Who Is an American?: Hint: It should not be about ancestry. (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, JUL 26, 2024, Persuasion)
In his acceptance speech for the vice presidency at the Republican National Convention, JD Vance stated that “one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea.” But, Vance asserted, the country was not just a “set of principles … but a homeland.” He went on to illustrate this by referring to his family’s cemetery where he hoped seven generations would be buried in a plot in eastern Kentucky. He said the country welcomed newcomers like his wife’s family from India, but “when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.”Taken at face value, this should not be particularly controversial. American identity has always been based on ideas like liberty and equality, making it what is sometimes labeled a “creedal nation.” But it also is a nation of shared memory and experience. And it is doubtless true that immigrants to the United States need to accept certain basic conditions for being an American, as required by their taking the oath of naturalization during the citizenship ceremony.
The real question is what Vance means by the phrase “on our terms” as a condition for Americanness. I would have thought that “our terms” meant precisely those ideas that constitute the American creed: loyalty to the Constitution and to the rule of law, and acceptance of the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” But Vance seems to be making the point that in addition to these ideas, ancestry is somehow also critical to Americanness. That quality is conferred by your progenitors, and is not simply a matter of your individual choice.