Who Are the “Real” Americans?
By: Heather M. Edwards
Tags: Politics, Immigration, Culture, Racism, Race

All rights © David Todd McCarty. Trump rally. Wildwood, New Jersey

What makes someone a “real” American? What does it actually mean to be American? Chances are, whatever you answer, nouns and adjectives, we are all of your answers.

(D) — All of the above.

You are the history of slavery but you are also the thousands of Oregonians lying down on the Burnside Bridge for nine minutes in silence, many with their hands behind their backs.

You are that filthy pavement. You are also the extraordinary engineering and construction of concrete over water. You are modern man and the cigarette butts flicked out car windows, the sunny bike rides and the iridescent oil stains swirling on the surface after the first rain. You are the double rainbows and the pigeons shitting on sidewalks.

You, too, are American.

You are the white law enforcement officers leaving their riot gear behind and kneeling in solidarity. But you are also the Brown people still in cages. You are all of the “free” Brown people lined up for their monthly ICE check-ins. They are scared. You are their immigrant hope for the American dream — and it’s a good dream — but you are their ankle bracelets too. You are their interpreters and their advocates but you are also those stern men without uniforms, the ones who say they’re in charge but wear no nametags and stand with their arms crossed in unmarked buildings.

You are the wall and you are the Statue of Liberty. You are Langston Hughes, George Stinney Jr., and George Floyd. You are the Japanese internment camps but you are also D-Day and Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges.

You, too, are beautiful.

My fellow American, are you angry?

We can’t claim just the good without embracing the shame in our legacy too.

I am angry. I am scared. But just because I wasn’t scared before the protests doesn’t make me any less American than I am now.

Police brutality betrays the American Dream. That’s right. I believe in the American Dream. I come from Catholic immigrants. Fourth generation. I am an Emma Lazarus American. I will always lift my lamp to The New Colossus — never the new fascism.

I am no Toby fucking Keith American. My daddy served in the Army too. And his “daddy” before him. But we don’t believe in shoving a boot up anyone’s ass. That’s been the American way for too long. We can be greater than that. (If you’re not familiar with Keith’s chest-thumping song just know that a grown-ass man still says “Daddy” and I’m paraphrasing his Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue lyrics to disagree with him.)

I, too, am an angry American, Toby Keith. But I think you’re angry for the wrong reasons.

“American” is not an ethnicity. It is an idea. It is a construct that simultaneously means different things to different people. It is a tangled fascia of contradictions and a Venn diagram of philosophy and ideology — the Code of Hammurabi, genocide, revolution, and the Iroquois Constitution, the Great Law of Peace — rugged individualism and community barn raising. It is Susan B. Anthony and Robert E. Lee. The Bible Belt and the Pulse nightclub.

From the Chinese and Irish laborers building the transcontinental railroad to the New York garment district to Cesar Chavez’s unions and strikes, you must sift through the sands of our whitewashed history books, your family traditions, our hero narratives, your grandmother’s recipes and your children’s future to decide what kind of American you are. And what kind of American you want to be.