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DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: PATRIOTISM, NATIONAL ATTACHMENT, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2004
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Until recently, with one historical exception, America was able to take for granted a coherent national culture and identity. Successive waves of immigrants entered a country that assumed that their ultimate assimilation was a desirable, not an oppressive, outcome. The United States did not prove equally hospitable to everyone: some groups endured enormous hardships on their way to a fuller realization of America's great promise of opportunity and freedom. Yet, throughout U.S. history, the dream of common purpose and community propelled the collective desire to live up to this promise and provided the framework within which progress was understood and made.
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I. Introduction
Until recently, with one historical exception, America was able to take for granted a coherent national culture and identity. Successive waves of immigrants entered a country that assumed that their ultimate assimilation was a desirable, not an oppressive, outcome. The United States did not prove equally hospitable to everyone: some groups endured enormous hardships on their way to a fuller realization of America's great promise of opportunity and freedom. Yet, throughout U.S. history, the dream of common purpose and community propelled the collective desire to live up to this promise and provided the framework within which progress was understood and made.1
Arnold Rose, The Negro in America, the condensed version of Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
Only the Civil War really tested the cultural and civic bonds that united America's disparate interests. Now, however, for the second time in its history, the United States faces a real question of how to fulfill its motto, E pluribus unum, that is, “Out of many, one.” Specifically, the U.S. faces the challenge of how to maintain a stable and effective relationship between this unum (the single American polity) and pluribus (the plurality of racial, ethnic, and religious groups that constitute America's citizenry). Unlike the first, the “Second Civil War” does not pit commerce against agriculture, urban centers against rural traditions, or North against South. Rather, the new danger lies in conflicts among people of different racial, cultural, and ethnic heritages, and between those who view America's cultural and political traditions as impediments to liberal democracy and those who think that preserving these traditions, while reforming them, is the best route to an improved society.
Unlike the first Civil War, this “Second Civil War” is not pitting one section of the country against another, but, rather, it is being waged in every section of the United States. This ‘culture war’ is, in reality, a series of wars: history wars, language wars, military culture wars, family definition wars, and so on. As a result, unlike the opposing camps of the first Civil War, today's antagonists cannot take refuge in the primary institutions in their part of the country, that is, their families or their religious, social, cultural, or political organizations. These are precisely the places where the battles are being fought.
The consequences of these conflicts are not to be found in the number of killed or wounded. Rather, they are to be found primarily in the retreat from common ideals, in basic cultural values abandoned or under siege, and in institutions floundering in a sea of shrill and conflicting demands. While America is undeniably more diverse than at any time in its history, it is also undeniably more fragmented, alienated, and polarized. At issue is whether it is possible or desirable to preserve the strengths of a common heritage in the face of insistence from some quarters that America's past has resulted in a culture that should be torn down in order to be built over, rather than one that is worth keeping and building upon.2
Stark illustrations of this viewpoint are found in the responses of some to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, which resulted in the loss of thousands of human lives. Susan Sontag had this to say:
The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others.
In other words, the terrorists' attacks were America's fault.
Sontag is not alone. Michael Lerner opined:
We live in a society that daily teaches us to look out for No. 1, to keep our focus on our own bottom line and to see others primarily as instruments to help us achieve our goals and satisfactions…. And that same insensitivity is institutionalized in the global system whose symbolic headquarters have been the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Yet we rarely look at our lives in these larger terms. We don't feel personally responsible when a U.S. corporation runs a sweatshop in the Philippines or crushes efforts of workers to organize in Singapore. It never occurs to us that when the U.S. (with 5% of the world's population and 25% of the wealth) manages over the course of several decades that shape global trade policies, that increase the disparity between rich and poor countries, this directly produces some of the suffering in the lives of 2 billion people who live in poverty, 1 billion of whom struggle with malnutrition, homelessness and poverty-related diseases.
In other words, there is poverty in the world. The U.S. as a nation and Americans as individuals have not eradicated it; therefore, the chickens have come home to roost and Americans have experienced the understandable (and just?) consequences of their neglect. See Susan Sontag, “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2001, 32; and Michael Lerner, “The Case for Peace,” Time, October 1, 2001, 77.
II. American National Identity and Dual Citizenship
In 1782, the Frenchman Crèvecoeur asked, “What does it mean to be an American?”3
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782), ed. Susan Manning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Some ask: What is American national identity? Others ask: Should there be one? Some worry about how Americans can maintain and further develop common understandings and purpose in a diverse country. Others ask: What useful purpose do such worries serve when Americans live in a “postmodern” era and when their allegiances ought to be global?
The implications of these issues are well illustrated by the increasing incidence of dual citizenship by United States citizens. What, exactly, is dual citizenship? At its most basic level, dual citizenship involves simultaneously holding more than one citizenship or nationality.4
A person in the United States may acquire multiple citizenship in any one of five ways:
1. He or she may be born in the United States to immigrant parents. All children born in the United States are U.S. citizens regardless of the status of their parents (jus soli).
2. A person may be born outside the United States to one parent who is a U.S. citizen and another who is not (jus sanguinis). A child born in the United Kingdom to an American citizen and a British citizen, for example, would be a citizen of both countries.
3. A person may become a naturalized citizen of the United States and this act may be ignored by his or her country of origin. This can occur even if the country of naturalization requires, as the United States does, that those seeking naturalization “renounce” their former citizenship and nationality. In the case of the United States, a new citizen's failure to take action consistent with renunciation carries no penalties, and other countries can, and often do, simply ignore the new oath of allegiance.
4. A person may become a naturalized citizen of the United States and, in doing so, lose her citizenship in her country of origin, but the individual may regain it at any time and still retain U.S. citizenship.
These are the traditional sources of multiple citizenship. Yet, there is now a fifth and potentially far-reaching method of obtaining multiple citizenship, namely, ‘cluster citizenship’. Increasingly, some regions of the world are working toward common citizenship, even while specific countries within these groupings retain the right to regulate citizenship. So, for example, a citizen of Germany and France now shares a common citizenship in the European Union, even though both countries retain a legal right to regulate their own citizenship standards. This follows a similar practice between South American nations and Spain, whereby a number of countries in South America recognize dual citizenship with the latter. Or an Algerian can have dual French citizenship and if he then becomes a naturalized American citizen he would then hold citizenship in three countries.
The United States does not formally recognize dual citizenship, but neither does it take any effective stand, politically or legally, against it. Thus, a person can have all, or many, of the rights and responsibilities that adhere to a U.S. citizen while doing the same in each of the several countries in which she also holds a passport, regardless of the limited length of time or actual absence of residence in the U.S., and regardless of the nature of her economic, cultural, political, or emotional ties to the other countries.
Many people are surprised to learn that an American citizen cannot be deprived of citizenship even if he or she holds elective office in another country, serves as an advisor to a foreign government, votes in another country's elections, or serves in its armed forces—even if that country is actively engaged in hostilities against the United States or its allies. John Walker Lindh, also known as “Suleyman al-faris,” an American who took up arms with the Taliban against the United States in Afghanistan, could have been tried and convicted of treason without ever having had his U.S. citizenship stripped from him. (He pleaded guilty to two lesser charges and received a twenty-year prison sentence.)
The attacks of September 11, 2001, have made Americans more aware of the issue of allegiances and attachments, but this awareness primarily has been focused narrowly on Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants. The national security implications of immigration and national attachment are real, but they are not my concern here.5
I take up the national security implications of dual citizenship and multiple attachments elsewhere. See Stanley A. Renshon, The 50% American: National Identity in a Dangerous Age (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, forthcoming).
This issue comes into sharper focus by looking at some basic numbers. There are now ninety-two countries that recognize, and many of which encourage, dual citizenship for their nationals. This number grew dramatically during the 1990s and is expected to continue to grow.
The numbers involved are quite striking. Historically, of the more than twenty-two million immigrants legally admitted into the United States between 1961 and 1997, almost seventeen million arrived from countries that allow dual or multiple citizenship. Official figures from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for 1994 through 1998 show that seventeen of the “top twenty” immigrant-sending countries (85 percent) allow some form of multiple citizenship. Of the slightly more than 2.6 million immigrants who arrived during this period, some 2.2 million (86 percent) are multiple-citizenship immigrants. And these represent only the “top twenty” immigration sources. Historically, of the more than twenty-two million immigrants legally admitted into the United States between 1961 and 1997, some 16.3 million, or almost 75 percent, are from countries that allow dual or multiple citizenship. A conservative estimate of the number of individuals living in America with, or entitled to, multiple citizenship is well over forty million and rising.
One might ask, So what? My answer is this: The psychological implications and political consequences of having large groups of Americans holding multiple citizenship has rarely, if ever, been seriously considered. It is yet another example of how American political institutions often “make” policy by not paying attention. Yet, the issues raised by these facts go to the very heart of what it means to be an American and a citizen. These facts also hold enormous implications for the integrity of America's civic and cultural traditions, as well as for domestic national security.
Is it really possible to be a fully engaged and knowledgeable citizen of several countries? Is it possible to follow two or more different cultural traditions? Is it possible to have two, possibly conflicting, core identities and associated attachments? And, even assuming that such things are possible, from the standpoint of democratic and cultural functioning, are they desirable?
A. Unlimited identities: A narcissistic conceit
Consider the question of multiple loyalties and American national identity. Most advocates of multiple citizenship subscribe to the “Why not one more?” theory.6
See, for example, Randolph S. Bourne, “Trans-National America,” Atlantic Monthly 118 (1916): 86–97; T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “A Multicultural Nationalism?” American Prospect 9, no. 36 (1998): 80–86; and Peter J. Spiro, “Dual Nationality and the Meaning of Citizenship,” Emory Law Journal 46, no. 4 (1997): 1412–85.
Postmodern theorists see us as comprising a virtually unlimited and replaceable set of selves that can be enacted or abandoned at will. Liberal political theorists and their allies count up all of the categories by which we may be understood and conclude that adding one more, even a different nationality, will make little, if any, difference.
The first basic fallacy underlying these arguments is the notion that the elements that comprise a person's core identity are infinitely malleable. They are not. The second basic fallacy is that all identifications have equal weight. They do not.
The “Why not one more?” position fails to distinguish between the elements of personal identity that form the central core of one's psychology and those that are more peripheral. I am much more a father than a Caucasian, much more a political moderate than an Upper West Sider. And, I am definitely more of an American than most of the other categories in my list.
B. Dual citizenship and American democracy
The idea that individuals can integrate multiple, conflicting basic orientations toward life may well prove a form of cultural conceit. Apparently, it is easy for some in the privileged elite to disregard the primary attachment to their country that other citizens feel and that is crucial to American civic life. In so doing, the elite appear to have confused “sophistication” with a new form of rootlessness. Such people may go anywhere, but belong nowhere.
Such rootlessness is the opposite of civic engagement. The American ideal of civic republicanism is, after all, grounded upon the citizen, not the subject. It has been well understood in political theory that democracy makes many demands on its citizens. They need to be informed about the issues that their societies face, temperate in their deliberations on them, and restrained in actions designed to further their preferred solutions. Living in a country that faces complex and divisive issues arising from its increasing diversity and the threat of catastrophic terror requires even more from its citizens.
Yet, advocates of dual citizenship consistently minimize the difficulties of being a fully engaged, knowledgeable, and effective citizen in one political system, much less two. Some endorse Michael Sandel's view that whether one chooses to carry out one's commitments as an American citizen or as a responsible citizen of another country is a matter of personal moral reflection and choice.7
Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996).
See, for example, Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2001), and the literature related to his argument.
C. Knowledge of two cultures?
The informed citizen is the basic integer of the democratic process. If citizens do not or will not know or cannot understand their country, then a linchpin of democratic government has been lost. Advocates of multiple citizenship assume that it is possible—indeed, desirable—for citizens to be well versed in the culture, history, language, and political debates of more than one country.
Regretfully for those who make this assumption, however, the American public fails badly on indicators of deliberative knowledge. In a 1996 poll, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that “a quarter of those surveyed said they learned about the presidential campaign from [television comedians Jay] Leno and David Letterman, a figure rising to 40 percent among those under 30.”9
Cited in Howard Kurtz, “Americans Wait for the Punch Line on Impeachment: As the Senate Trial Proceeds, Comedians Deliver the News,” Washington Post, January 26, 1999, A1. See also Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
Not surprisingly, perhaps, in view of the above, U.S. schools appear to be losing ground in what might well be considered the most basic element in preparing young persons for their role as citizens, that is, having a foundation of knowledge about the country in which they live and the political institutions that undergird its freedom and way of life.10
See, for example, John J. Patrick, “Political Socialization and Political Education in Schools,” in Stanley Allen Renshon, ed., Handbook of Political Socialization: Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1977), 190–222; and Judith Torney-Purta, “Psychological Theory As a Basis for Political Socialization Research: Individuals' Construction of Knowledge,” Perspectives on Political Science 24, no. 1 (1995): 23–33; Judith Torney-Purta, “Education in Multicultural Settings: Perspectives from Global and International Education Programs,” in Willis D. Hawley and Anthony W. Jackson, eds., Toward a Common Destiny: Improving Race and Ethnic Relations in America (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1995), 341–70; and Richard G. Niemi and Jane Junn, Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
Cited in Margaret Stimman Branson, “The Role of Civic Education,” a report issued as part of the National Standards for Civics and Government (Calabasas, CA: Center for Civic Education, 1998), available on-line at http://www.civiced.org/articles_role.html [accessed May 6, 2003].
The 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Civics Report Card—a major test of subject knowledge for fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students—revealed that “students have only a superficial knowledge of civics and lack depth of understanding.” For example, only 38 percent of eighth graders knew that Congress makes laws; and nearly half of high-school seniors did not recognize typical examples of the federal system of checks and balances.
The 1998 national surveys and Civics Report Card divided scores on knowledge and proficiency into four groups: below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced.12
National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1998 Civics Report Card for the Nation (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1999), 40; available on-line at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/ [accessed May 6, 2003].
Lest this be seen as an issue affecting only public schools with their mixed record of academic performance, the results of a survey conducted at America's most elite colleges is likewise instructive. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group that supports liberal arts education, recently posed a series of high-school level multiple-choice questions to a randomly selected group of graduating seniors at Harvard, Princeton, and Brown.13
Jerry L. Martin and Ann D. Neal, Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 2000). See also Scott Veale, “Word for Word/Pop Quiz; History 101: Snoop Doggy Roosevelt,” New York Times, July 2, 2000, late edition–final, sec. 4, p. 7, col. 1.
Some ask whether it is legitimate to hold immigrants to a standard unmet by citizens, as if any ignorance among the latter is good reason to allow the same among the former. Yet, the question does contain a point. The implications of these data are troubling for Americans and immigrants alike.
Americans do not have and are not acquiring the levels of basic information and proficiencies that are essential to living in and supporting a democratic republican form of government. These deficiencies apparently extend from America's most average students to its “best and brightest.” Accordingly, these findings raise serious questions about whether American children will have the tools needed to shoulder the responsibilities of living in and helping to guide the United States through dangerous and difficult times. These deficiencies certainly do not give much comfort to those who believe that it is no difficult matter to be sufficiently versed in the history, politics, and policies of two or more cultures.
III. American National Identity
To this point, I have used the term ‘national identity’ as if there were some shared understanding of the term and, of course, there is not. Social psychologists who use the term tend to equate it with ‘patriotism’, and ‘patriotism’ with what can only be called ‘aggressive nationalism’. Essentially, this entails agreement with survey items that reflect a tendency to see the world in an “us” versus “them” way and a willingness to take whatever steps are necessary to see that “us” comes out ahead. Needless to say, love of country does not necessarily require a citizen to be quick to war, or to support one's country regardless of what it does. What ‘patriotism’ does actually mean is a matter to which I will turn further below.
Others, being both outside of psychology and unfamiliar with it, fare no better. Eytan Meyers defines what he terms a “national identity approach” to immigration policy as focusing on several factors:
The unique history of each country, its conceptions of citizenship and nationality, as well as debates over national identity and social conflicts within it, shape its immigration policies…. Much of this literature can be characterized as historical sociology or political sociology, and it builds upon social and psychological theories, and concepts such as national identity, nation building, prejudice, alienation and social closure.14
Eytan Meyers, “Theories of Immigration Policy: A Comparative Analysis,” International Migration Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 1245–82.
If this sounds like a hodgepodge of different terms with little theoretical specification, Meyers is perhaps to be excused. After all, he is not a psychologist and even the father of the term ‘identity’, Erik Erikson, was extremely vague about its meaning.15
In one place, Erikson defines “ego identity” as “that which consists of role images.” Shortly thereafter, he defines “self-identity” as what “emerges from experiences in which temporarily confused selves are successfully reintegrated into an ensemble of roles which also secure social recognition.” Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 211. Elsewhere, he defines “self-identity” as “the more or less actually obtained, but forever to be revised, sense of the self within social reality.” Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: Norton, 1980).
If this sounds somewhat vague, it is. Erikson himself recognized its ambiguity: “I have tried out the term identity … in many different connotations…. Identity in its vaguest sense suggests … much of what has been called the self by a variety of workers… .”
The idea that the character or psychology of a people is related to its capacity for particular kinds of politics has a long history. How, exactly, to understand this link has had its share of false starts. National character studies, which were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, tried to find antecedents of political institutions and cultural practices in very early childhood experiences. The swaddling of Russian children, it was said, made them vulnerable to a lack of individual initiative.
Along similar lines, the authoritarian German family had made German citizens susceptible to a strong father figure. Members of the early culture-and-personality school often wrote as if personality were culture writ large, and they viewed the former through the powerful but scarcely refined lens of early psychoanalytic theory. Those uncomfortable with a view of internal psychology as little more than a barely contained caldron of urges set for life in instinctual stone had many legitimate questions to ask.
In 1963, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, in their classic study, The Civic Culture, approached national psychology and its relationship to political practice in a different way.16
Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).
The question of what are the sources of civic integration and national attachment is, of course, related to the question of what public psychologies are consistent with democratic practice. Yet, it is also a very separable question, and a critical one, whether the United States has sufficient sources of cohesion and attachment among its diverse population to sustain the level of national integration that is necessary for democracy to prosper.
Americans do live in a country where there is intricate and increasing interconnectedness, but far less relatedness. Robert Putnam is right, Americans are less connected. They are, in his words, “bowling alone.”17
Putnam, Bowling Alone.
The primary response to this issue has been institutional. The consensus has been that Americans need to revitalize their civic networks. Thus, the U.S. has seen White House Conferences on “Character Building for a Democratic Civil Society,” a National Commission on Civic Renewal, and many thousands of other initiatives designed to mend the frayed fabric of American civic culture.
There is much to say about these important efforts, but here I want to point out that they proceed on the idea that public psychology will follow civic institutions; that is, if you improve the civic infrastructure, then you will increase individuals' sense of connectedness and presumably support for America's democratic institutions. This may well be the case, but the likelihood of accomplishing such change during America's “Second Civil War” is a matter I have not seen analyzed.
At any rate, I would like to approach the matter from a more directly psychological perspective and ask the following questions: What is the basis of a person's attachment to his or her country? And, once we arrive at an answer, what are the implications of this understanding for the very large number of immigrants who have chosen to make the United States their home?
A. The creed
Some theorists of immigration and American identity believe that they already have the answer to both of the above questions. It is ‘the creed’. In the view of theorists from both the Left (Michael Walzer) and the Right (Samuel Huntington), the national creed is all that Americans need to be united.18
Michael Walzer, What It Means to Be an American (New York: Marsilio, 1996). Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981).
The agreement is illusory. One is reminded here of the classic study that found that almost every American supported free speech, until the first time he or she was asked about a specific application of the principle that was controversial. Of course, consensual agreement by itself is no necessary reflection of desirable democratic process.19
Alan Wolfe's in-depth study of Americans and their approach to moral conflict found a new ethic that can be summed up by what has become almost an eleventh commandment: “Thou shall not judge.” He attributes it to an emphasis on pragmatism rather than values in making tough personal decisions, a reluctance to second-guess the tough choices of other people, and ambivalence or confusion as the “default” moral position. See Alan Wolfe, One Nation, After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think about God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
No, neither the creed nor the willingness to profess it will rescue us from our difficulties for several reasons. First, it is too abstract. People can agree with many things in the abstract, but American politics takes place in the contentious, increasingly ferocious, here and now of real problems and policy debates.
Second, the creed is almost entirely cognitive. It is in the realm of the mind, not the emotions. Yes, one can have positive attachments to abstract aphorisms, but they are not the bonding glue of national attachment. One does not die for the aphorism “Democracy is the best form of government.” One dies, if so inclined, for a particular manifestation of democracy.
Third, an emphasis on the creed almost completely neglects the importance of psychological characteristics that can and do unite Americans as a people. The creed suggests that Americans are bonded together because they share support at the stratospheric level of what amount to cultural clichés. Yet, there is another level at which Americans share something very fundamental that helps bind them together: their psychologies.
B. American psychology
I am not suggesting that there is some modal American character of the type that anthropologists tried to ascribe to Russians, Germans, and others. (Recall my discussion above of the “early culture-and-personality school.”) What I do want to suggest, however, is that from the earliest days of America, the country has flourished because of the particular motivations of its immigrants, and they and their offspring have been influenced, in turn, by institutions and practices that call forth and reinforce these very same motivations.
I have dealt at greater length elsewhere with the evidence to support this view,20
Stanley A. Renshon, “American Identity and the Dilemmas of Cultural Diversity,” in Stanley A. Renshon and John Duckitt, eds., Political Psychology: Cultural and Crosscultural Foundations (London: Macmillan, 2000), 285–310.
American national psychology is built on the motivational foundation of those who first immigrated to the United States. They were looking for a new and better life, one in which their skills could be put into the service of their ambitions. Others came looking for the freedom to express their religious views and the opportunity to build a society consistent with them.
Freedom and opportunity came together in a particular way in the religious colonies, but in quite another way in those colonies dominated by immigrants searching for economic advancement. In neither sort was freedom or opportunity an isolated, absolute value. In the case of colonists seeking religious freedom, it was embedded in a community context, and in the case of those seeking economic opportunity, it coexisted with a strong belief in public social and political equality.
The common denominator among all immigrants was first of all ambition and, secondly, courage. Those who came to the United States gave up familiar surroundings, which was no small matter, and in doing so, took large risks. No written report or rumor could adequately prepare new immigrants for what they faced. Those who were able to pursue and fulfill their ambitions for a better life had to be able to persevere through hard times and circumstances—of which there were many.
The physical realities of frontier conditions required a psychology of courage, independence, and self-reliance. Seizing opportunity required talent and hard work. America was rich in promise, but only for those willing and able to survive, persist, and thrive in difficult circumstances.
Those who prospered had to adapt. The past could no longer operate as a ready crutch. Each new challenge demanded its own solution. Thus, the early Americans were forced by necessity to honor the present more than the past and to solve problems innovatively rather than apply timeless principles. In short, forward-looking thinking became a necessity as well as an outlook.
Often having nothing more to rely on than their own ingenuity, and dealing with novel circumstances, Americans became pragmatists: they focused on what worked. America was not at first a country of revolutionary innovations, but in many ways pragmatism did prove ultimately to be revolutionary. At any rate, it was successful, and repeated success led to a sense of can-do optimism.
Some who undertook this new life hoped that they would succeed. Others were sure that they would. However, beneath both sets of feelings was a conviction that their efforts would count, and their success—if it came—would be a matter of hard work and luck (or providence), but not of luck alone. In short, these people had an expectation of personal effectiveness, which, when combined with hope or faith, gave them confidence and an optimistic outlook.
Therefore, we can say that Americans—at least those who had the most chance to be successful—shared a variety of characteristics. They were ambitious risk takers, with the courage of their aspirations. They were willing to endure enormous hardships, not once or twice, but repeatedly. The life they left behind, as bad as it was, must have looked good on occasion, but they persevered for the chance to realize their ambitions. “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again” became an aphorism for the generations.
The early Americans also needed resilience. America is often called the land of second chances, and for good reason. The opportunity for reinvention accompanied the risks of failure in a free, capitalist society. You could try, try again, but you first needed to be able to pick yourself up off the floor to do so.
Success in the United States was substantially oriented to the future and the present, rather than the past. Big ambitions were, of necessity, coupled with a pragmatic bent. What counted was what worked.
Above all, people were the authors of their own salvation, both in religious and secular terms. Individual effort, not fate, became the key to success. “God helps he who helps himself” became another aphorism for the ages.
My point here is not that every American exhibits high levels of each of these psychological elements. David Miller quotes David Hume as remarking that the vulgar think that everyone who belongs to a nation displays its distinctive traits, whereas “men of sense” allow for exceptions. Miller suggests thinking of national traits in terms of Wittgenstein's metaphor of a thread whose strength does not reside in a single strand running through the length of a garment, but rather in the overlapping of many fibers.21
David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 26–27.
What I am suggesting is that the United States was built on the particular combination of psychological elements that I have just described. Further, these elements have defined America's national psychology for the past two-hundred-plus years of its existence.
These elements of American national psychology have constituted the psychological center of gravity for American national culture. They have provided individuals with the psychological keys with which to unlock the riches of opportunity and to fulfill their responsibilities as free citizens. By providing opportunity, America has fostered ambition. By encouraging freedom, America has placed a premium on being prepared to make use of it.
Subsequent generations of Americans did not acquire these psychological capacities in a vacuum. Institutions were geared to develop and support them. The United States was not a feudal society, so one's station in life could advance or decline. As a result, families prepared their children for success, however that might be defined. Since a central part of success was seen to be hard work and its associated characteristics (the expectation of accomplishment through effort, setting and meeting goals, balancing responsibilities and pleasure), families had an incentive to instill the virtues and necessities that undergird success: diligence, seriousness of purpose, perseverance, and resilience.
The work of the family as a psychological preparatory institution was supplemented and reinforced by other American institutions—most notable the school and the workplace. Schools taught subjects, but in doing so reinforced the development of the habits of success already encouraged by the family. Material had to be mastered, tests passed, and focus developed. The national habit of acquiring ever more sophisticated skills and knowledge for the eventual rewards that they were assumed to bring grew over time—from minimal schooling early in America's history to today's nearly universal expectation of at least a high school diploma, and typically more.
All of these were considered preparatory for “making it,” and one did so in the world of work and opportunity. Here, too, the psychological lessons that began in childhood and continued through school played a large role. Ambition, assumption of prudent risks, the development of habits associated with hard work, and the ability to sustain oneself through the vicissitudes of capitalist life all helped to foster and reaffirm the peculiarly American psychology.
These interlocking and related mechanisms of American national psychology are painted here in broad strokes. Moreover, the point obviously is not that every American acquired and developed these characteristics to a substantial degree. What does seem clear is that the basic cultural foundations of American society—freedom and capitalist opportunity—provided the psychological setting within which Americans lived and prospered. There is, then, a necessary relationship between America's national culture and the psychological characteristics that foster success within it.
Does this mean that national integration of immigrants ought to take place primarily at this basic psychological level? Not wholly, but it does play a role. Americans applaud immigrants who show ambition, who try to achieve work-related excellence, who are anxious to move toward self-sufficiency, and who remain pragmatic and optimistic about themselves and their new circumstances. Americans can appreciate the new immigrants' struggles to maintain community as they pursue their ambitions. Americans can appreciate their strivings toward achievement and self-reliance. And Americans can appreciate immigrants' desire for political, economic, and social equality. Americans do so understanding that, from a democratic perspective, no person is inherently better than any other. Yet, Americans also recognize that the United States allows economic, political, and social disparities that come from differences in skills, ability, and desire, as well as from the (hopefully) transitional circumstances of finding and building a new life.
Every country rewards the psychology that it favors, and America is no different in this respect. This is why many generations of American immigrants have managed to build successful personal and community lives.
We have examined two important factors: creed and psychology. Are these sufficient to develop the sense of attachment and integration that is so necessary to democratic functioning in an increasingly diverse country? No. There is one more absolutely essential element that helps to unite and bond both the creed and American psychology: patriotism.
C. Patriotism
Patriotism is the missing link in discussions of American national identity and integration. It is the missing link in discussions of civic integration. It is the glue that bonds together American psychology with support of the American creed. And, it is the emotional amalgam that makes real diversity possible.
Patriotic feelings cannot be legislated. However, they can certainly be encouraged, and they can most certainly be retarded by indifference to how well new citizens become integrated into, and attached to, American society.
Most discussions of patriotism portray it as a simple or a simplistic and aggressive love of country, but there are many definitions of patriotism. While people clearly hold strong views about patriotism, there is little in the way of sustained theory.
We know very little about patriotism and its emotional sibling, loyalty. Duty, honor, and country are stirring ideals, carried out, often at high cost, by small groups of dedicated Americans. However, these ideals are not the sustained coin of the larger society (post–September 11th being a marked departure). Even the words ‘loyalty’ and ‘patriotism’ set off more arguments than quests for knowledge.
I realize that words have power, and this is why I refer to ‘national attachments’ rather than ‘loyalty’. Yet, I have come to believe that, regardless of which term is used, the phenomenon to which it refers is more than a simple love of country or a thoughtless, aggressive defense of it. This essay is not the setting in which to spell out such a theory, but I think that it is reasonable to suggest that patriotism is much more complicated than either its supporters or its critics allow.
I see American patriotism as including a warmth and affection for, a commitment to, a responsibility toward, a pride in, and support of the United States—its institutions, its way of life and aspirations, and its people. Love may be a summary term that covers all these things, but I think that each of these elements is discrete.
It would take some time to spell out the bonding implications for immigrants that come with these various forms or elements of attachment. A warmth and affection for one's country, for example, is a primary form of attachment and can obviously help individuals to weather the vicissitudes of immigrant (or even established) life in the United States. Some of these elements may be present in incipient form even before an immigrant arrives on U.S. soil. Others may take time to develop. But all of them are affected in some way by the pull of dual citizenship and dual loyalty.
IV. Dual Citizens: What's Different?
Advocates of dual citizenship can point, with some justification, to the fact that there have always been persons with multiple national attachments among the American populace. Yet, there are profound differences between earlier periods of mass immigration and now. Consider the hyphenated Irish-American or Jewish-American identity. Does the former, for example, mean that such a person is an Irish-American, an Irish-American, an Irish-American, or an American of Irish descent? Each of these possible permutations reflects a psychological identification with, and arrangement of, some of the basic building blocks that form one's identity.
It seems very unlikely that, either in the past or in the present for that matter, most Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans would see their “home country” identifications as either equal to, or more important than, their American identity. Moreover, if any of their fellows from the “old country” were to suggest that they should more strongly identify with it, most would likely respond clearly, straightforwardly, and without much self-doubt: no. They might be interested in some aspects of their “home countries,” but most, if not all, would say that they were Americans first and primarily.
This is less and less the case today. Consider a hypothetical scenario in which Irish-American and Jewish-American equivalents for ‘black’ or ‘Chicano’ (‘Hispanic’) were available. Let us call them ‘white’ and ‘European’. In fact, these terms, while available, have never been embraced by Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans. To embrace them would effectively decouple their personal identities from their preferred identification with America.
Can anyone seriously argue that such a “decoupling” of identity would be chosen by Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans, as sociologist Rubén Rumbaut found was the case in second-generation Americans of Mexican descent? He found that almost half of respondents from this group selected a racial or pan-ethnic identity, and that another eight percent would select an identity exclusively allied with their parents' national origin.22
Rubén Rumbaut, “Assimilation and Its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality,” International Migration Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 923–60.
The claims of states on their dual citizens has led to conflict in the past, and it is surely true that we are not likely to go to war with Great Britain over the kidnapping of our and their dual citizens, as was the case in 1812. Yet, while international military conflicts that engage or test the loyalties of dual citizens in the United States cannot be ruled out, the real problem is not war but cohesion.
Do dual loyalties equal conflicted loyalties? Loyalty is a complex concept and an even more complex emotion. Psychologically, loyalty is basically an attachment to, a sense of identification with, and feelings toward a person, place, or thing. These can run from the shallow to the profound, from the episodic to the immutable, and from the singular to the diverse.
Primary nationality, the one that we are born into, begins to take root very early, indeed before a child is born. In most cases, the history and practices that bring together a particular couple are themselves influenced by the cultural expectations and understandings that the individuals acquired while growing up in their country and culture. How they prepare for their child and how they relate to him are also conditioned by the same factors. Of course, the parents speak to the child in their own language, which is soon to be his, and, as he grows, they serve as guides through and interpreters of the cultural landscape that he must learn and traverse. Being embedded in, and attached to, one's country of origin begins early.
A very large number of studies of children, dating back many decades, document that children begin to incorporate the symbols of their nationality and country very early, and they are deeply resistant to change. Why is this significant? It is significant because loyalty to a nation and feelings of attachment to it begin at a primal age and become increasingly consolidated as a child develops. Why are people willing to die for their country? Why do great national accomplishments bring pride? Why do the symbols of a country—such as its flag or constitution—carry such great emotional weight and political power?
The early formation of national attachment explains why a reporter for The New York Times, covering the attitudes of African immigrants to the United States, could write,” Many African immigrants say that whether they stay here for two or 20 years, Africa is, and always will be, home.”23
Amy Waldman, “Killing Heightens the Unease Felt by Africans in New York,” New York Times, February 14, 1999, late edition–final, sec. 1, p. 1. col. 4.
Bruce Finley, “Hearts Torn between Old, New Worlds,” Denver Post, August 23, 1998.
Or, consider the reactions of some Mexican immigrants who were interviewed about whether they would apply for U.S. citizenship in light of California's Proposition 187. (Among other things, and before a federal judge overturned major portions of the law as unconstitutional, Proposition 187 excluded illegal aliens from public schools and public social services, including nonemergency health care. Immigrants seeking such taxpayer-funded services were required either to “obtain legal status or leave the United States.”) Some of the answers given by Mexican nationals regarding whether they would become U.S. citizens included the following: “Never, I was born in Mexico, raised in Mexico, and I want to die in Mexico …”; “[G]iving up my Mexican citizenship is like giving up a child of mine …”; and “It's as though I'm betraying my country, my people, and my culture… .”25
Alfredo Corchado and Kendall Anderson, “Mexicans' Interest in Citizenship Up; Proposition 187 Prompts Increase,” Dallas Morning News, December 1, 1994, 27A.
In one of the few systematic, in-depth studies of the identifications of Muslim immigrants with their country of origin and with the United States, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, an Iranian doctoral student at Harvard University, found that Muslim immigrants are extremely ambivalent about the United States. The study found that “a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have strong ties or loyalty to the United States.” Indeed, GhaneaBassiri's questionnaire showed that more than 50 percent of his sample of immigrant Muslims in Los Angeles and almost a third of Americans who had converted to Islam felt more allegiance to a foreign country than to the United States.26
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Competing Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Angeles (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).
V. Conclusion
The basic question raised by the findings discussed in the previous section has little to do with disloyalty and much to do with conflicted loyalties. At the center of what should be a vigorous debate is the most profound question: Should the United States, as a matter of policy, condone or encourage multiple loyalties, or should the nation's energies be focused on ensuring that new arrivals and citizens alike are encouraged to take steps that truly connect them with the United States?
Becoming an American is not simply a matter of agreeing that democracy is the best form of government. It is a commitment to a psychology and the way of life that flows from it. Moreover, it ultimately entails an appreciation of, a commitment to, and, yes, even a love for all that the United States stands for and provides.
It is easy to view America instrumentally. It is a place of enormous personal freedom and great economic opportunities. A 2001 study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that eighty-two percent of respondents agreed with the following statement: America is a technologically advanced nation that we can learn from. Yet, only thirty-five percent agreed with this statement: America is an example of freedom that we can learn from.27
Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, and Bryan T. Froehle, The Mosque in America: A National Portrait (Washington, DC: Council on American-Islamic Relations, 2001). Available on-line at http://www.cair-net.org/mosquereport [accessed July 10, 2003].
America has always recognized that many immigrants arrive seeking treasures that are in such short supply in so many of the countries from which they emigrate. The fear that self-interest will come at the expense of developing genuine appreciation for and emotional connection to the U.S. has, I think, always been the subtext of attempts to ensure that new arrivals “become American.”
America reached its present state of political, economic, and social development by providing extraordinary personal freedom and abundant economic opportunity. In doing so, America leveraged personal ambitions as a tool to transform individuals' social and economic circumstances. In the process, it helped them develop and reinforce the psychological elements that are necessary not only for personal success but also for the civic prudence required of citizens in a democracy. An emphasis on consistency, hard work, delay of immediate gratification, prudence, pragmatism, and optimism are among these psychological elements.
This has been the historical trade-off of American receptivity to immigration: America takes the chance that it can leverage immigrants' self-interest and transform it into authentic commitment. Immigrants agree in coming to the United States to reorient themselves toward their new lives and away from their old ones. This involves some basic proficiencies, such as learning to be at home with English and understanding the institutions and practices that define American culture and life. In the process, and as immigrants become more successfully integrated, they are better able to reflect on the ways in which their search for freedom and opportunity fits in with the history, with all of its vicissitudes, that has shaped the idea and promise of America.
It is only at this point of deeper reflection that the transformation from self-interest to genuine emotional connection can be made. Thus oriented toward their new home, immigrants can become part of the fabric of American cultural and political life. Leaving a life behind, even a life that one wanted to leave, is, of course, difficult. Yet, generations of earlier immigrants thought the sacrifice worthwhile.
Dual citizenship and its associated bifurcation of attention and commitment change this traditional and successful recipe for integration. Immigrants increasingly come from countries that encourage dual citizenship. These nations' purposes in doing so are primarily self-interested. It may be to ensure a continuing flow of financially critical remittances from emigrants working in the United States. Or, it may be to organize their nationals to further their “home country's” policy preferences, such as amnesty for those nationals who entered the United States illegally or the support of bilingual policies that help to maintain and facilitate ties to the “home country.” Whatever the specific purposes, sending countries are increasingly mobilizing to retain their emigrants' emotional attachment and to deepen their commitment to the “home country.” Modern technology and travel facilitate this quest.
These developments set the stage for conflicts of interest among new immigrants from different countries (many of whom retain deep attachments to their nations of origin), and between new immigrants and their more established countrymen (many of whom have become U.S. citizens). Given the geographical distribution of new immigrants, it is possible that whole states and certainly some localities will be comprised of a substantial portion of dual citizens with active and deep connections to their countries of origin. Will these immigrants be willing or able to set aside these connections in favor of their community's interest or America's national interest? Whether this is possible as a matter of psychology or politics remains to be seen.
To a democracy—especially one facing issues of the acceptance of its basic institutions and cultural premises—the costs of allowing large numbers of immigrants to retain dual citizenship, and thus multiple loyalties, are likely to be substantial. Immigrants' increasing capacity to utilize technology to maintain these ties, coupled with pressure on them from their “home countries” to do so, means that the costs of dual citizenship will only escalate in the future. Moreover, in a time characterized by serious concerns regarding the decline of social capital and its implications for American civic life and the dangers of catastrophic terrorism, the split attachments of large numbers of dual citizens ought to be a source of deep concern.
No country, and certainly no democracy, can afford to have large numbers of citizens with shallow national and civic attachments. No country facing divisive domestic issues arising out of its increasing diversity, as America does, benefits from large-scale immigration of people with multiple loyalties and attachments. No country, striving to reconnect its citizens to a coherent civic identity and culture, can afford to encourage its citizens to look elsewhere for their most basic national attachments.
Footnotes
I would like to thank my fellow contributors to this volume and the editors for helpful comments.
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