Essay On American Identity

“American Identity” A persons identity is defined by dictionary.com as the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another. With that being said the words “American Identity” just does not fit right because America is filled with so much diversity. America is one of the least homogeneous countries in the world, in fact, statistics show that by 2043 there will be no majority in America as the white population will fall below 50% (Cooper). So keeping that in mind, classifying someone as non-American because of the way they speak is a fallacy. This type of fallacy is called the name-calling fallacy, where people associate a person or idea to a negative symbol. America is filled with people who speak differently, however, they are still considered members of the country because they live there. America does not limit its people to one specific idea or quality, it welcomes people with a variety of different beliefs. People should not be looked at as non-American because of the way they talk. America is a diverse country full of people of different races and people who speak different languages. In fact, according to one study 61.8 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English (Kasperowicz). So when talking about what makes someone American nobody can specifically define what that is because we are all different. The only thing we can specify on about being an American is living in America. Just because someone speaks Spanish and lives in America does not make that person non-American. A lot of people have come to the conclusion that because someone speaks differently than them they have different ideas and beliefs, but that is not entirely true. Someone could have the same beliefs as someone else but the way they vocalize those beliefs is different, that does not necessarily make two people different from one another. People are constantly moving into America in search of a new life. Every year, in fact, about one million immigrants move into America (Jacobson). Once a person has settled in and is now officially living in America, they are technically considered Americans at that point. But society now has this convoluted idea that in order for immigrants to truly be seen and looked at as Americans, they have to complete a test in order to become U.S. citizens. These tests that immigrants have to take test their knowledge of Americas history as well as the English …show more content…
From this definition of culture, we see that it lists behaviors and beliefs. Speaking Spanish or any other language is not a behavior or a belief, it rather communicates a cultures ideas. Language to cultures is just the way the people express these ideas vocally it is how they communicate their thoughts to one another. Language is not a part of a persons cultural identity because there are people in America that speak different languages, but who still share similar beliefs they just vocalize them differently but in their minds it is the same thought. What is a part of a persons cultural identity is their race, nationality, gender, location, age, gender, sexuality, history and religious beliefs (“What is a Cultural Identity,” 2015). The way we speak is not a belief in its self, you do not have to speak English in order to have beliefs similar to Americans because that is all contained in the thoughts in your mind not the within the words you