American Identity

In Creating America, Joyce Moser and Ann Watters suggest that, “in understanding American identities, we need to come to terms with unity and division, with separateness and common ground.” It is not easy to understand or define American identity since different people discovered the country. They are people who have arrived with different hopes in life and for different reasons. The argument of Moser and Watters suggests the concept contradictions. From Unity and division, to separateness and common ground, all contradict each other. Another opposites stated above are American, which is considered as public, and identity, which is considered as private. They argue that in order to fully understand American identity, we must understand irony in it. The authors use the opposite relations to make a connection of what America is. I believe that we really should clearly understand our differences and similarities in order to understand what America identity is. After all, America is truly a diverse country, with citizens of different race, ethnicity, and nationality.

As American identity remains undefined, people came up of different metaphors such as the “melting pot” and the “mosaic”. Melting pot is a metaphor for a nation in which different cultures being brought together in a hot pot, melted down, and reformed as a completely new culture. Also, people came up of another metaphor, which is called mosaic. Mosaic refers to a nation of people, representing different races and ethnicities. Both terms closely describe diversity in America, but I consider melting pot as a more accurate metaphor for the country. In my opinion, America is in the state where in citizens are being pressured to differ from their culture, that is why people coined the term “Americanized”, or simply being reformed into American culture. In the past, some people were unaccepted unless you conform. Especially when race is what a true American based on.

According to Dictionary, a nation is...