Have you ever understanding just how young United States of America is in world culture? We didn't become one country until after the Civil War, and then we were faced with rebuilding a war-torn economy. Our machinery was new and not very well made, and the books we printed were lacking in quality. We prolonged to depend on England for literature. It has taken a whole century to catch up. We now have a variety of literature that stands on its own. The children's books of the twentieth century tell America's story and help us to appreciate the unique quality of American culture. No other country in the world is anything like us. Yet we recite every other country in the world. We're a mosaic, each pixel representing a inescapable element, and together a particular image.
What does it mean to be an American? It starts with the American dream. It continues with a trust that nothing stands in our way. We have the relaxation as individuals to go after the dream, either it's financial or, as in the case of Dorothy in "The extraordinary Wizard of Oz," looking the way back home. This aspect of being American hasn't changed, even though looking the way, financially or socially, isn't all the time easy. During the 1930s, we had to face the Great Depression; in the 1940s, a second world war; in the 1950s complacency and a war that we couldn't win; in the 1960s a public revolution and, again, a war we couldn't win; in the 1970s a psychological depression; in the 1980s a power struggle, and in the 1990s too much violence. We started out the twentieth century involved in an commercial revolution, and we have started the twenty-first with an electronic revolution.
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As part of this electronic revolution, we're looking that new sources of facts are changing our view of history. Also, our privacy has been invaded, and we're looking out a lot more about each other than we need to know. For a country that celebrates personel rights, it has taken a long time to recognize the barriers that have made such proprietary difficult to perform for some people, namely blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and, let us not forget, women. I've never thought about myself a feminist, but I was brought up to believe that being female was a matter of pride, not debasement.
Most Americans, with the exception of Native Americans (or "the People," as they prefer to be called), see themselves as more attached to their country of origin, the land of their ancestors, than to America itself. Owning a house is more important than ties to a piece of land. They see themselves as hyphenated Americans--Italian-American, Polish- American, Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American. American citizens can trace their genealogy, but if the trace goes back more than 200 years, chances are they're going to find themselves in a different country. Even for those claiming ties to the first settlers (European, that is) can't go back more than 400 years.
With the whole world at our fingertips, we tend to ignore much of that world, looking the American way as the only way. Instead of learning from others, we try to inflict our beliefs on them. We're rash and outspoken and unafraid to voice our opinions here and abroad. But isn't that the glory of America, the relaxation to speak out? We also have the relaxation to listen, and we should do more of it. In the meantime, being an American is a matter of pride, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
What Does It Mean to Be an American
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