The New American Identity, Essay Example

There have probably always been two new American identities, if we think of America as a nation of immigrants and disregard the many native old American identities. Each immigrant wave came with at least two generations — parents and their children, those either already born or soon to be born. Each generation saw themselves as Americans in ways different from the other generation. The children saw themselves not as immigrants but as Americans, even when a “foreign” language was spoken at home. (Later, some of those children or their own children saw themselves as hyphenated Americans — Irish-American, Italian-American, African-American, etc.) Meanwhile their parents who remembered the old country saw themselves as immigrants who wanted to become Americans. Many of them learned English as best they could and strove to look and act like “Americans”, if only in the wearing of “American” clothes and (for men) the shaving off of foreign-looking beards. This aspect is shown in a movie I once saw, called Hester Street (1975). When an established and stylish young immigrant husband greets his just-off-the-boat wife from the old country, he is appalled by her old-country clothes.

Over a century ago, adult immigrants worked to lose their old identities and to submerse themselves in the American melting pot. That is probably because back then, immigration for most was a one-way ticket. But today’s legal immigrants can easily travel back and forth. There is just no need to change identities so radically anymore. Still, the youngest immigrants always become “Americanized”, a word representing the same new identity to different generations.