What does it mean to be an American?
It’s not an idle question. In fact, this July 4 – exactly 250 years after our nation’s founders chose to swap out the role of “subject” for the role of “citizen” – the concept of who we are, and aren’t, is the red-hot center of a loud debate.
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Some argue that being American is about believing in certain ideals, the notions of equality and liberty that are spelled out (or at least nodded to) in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. Others argue that being American is about other stuff, too, including a shared culture and history.
And while the debate over those concepts can feel infuriating or, at times, potentially dangerous, nobody gets to have the final word. If anything, the debate itself is the answer.
So, sure, the question of what America is may be unanswerable, but the right to haggle about it, endlessly, feels as American as America gets.
Which is why, this Fourth of July, we’re asking a few different people, with varying experiences in this country, to share their answers to the not-so-simple question.
Here’s how some Americans explain themselves.
The teacher
Matthew Dietze, a 24-year-old social studies teacher at Suzanne Middle School in Walnut, first “fell in love with history” in high school, in Bakersfield. And he kept that feeling alive in college, at Biola University in La Mirada.
As a history major, he said, most of his research focused on U.S. history. And the lessons from that, Dietze said, still shape his ideas about civics and his role as a citizen.
“For me, being an American really is about being a participant in the project of making a more perfect union, as corny as that might sound. I really think this country was built on a promise to make a republic that serves the people.
“Now, the definition of ‘people,’ and who gets included as an ‘American,’ have changed over time,” he added.
“But the privileges and responsibilities of being an American really haven’t.”
Voting and staying informed, he said, are some of those responsibilities. So is using the political process to “advocate for your community.”
“I’m a big Civil War fan, and something Lincoln said about nobody being truly free until everybody is free really resonates. The idea behind our democracy is that it’s built for the people. It’s not an individual project. So, when you advocate for your community, not just yourself, you ensure that the government is responsible to all the people.
“There’s power in that.”
The kid
Jayden Kuan hasn’t had a long time to get this whole “American” thing down. He’s 10, a soon-to-be fifth grader in Irvine.
Still, he’s got some thoughts. And, recently, he pondered those before he entered the America’s Field Trip contest, a government-sponsored event held this spring that asked kids from grades 3 through 12 the following question: “What does America mean to you?”
Jayden’s answer, told through an essay and a drawing, took first prize. As a result, he’s planning a summer trip to Philadelphia, where he’ll check out the room where the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell and the U.S. Mint.
Jayden’s ideas about the subject of the day sound vaguely Jeffersonian.
“Being American means that I am free to learn, play and be myself,” he said.
“I’m able to experience many different cultures, because my mom and dad are immigrants from different countries (she’s from Hong Kong, he’s from Taiwan). So I can experience what it’s like to be part of (those cultures), and still be American.
“For example, on July 4, I can eat hot dogs. But I can also walk the lion dance during Chinese New Year.”
And, yes, Jayden believes that sort of multiculturalism is a fundamentally American ideal.
“The USA,” he said, “is accepting and diverse.”
Jayden also explained what he was trying to convey in the art he submitted for the contest.
“The Statue of Liberty in the drawing symbolizes freedom. And the school symbolizes that I’m free to learn and play and be myself. The Golden Gate Bridge symbolizes California, which is where I’m from. And the soccer ball is there because my brother plays soccer.”
There are, he added, a couple other important symbols.
“There’s a beach in there because there are a bunch of beaches in Orange County. And I’m wearing a USA shirt because I love America and I’m proud to be an American.”
The dentist
In theory, America is (currently) 342.6 million individuals.
Ranchers, industrialists, cowboys, Clint Eastwood characters; all of them seem specifically American, in part, because they succeed or fail on their own. If America’s ethos can be boiled down to a single word, it might be this: solo.
Or not.
“Actually, a big part of being American means looking out for your neighbor and your community,” said Anne Andrews, a 31-year-old dentist who lives in Yucaipa and works in Riverside.
“American means making sure everybody has a full bowl of food,” she added. “I mean, you do what you can to feed your own family, and then you look to your neighbor to make sure they have enough. That feels American to me.”
It is true that the real story of America has differed, often, from the archetype of rugged individualism. The Hoover Dam and Mt. Whitney’s hiking trail were built by tax-paid workers employed to keep them fed. The war that ended slavery was sparked, in part, by people who didn’t want other people to live in bondage. Even the American Revolution required people from dramatically divergent cultures – colonial Virginia and New York, for example – to see each other as siblings.
For Andrews, such collaboration is fundamentally American.
“If we’re not doing things for a monarchy, who are we doing things for? The answer is each other.”
The birthday girl
Victoria Durant’s parents, Lyn and John Pohlmann, called her the “Bicentennial Baby.” That’s because she was born on July 4, 1976, the day the United States turned 200. Her birth announcement was placed in a time capsule to be opened in 2076.
These days, Durant, who lives in Glendale, works as a marriage and family therapist. In that job, she says, she’s heard a lot of people’s views on the state of the country, and she’s seen the anger that people sometimes express toward others who don’t share those views.
All of it, she says, has helped shape her ideas about what it is to be an American.
“For me, the thing that’s been most salient is that we are allowed, here, to have diversity of thought,” Durant said, adding that in other countries such permission isn’t always given.
“We are the most spoiled people in the world,” she added. “Well, the reason we are so spoiled is not simply because we are wealthy and we have clean water and amenities that other countries can’t afford. (It’s because) we are free as a people.”
Durant said she’s traveled to parts of the world where being able to voice a political opinion isn’t always a given. She said that freedom is something many Americans might be taking for granted.
“We should be allowed to say what we want to say,” she said. “That’s what makes America, America.”
Diversity – from state to state and from city to city – is another characteristic that, in Durant’s view, is fundamental to being American.
After traveling to Columbus, Georgia, a few years ago, Durant said that she felt as if she had more in common with the Armenian people in her building in Glendale than with an Anglo-American in Georgia.
“That’s what I love about America,” she said. “You get to experience extreme differences in a way that, in other countries, you don’t encounter. And it’s tolerated.”
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This year’s Fourth of July marks a milestone for Durant. She’ll turn 50 the same day the United States turns 250. Durant will celebrate surrounded by family and friends. So will millions of other Americans.
She said that despite our flaws, America’s freedom and its Constitution are worth celebrating.
“I have been to a lot of places,” she said. “But I still think living here is much more enriching. It’s just a wonderful place, especially here in Los Angeles. … We’re just so lucky.”
The detailer
Kike Sanchez says being an American not only requires, but allows, ambition, drive and pride; something he says he could not fully achieve in his native country, Peru.
Sanchez, 58, immigrated to the U.S. when he was 25. He didn’t yet speak English, didn’t have any friends, and didn’t know many U.S. customs.
But he cared about none of that because he’d finally made it to America.
“I’ve admired this country since I was little,” Sanchez said. “The mentality is different; there’s ambition, education. And people prepare more for the future. I’m very grateful to be here.”
In 1998, Sanchez married Irma Sanchez, also from Peru, and the couple, who live in Torrance, had two sons. Sanchez said both, now in college, wouldn’t have the same opportunities in any other country.
“You can get anything in this life, especially here, especially in America.”
Sanchez soon realized that what had been a hobby – fixing up cars – could be his life’s work. In 2002, he started a business, South Bay Detailing, providing automotive detailing, paint correction and ceramic coating services.
Sanchez says he applies his favorite American values – ambition, drive and pride – at work.
“Of course, everybody needs money,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I want to be proud of what I did.”
About a decade ago, Sanchez was selected to be a part of a 30-person team to restore the first jet-powered Air Force One, the presidential aircraft built to transport John F. Kennedy.
This year, Sanchez was selected for a fifth tour on the detailing team. This month, he’ll go to Seattle’s Museum of Flight to re-spiff up that first Air Force One and other notable aircraft.
“Coming from Peru and building my life and business here, this opportunity means everything to me,” Sanchez said. “To be trusted to help preserve a piece of American history, especially during the year our country celebrates 250 years, is something I will never forget.”
The caregiver
Virginia Salazar remembers hearing people sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” when she was growing up, in comfort, in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, an island in the southern Philippines. Even then, during World War II, decades before she would emigrate to the United States, Salazar dreamed of what she still calls “a wonderful thing”: becoming an American.
She made it stateside in 1987. By then, she was married and a mother, but her new job in her new country was as a caregiver, watching over other people’s families while simultaneously figuring out how to raise her own.
“You really have to work hard if you want to earn money,” the Jurupa Valley resident said. “Nothing is free.”
Salazar said that as an American immigrant, being honest and grateful are the most important values. At 89, she remains in “endless gratitude,” matriarch of a family that now includes five children, 13 grandkids and six great-grandkids.
“I’ve lived the American dream.”
The hero
At 103, Donald Horne has a unique perspective on the America experiment.
He graduated from Whittier High in 1941, the year the United States was pulled into World War II. He was working on his father’s car, in fact, when someone came out of their Newlin Avenue house and said, “We’re at war. Pearl Harbor was bombed.”
“It had never happened before, so I had nothing to associate it with,” said Horne, then 19. “But they explained that that kind of action is an act of war. Not something that you’re gonna talk about and have it go away.”
Two years later, Horne was in the U.S. Navy, eventually serving as an Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class at stations in Oklahoma, Arizona, California, Hawaii and Guadalcanal in the Pacific Theater.
Safely home, he met Betty Murphy at a roller rink, and they married eight months later. Their wedding announcement, in 1946, appeared in the Whittier Daily News, launching a marriage that Horne said was full of both adventure and the challenges of raising four children in the Flomar Drive house he still calls home.
Betty died in 2017, ending what Horne described as “72 years of a long conversation.” But the American life they built endures; in weekly Mass at St. Bruno’s, in voting in every election, in enjoying noodles and knackwurst with flat Pepsi (“I take it straight,” Horne said.)
The American values that Horne cherishes and defended, and the American ways that he says need work, run the spectrum.
“There are so many things that I find discouraging,” Horne said. “There are so many things that I find that (are) so enlightening.
“We’ve got good and bad people; we’ve got good and bad situations. We have freedom to move around in the country. If you don’t like the cold weather, go to someplace else. If you don’t like hot weather, go someplace else. A lot of countries, you can’t do that.
“And to have the kind of freedom, too, where you don’t tell me to how to live, or if I can live.”
The other hero
Brandon Tsay entered America’s national spotlight on Jan. 21 2023, when he used courage and his bare hands to disarm a gun-wielding man at the Lai Lai Ballroom, an Alhambra dance hall run by his family.
The man Tsay confronted had already shot and killed people at another ballroom, in Monterey Park. And the rampage that Tsay helped to end – which left 11 dead and nine wounded – is, to date, the deadliest mass shooting ever in Los Angeles County.
Tsay’s actions, captured on video, went viral. Soon he was in the news, feted by neighbors; a celebrity. Within days, Tsay was at the State of the Union, a guest of then-President Joe Biden.
Since then, Tsay has leveraged his moment to help his community. He’s worked with nonprofits, and he’s spoken publicly about senior safety and mental health in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities, groups who often dance at the Lai Lai and similar venues.
When asked what it is to be an American, Tsay emphasized the right to make one’s voice heard, “without the worry of harm.”
“To be American is to have the freedom and ability to change your community.”
Beyond the lives lost, mass shootings render entire communities emotionally scarred. Tsay said his community is healing because of group efforts; Americans reaching out to other Americans.
Though many seniors in his community are, in Tsay’s view, “traditional, and want to sweep their trauma under the rug,” he said others have been willing to accept mental health assistance (often offered by younger community advocates) as long as they can get that help with others.
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“They don’t want to do it one-on-one, with a stranger,” Tsay said.
“They want to be part of a community, as a body, to heal together.”