importance. In 1990, for instance, “German” was listed as a background by 49 million Americans — but in 2000 that number leaped to 58 million.
If there was a massive influx of Horsts and Inges in the 1980s, I missed it.
But one big difference between the 1980 census and the 1990 one was this: In 1990, “German” was listed as an example of a possible origin. The other was “Croatian.” (Reported Croatian ancestry doubled.) We don’t know who the hell we are, and we don’t care.
Choosing the American label for one’s origins is a form of pushback — a return to community, if you like — against an increasing obsession with separation along ethnic lines. One fourth of the 2010 Census form was taken up by questions about race and background.
“To be without a race-ethnic group identity in the United States today is to be without an identity,” claimed one study quoted in the book.
Nonsense. We’re more than our origins — better, too. Move to France if you want, but you’ll never be considered a Frenchman. Same with Japan or Russia or Mexico.
For many Americans, our shared culture is the definition of who we are. In a survey published in July of 2001, 83% identified their traditions and cultures as uniquely American. A majority of Americans of Latin American (61%), African (54%) and Middle Eastern (64%) descent agreed. “In America,” wrote citizen Christopher Hitchens in his essay “On Becoming American,” “ your internationalism can and should be your patriotism.”
Margaret Thatcher put it in similar terms: “Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been built upon an idea, the idea of liberty. No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture.”
To list your ethnicity as American is a declaration of independence from the old tribal divisions and blood feuds. It’s a way of saying we have more in common than not.