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What is the American Identity?                                                                                    

Posted at: Jun/09/2009 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Watching America,

To me, this is one of the easier questions to respond to. I feel that the primary aspect of our national identity is a “Love of the Underdog”. I know, it sounds more like a theme to a movie. If you look at our own history, the origins of this Love of the Underdog are pretty apparent.

From 1754-1763 the French along with their Indian allies waged a war on the then British colonies of North American. Many of the colonists were proud to fight against the French and considered themselves loyal British subjects. The British Empire was fighting wars on a number of continents and the cost of this global military effort was substantial enough to force tax increases in all of its colonies. A mere 15 years after the French and Indian wars, under the burden of overwhelming taxes our own colonial revolution for independence began. The reason I bring up this history lesson is to put things in perspective. Our 13 colonies were a relatively small outpost for their day. The British Empire of that day was the ‘world power’. I can’t emphasize that enough. Our colonies going up against the British Empire of that day was equivalent to a mouse deciding to do battle with the cat. Even the French who looked for every opportunity to harass the British would not help us until we had finally won one substantial battle. As we all know, despite the overwhelming odds we won our independence from the British which is truly a story of the underdog coming through. I feel strongly that we have adopted this character as part of our identity. It is very easy for American’s to adopt an underdog cause. We love our movies and books where despite overwhelming odds the underdog triumphs in the end. I am also aware that our love of the David verses the Goliath also has us periodically adopting the wrong team, but that is fodder for another day.

I mentioned earlier “primary aspect”, that is because I believe there is a second component to our American Identity. I feel that the second component of our identity is "Optimism". This may seem strange, but if you speak with individuals from other countries this becomes a reoccurring theme when talking about American’s. I suppose you can’t take on challenges like Afghanistan, Bosnia or Iraq without an optimism bordering on arrogance. Optimism and a love of the underdog can easily be argued as two sides of the same coin, they definitely dovetail into the proverbial “can do anything” attitude. This is not just an identity we project to other countries. Whether the goal of going to college, owning a home, achieving some high level of professional success, we attack our lives with the belief all things are obtainable despite the measurable fact that they are becoming less and less so.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t believe these behaviors are wrong. Being optimist and adopting what appears to be lost causes will periodically lead to shining achievements. Conversely, giving up on these attitudes means accepting complacency and mediocrity. If we don’t strive for more, we doom ourselves to less and less and that is just unacceptable.

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