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This. This comment right here.
People on the Motte make a lot of fun, often correctly, of the newest crop of social historians and academics and a lot of the crap they produce. But this comment demonstrates in my eyes quite convincingly that they have something of value buried there.
It’s a classic example of “othering”. American is literally by definition not something you can split up. It refers to nationality, not any sort of subgroup. It refers to a broad group political construct of humans. And deliberately sectioning it off for no good reason only plays into the hands of bad actors. And historically, it’s downright ignorant. America does have a large history of immigration that is literally inseparable from its current makeup.
Source? I disagree, "American" is at least as much cultural as it is political. It's why grinding down immigrant (and native) enclaves was seen as a worthwhile project, why public schools were so massively popular, and why Hollywood was so inmportant both domestically and abroad in shaping what America is. Baseball, Coca-Cola, and apple pie are not political projects, and I absolutely reject any attempt to define them out of any importance to the concept of "America." I'd like to believe that only ivory tower academics could be so disconnected from society that they believe that the only thing American about America is writings on dusty papers.
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