Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The "American" Family
In "America and I" her first job she got was working as a servant for an "American" family. I like that she puts quotes on "American" when she describes them, because they were immigrants just like her, from the same type of village, but they have been "Americanized." They wore American clothes and had American jobs and lived in an American house. They treated her terribly and exploited her. What does that say about the relationship between an immigrant worker and an "American"? What is an "American" to an immigrant?
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I like your point. I've actually thought about this on several occasions. what is an American anyway? Really we are all immigrants of some foreign country unless you're 100% Native American. But I think in this context being American is being someone who has established a life in the U.S, they speak English and have jobs and families and are usually White (I say this because I feel like anyone who had any sort of physical attribute that separated them from Caucasians wasn't ever really seen as an American but was burdened as always being an immigrant). I think an "American" to an immigrant is someone who has what immigrants wanted to have and immigrants had to spend a while learning how to fit in in America in order to become "American"
ReplyDeleteWhat I like about this question is that we have almost exclusively discussed what an immigrant is to an "American" yet haven't really addressed the reverse. To an immigrant, I think an "American" in general becomes the privileged. Even though America is a nation of immigrants, an American has been Americanized. They no longer speak with their native accent, they dress in American clothing, and they have melted into American society. The immigrants are considered 'the other' thus American becomes those that do not distinguish themselves as other.
ReplyDeleteI like your question for a number of reasons. I don't think there really is a clear cut definition of being "American" and there never will be. Everyone here came from another country except for the original Native Americans, so it makes no sense to abandon initial cultural traits and life, then become apart of another sort of "made up" culture. If the goal was to classify everyone as the same thing, they should simply just classify them as people and nothing more, then the line of division would cease to exist.
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