Their identities are all different. Yet they walk the same halls. Their histories are individual. Yet they take the same classes. They speak different languages. Yet they salute the same flag.
The American is born and made every day at Rutgers University-Newark, “The most diverse campus in the nation,” according to U.S. News and World Report. Students from around the globe share classes and experiences that define and redefine their roles in American democracy. Nonetheless, whether one is born in America, naturalized or in the process of becoming a citizen, Rutgers-Newark students offer more than one definition for what it means to be an American.
Nineteen-year-old Rutgers-Newark student Sarada Sakamuri, of Indian descent, was born in Seattle, Wash., grew up in Edison, N.J., and has been visiting New Delhi, India, since she was a little girl. She recounts growing up with the image of the American ingrained in her mind, but realizing little how she actually fit in until she arrived at Rutgers-Newark. Sitting among her friends in the Paul Robeson Campus Center’s dining hall, Sakamuri is proud of her individuality, as she considers her group of friends to be the most diverse on campus. Nevertheless, she often finds herself challenging her own identity.
“I consider myself American because of the American ideals of freedom, justice and equality for all. On that theoretical level, I consider myself American. But I know growing up, even though I’m an American, sometimes my first reaction would be that I’m not—I’m an outsider compared to a group of white people who are the true Americans. And a lot of Indian people even tell their kids that they are Indian and that they are not American. So even though I don’t want that to be my initial reaction, sometimes I know that it pops up and I don’t feel as American as everybody else. It’s something that I am still learning about,” Sakamuri said.
Her friend Kavita Gupta, also of Indian descent, agreed. “I’ve always associated being American with being Caucasian, so I guess it is a stereotype—even here in the most diverse metropolitan area of the United States,” Gupta said.
Rutgers-Newark student Amani Shahin, of Palestinian descent, concisely stated, “Being American is all about the whiteness.”
According to Mathew Frye Jacobson, Yale University professor of American Studies and history, in his book Whiteness of a Different Color, Americanization in the United States is often associated with whiteness because of its long colonial heritage. He explains that British colonialists, who departed oppressive monarchic England, were the first to establish this definition for what it means to be an American.
According to Jacobson: “In 1790, the white men who settled this country were white men from Europe, the men who fought the Revolutionary War, framed the Constitution and established government.… They were eager for more of their kind to come, and it was to men of their own kind that they held out the opportunity for citizenship in the new nation.”
It was therefore “the nation’s first naturalization law in 1790 [limiting citizenship] to free white persons,” that led to the discrimination held by an influx of ethnic immigrants coming from Europe in the 1840s. This was the starting point for when immigrants were labeled either as “undesirables” and given difficult labor jobs or “re-racialized” as Caucasian and granted ruling class status as true Americans. Race signification was a part of the building of America because it categorized individuals into labor groups—therefore securing “capitalism, with its insatiable appetite for cheap labor, and republicanism, with its imperative of responsible citizenship,” according to Jacobson.
However, all this changed, said Jacobson. “In response to a new racial alchemy generated by African American migrations to the North and West, whiteness was reconsolidated. The late 19th century’s probationary white groups were now remade and granted the scientific stamp of authenticity as the unitary Caucasian race—an earlier era’s Celts, Slavs, Hebrews, Iberics and Saracens, among others, had become the Caucasians so familiar to our own visual economy and racial lexicon.”
It is from here that the strongest form of Anglo-Saxon identity takes hold on America as the African American was differentiated by the color of his or her skin. According to Jacobson, “This [was] at a time when the definition of the word ‘Negro’ in a Philadelphia encyclopedia could include idleness, treachery, revenge, debauchery, nastiness and intemperance… This was merely the dominant, not monolithic, view of the relationship between republican government and race during that period.”
In the words of Rutgers-Newark professor of history Jan Lewis, “Race is a system of signification.”
Professor of history Amy Portwood agrees and further offers that this is why the Bill of Rights’ principle of “All men are created equal,” should be looked at in the context that it was written.
According to Jacobson, “It is against this backdrop that the history of political whiteness took shape and that the fluidity of certain group’s racial identities became apparent.… The Mexican War, slavery and Emancipation, Reconstruction, Indian wars, anti-Chinese agitation, Pacific expansion and popular accounts of Pacific, Asian and African exploration all kept vividly alive the crucial distinction in American political culture dividing white from nonwhite populations.” These not only included African Americans, but also darker South Americans and anyone of differentiable color.
With this said, the perception that Americans are Caucasian is a deeply rooted tradition in America that has been transformed over time, according to Gary Gerstle, University of Maryland historian, in his book American Crucible. For Gerstle, this is because Americanization in the 20th century took on a new sort of “civic nationalism”—an identification that differs greatly from the racially defined “Anglo-Saxon racial nationalism” of the past. Civic nationalism, which was especially strong during World War II, still excluded African Americans. Still, it opened the door for a wider range of groups to claim an American identity.
For example, in the military, 25-year-old Rutgers-Newark student and U.S. Army veteran Karina Arrieta discovered what it meant to be an American. As a first-generation immigrant who came to America at age 17 from Cuenca, Ecuador, she said, “I am an American citizen, naturalized, and very proud.”
Arrieta explained that her identity in America changed when she underwent what she explained as a “grueling military experience” that she shared with other Americans from every racial and ethnic background. Nonetheless, she said, “The military defined who I needed to be. It helped me gain focus of all my goals.”
This was particularly true for Arrieta, who grew up in a bicultural home in Hackensack, N.J., speaking Spanish and English. All members of her family are all naturalized citizens, but she never really felt American, and she maintained certain parts of her culture and cultural identity at home.
Nonetheless, Arrieta did not ever believe that she had to be white in order to be an American. “My parents never said, ‘You are only going to speak Spanish in the house and you’re just going to eat rice and chicken,’ or whatever stereotypical ideas people may have. They told us all that we were American, and we had to be accepted.”
But when Arrieta first arrived from Ecuador she was often discriminated against for her accent and her style of clothing. Furthermore, she did not have a grasp of “little things”—in particular, America’s differing perspectives on “morals in the home and respect for elders,” she said.
At age 18 she enrolled in the army in order to find herself and establish her identity in America. Arrieta said: “The military really made me a different person. It shaped life and ideas differently for me about being an American. However, a lot of people have the misconception that you go in and get brainwashed. But that doesn’t happen. If you allow it to happen, then it will happen. If you don’t, then you keep everything that you want to keep with you—and then some.”
She elaborated: “I think the military really made me think that I was an American because you think of women in other places where you don’t have an opportunity, where you’re not even given a chance. But in America, we are at least given a chance. And so you have to fight for it and be grateful that ‘I got this chance, I got something to fight for.’ So for me, that’s what being an American is. You have everything that you could want, everything that you could achieve. It’s just a matter of taking that path toward freedom, with all the bombs and the flags and everything.”
Rutgers-Newark student Brendan Ibrahim, of Iraqi and Irish descent, also believes that patriotism and a commitment to this country define what it means to be an American. He said: “Being American is not about how much you have or who you are specifically. There are Americans who aren’t only white. There are Americans who come from mixed backgrounds. I think being American is being proud that you believe in freedom and are willing to defend it—not only for yourself but for everyone who lives here.”
The tradition of the American military as a unifying force of citizenship was most strongly recognized in the 1940s during World War II when the United States battled Nazi fascism in Europe and experienced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
According to Gerstle, during World War II President Franklin Roosevelt pushed forward a vision of a civic nationalist state: “During this time, Euro Americans achieved a unity and sense of common American-ness greater than what they had previously known. Full acceptance into American life finally seemed within grasp of Catholics and Jews, especially once the government invigorated the civic nationalist tradition and made the elimination of racial and religious prejudice central to its war aims. African Americans and other minorities, meanwhile, seemed to be making significant strides on their own, at least in terms of pushing civil rights issues higher on the nation’s agenda.” Nonetheless, segregation still remained an issue in the South.
However, American involvement in World War II, even with segregation in its military, invigorated patriotism that resonated through the military and boosted the purchase of war bonds by ethnics who believed they could transcend the myth of whiteness by proclaiming their American patriotism.
This trend could not last forever according to Gerstle. While unity became the watchword of the nation throughout the ’40s, black separatist struggles in the 1960s challenged civic nationalism, leading Americans to question the relationship between ethnicity and national unity.
It was the “black nationalist renunciation of America,” according to Gerstle, that challenged Roosevelt’s ideal vision for America as a civic nation. This was because it reflected the persisting inequality through education and employment experienced by blacks throughout the country asserted by leader Malcolm X in April 1964. X said: “No, I’m not American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.…”
Followed by intense riots that ravaged the nation starting “in New York in 1964 and Los Angeles in 1965, spread by 1968 to Detroit, Newark, Washington, D.C., Chicago and many other American cities,” black Americans believed, according to Gerstle, they were oppressed long enough by white people, and they rebelled against them by abandoning civic nationalism.
However, it was the U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War beginning in 1965 that was the final straw in the breakup of Roosevelt’s civic nationalism in America. According to Gerstle, this was because “protestors tended to see the persistence of racial inequality at home and the war against Vietnamese Communists abroad as two faces of the same problem—the corruption of American ideals and the repressive character of the American state.”
It is from this point in history that the American identity resolves toward disunity in a civic nationalist sense, according to 23-year-old Rutgers-Newark law student Sarah Jane Gurka, who is of Polish and German descent. As a history major at Rutgers–New Brunswick, Gurka fervently continues to read up on America’s past but studies law in order to defend the civil liberties of America’s future.
As Gurka traveled around Europe after graduating from New Brunswick in 2002, she realized how much power and freedom she had with her American passport. But when she returned to New Jersey, her view of America and her role within it also changed.
T
his was because Gurka examined America for the first time in her life from the outside looking in. From that point she realized, “The U.S. is the only country that I would fight for. I mean, when you’re somewhere that isn’t in America and people start putting down your country, it makes you think: If we’re such a bad country, then why does everyone want to move here? Why do millions of people immigrate here every year? It’s the only country where you can be poor as dirt and work your way up. I mean, my whole family was poor.”
Nevertheless, Gurka agrees that discrimination still exists in America if one is not Caucasian. However, coming from an economically disadvantaged and disconnected family, she also sees herself at a loss when it comes to gaining opportunities in her life.
Therefore, Gurka’s view of what it means to be an American is what she jokingly calls “cynical.” She proposes a “capitalist nationalism” that brings into question what it currently means to be an American at Rutgers-Newark.“I think money binds Americans. I think that if you have money it doesn’t matter what the hell culture you are, it doesn’t matter what religion you are. You can be successful. If you don’t have money, then you work hard. And then your success and your worth are measured by how much money you have. We are a capitalist society and all everybody cares about is money. It doesn’t matter what you are. It may be harder for you to get to success if you are a Muslim or a Christian or whatever. But I think once you have the money, you are an American.”
Sociologist Christopher Lasch, in his book The Culture of Narcissism, explores the phenomenon of “capitalist nationalism” in America. He explains, “Indeed, Americans seem to wish to forget not only the sixties, the riots, the new left, the disruptions on college campuses, Vietnam, Watergate, and the Nixon presidency, but their entire collective past.” He believes the concepts of immediate gratification and self-absorption have grown in Americans as a result of comfort and apathy within their isolated surroundings. Furthermore, Americans are not as active as they once were in their nation’s political sphere and therefore are complacent with the immediacy of their lives. Lasch explains, “To live for the moment is the prevailing passion—to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity.”
Of course this does not mean that all students at Rutgers-Newark share the same opinion about what it means to be an American. As these students have shown, there is more than one definition that has significantly changed within the past two centuries.
Rutgers-Newark student Marisa Henriques, of Portuguese descent, is in the process of becoming an American citizen. She agrees that the American identity is constantly being redefined, and that the uniqueness of individuals entering the country, and the circumstances under which they enter, will always lead to more than one answer for what it means to be an American. She said. “I guess the definition for what it means to be an American is believing in freedom, but also knowing that this freedom is going to keep changing as we move forward. As new people from different parts of the world come to this country, they bring new ideas with themselves. And these ideas will in turn shape the way people perceive themselves collectively.
“For me, being American would be living in this country with everybody else from around the world and knowing that the memories, experiences and history that I bring with myself from Portugal make my definition for the American different from everybody else’s.”
Rutgers-Newark student Bianca Gray, of African descent, agrees that there is no way to characteristically define the American. Instead, she feels that being an American implies rights to equality and freedom for everyone in the country, regardless of racial background.
Nevertheless, as someone who considers herself to be a “black American,” Gray said some work still needs to be done in order to convince her that America is truly about equality and freedom. “Black people have the same opportunities as white people,” Gray said, “but still they are limited. For example, when we apply for a job in a corporation, we might have one job opening available to us when there would be 10 for a white person.”
But Rutgers-Newark student Ram Mostafavi, of Iranian and Armenian descent, defines the American more simply. He believes that the number of generations one’s family has been in America determines one’s identity: “I think lineage and your family history determine whether or not you are an American. I would not really consider myself an American because I am a second-generation immigrant. But if your family was born here and they grew up here, then you would fit into the third generation, which is when this country would really be your home, and you would truly be an American.”
Nevertheless, what stands out most is that the definitions of the past still maintain lingering effects today. Racial nationalism, civic nationalism and capitalist nationalism are all found at Rutgers-Newark. Therefore, what it means to be an American may be all of these things as a culmination of history. Or maybe, America and Rutgers-Newark are heading in a new direction altogether.
Nonetheless, the significance of identity is important in America. And without the diversity of these individuals, according to Arrieta, America simply would not work.
“I guess the redefinition of American identity is that people make an identity for themselves, not of certain groups but for everybody that contributes to their specific societies. It’s not only people who are born in the United Sates or wherever, because the only people who are probably native to this land were the native American Indians. So the whole society that we have nowadays was redefined by whatever happened to them once they arrived here and how they feel toward this country. You make your own identity—and you either accept it or you don’t. And I think that a lot of us accept the fact that we live here.”
Omid Farza is a 2004 Honors College graduate of Rutgers-Newark.
