Another Way to Be an American

"The concept was becoming commonplace in American discourse, marking a stand against what he referred to as "hyphenated Americanism." The persistence of such identities-German American, Italian American, Jewish American-was for Roosevelt "the one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin," creating a "tangle of squabbling nationalities." "The foreign-born population of this country," Roosevelt said, "must be an Americanized population-no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace.""

""If Americanization on the terms that Roosevelt and others had defined failed, what of it? Should immigrants not shape their own lives as they see fit? Should they deny their own cultures and identities? To be open to this sort of cultural diversity was not, Bourne wrote, "to admit the failure of Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean.""

By 1915 a national campaign promoted Americanism, opposing "hyphenated Americanism" and warning that ethnic identities like German American or Italian American threatened unity. Advocates claimed foreign-born residents must become fully Americanized to defend national interests in war and peace. A counterargument in 1916 proposed a trans-national America that embraced immigrant cultural retention rather than enforced assimilation. That view held cultural diversity as compatible with democracy and called for rethinking Americanism to include multiple loyalties. Rising xenophobia and wartime fervor intensified pressure for assimilation, while debates about incomplete assimilation had long-standing roots in public discourse.

Read at The Atlantic