To Be American
For a discussion board, I answered the question: "What it means to be American".
My response may be a little bit cynical, but this is what I experienced first hand.
My Answer to "What it means to be American":
Just last week, I was reading a survey done in different parts of the world, asking if they can easily identify Americans. One answer is “When I’m with an American, I smell freedom”. I quite agree with this statement. If we look at the early 1600 and 1700s, many people came to the US hoping for free religious practice (ex. Puritans, Quakers). When the England started taxing, sending troops, and limiting the freedom of the colonists, we fought for the freedom – and we built our American government based on freedom – as Abraham Lincoln puts it: “A government for the people, by the people”.
Since always, America has been filled with people of different race, culture, and gender – the so called “melting pot”. Being an American, we have to get used to how there’re people who are completely different than yourself around you. The idea is that we can all be accepted the same way no matter what culture, race, or gender we are; but with historical records, we know this is not the case, and many believe it’s still not the case. I’ve lived in Taiwan for half of my life (10 years in Taiwan, 9 years in US); I saw the United States as an outsider and as an insider. In Taiwan, everyone believed that the US is the freest country in the world, where everyone gets equal opportunity - now I know better. Being an American means that you are free to practice any religion, have whatever culture, be whatever race and gender, have whatever opinion, and others can accept you as the way you are, or not, so there is no way everyone can be equal, even if we try.
This brings me to my next point: America operates on capitalist economy, and that simply means as Americans, we need to get used to the fact that rich Americans will be incredibly rich you cannot even visualize it, while the poor will be extremely poor you won’t even know how to help. When large companies comes into the ‘playing field’, this is inevitable. Being an American means you have freedom over your own property, but you won’t ever have security, because no one can singlehandedly control the market.
Thanks to the Bill of Rights and how our government was built, we can have whatever political views we want to have. As an American, you can also freely express your view, but whether people want to listen to you is another story.
Finally, education: we do have some compulsory education laws intact, but not much. Hearing stories of school drop outs, I think one characteristic of being an American is you can decide if you want education or not, but of course this comes with a consequence: we won’t have uniform education levels, and the education standard of the entire country would drop. Being an American means you have freedom of education, but that also means you’ll see uneducated people around you.
To be an American is trying to be free. Being actually free? Well, that’s the “American Dream”.
My response may be a little bit cynical, but this is what I experienced first hand.
My Answer to "What it means to be American":
Just last week, I was reading a survey done in different parts of the world, asking if they can easily identify Americans. One answer is “When I’m with an American, I smell freedom”. I quite agree with this statement. If we look at the early 1600 and 1700s, many people came to the US hoping for free religious practice (ex. Puritans, Quakers). When the England started taxing, sending troops, and limiting the freedom of the colonists, we fought for the freedom – and we built our American government based on freedom – as Abraham Lincoln puts it: “A government for the people, by the people”.
Since always, America has been filled with people of different race, culture, and gender – the so called “melting pot”. Being an American, we have to get used to how there’re people who are completely different than yourself around you. The idea is that we can all be accepted the same way no matter what culture, race, or gender we are; but with historical records, we know this is not the case, and many believe it’s still not the case. I’ve lived in Taiwan for half of my life (10 years in Taiwan, 9 years in US); I saw the United States as an outsider and as an insider. In Taiwan, everyone believed that the US is the freest country in the world, where everyone gets equal opportunity - now I know better. Being an American means that you are free to practice any religion, have whatever culture, be whatever race and gender, have whatever opinion, and others can accept you as the way you are, or not, so there is no way everyone can be equal, even if we try.
This brings me to my next point: America operates on capitalist economy, and that simply means as Americans, we need to get used to the fact that rich Americans will be incredibly rich you cannot even visualize it, while the poor will be extremely poor you won’t even know how to help. When large companies comes into the ‘playing field’, this is inevitable. Being an American means you have freedom over your own property, but you won’t ever have security, because no one can singlehandedly control the market.
Thanks to the Bill of Rights and how our government was built, we can have whatever political views we want to have. As an American, you can also freely express your view, but whether people want to listen to you is another story.
Finally, education: we do have some compulsory education laws intact, but not much. Hearing stories of school drop outs, I think one characteristic of being an American is you can decide if you want education or not, but of course this comes with a consequence: we won’t have uniform education levels, and the education standard of the entire country would drop. Being an American means you have freedom of education, but that also means you’ll see uneducated people around you.
To be an American is trying to be free. Being actually free? Well, that’s the “American Dream”.