They are also showing who really isn’t American…
The citizenship thing does it for me, even if I had been living here a long time on a green card I still wouldn’t feel comfortable considering myself to be American (I mean, they can still deport you if you do something illegal).
It may be that I am overly pendantic, which is why such an easy line to draw in the sand appeals to me.
I tried to test this out, but they shunned me, and now Lancaster County has issued a restraining order.
Sailboat
My kids are Amerasian and speak Chinese as their first and best language. Yet local Chinese are often perplexed to find out they actually speak Chinese. And speak Shanghaiese. and they don’t get the highest score in their local Chinese school’s english tests.
1996, the last time I was in Tokyo.
Huh, I’m shocked by people encountering “asians aren’t americans”. Must be my selection bias. Asians are everywhere around here and it doesn’t seem odd to anyone. I mean, anyone I know. Weird.
On the whole, I’d say one generation. For the immigrant, there’s usually (in my experience) the whole “greenhorn” thing. Immigrants tend to identify with other immigrants with similar backgrounds, are at least somewhat fearful of the new culture, and have accents. But their children are definitely Americans, except in instances where they have somehow been isolated from American society.
My wife is the children of immigrants. She’s clearly American as can be, as is her sister, who was born in Europe but came here as a very small child. Their mother, though, clearly has an immigrant mentality (their father died without my having met him, but I’m assured he was the same). She identifies herself as American, and, as a concentration camp survivor, she’s understandably not terribly fond of Europe. But she still feels most comfortable around other eastern European Jewish immigrants.
Instances of hyphenated Americans who are American citizens not being treated as Americans is just bigotry. I have no patience for it. I extend that to people who have spent their whole lives here, but are techically illegal. I can’t imagine the pain someone must feel who goes through the whole American experience and then is told at, say, age 17, “Sorry, it’s off to Guatemala with you.”
Clearly your Virginia relatives haven’t been in America long enough to grasp one of our most cherished values: It’s not who you ARE, but what you DO, that counts.
Perhaps one day, they will become true Americans too … .
Gee, kelly, did you bother to read the main thrust of the issue in this thread?
Gee, Monty, did you ever think of asking a question that has an actual answer?
BTW, I admit I went off the rails on this one. Sorry about that.
As opposed to the welcoming, nay, cosmopolitan attitude of the Japanese government 
No problem, kelly.
True. However, depending on where you are–a black person can also get the “Where are you from?” treatment.
I got it all the time in New Jersey, where everyone is an immigrant or a child of an immigrant. It didn’t take me long to realize that when people asked “Where are you from?”, they didn’t want to know where I was born–because they would only repeat the question after I would say “Atlanta, GA”. They wanted to know my “real” nationality. So I would say “black American” and then let them stew in their embarrassment for awhile. I don’t think the question is racist, but it shouldn’t be the first question you ask someone IMHO. Especially if that person doesn’t have a foreign accent.
I would venture to say that most people still think of a stereotypical white guy when they think “American”. When this changes, then you’ll find a widening acceptance of different-looking Americans.
How many generations? When you stop hyphenating yourself.
I don’t think that’s really the case, Magiver. Scottish-Americans and German-Americans are hyphenated Americans and don’t seem to ge the “Damn foreigners” treatment.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask and am sorry if is considered a hijack, but why is the dead guy Cho ( the killer) not considered American? He lived in the USA for 15 years right? He seems more American than Korean. Is it all based on citizenship?
He was a foreign national who did not get naturalized. As to why he didn’t get naturalized, there may be a few reasons for it. As with so many other questions related to this event, we likely shall never know the answer.
I understand that. It just seemed funny to me that the media very quickly started calling him a ‘South Korean national’. I read his background and thought he has lived in the USA for 15 years and Korea 8 years and he was a permanent resident who could have got citizenship if he wanted.
Perhaps he coudln’t have gotten US citizenship? After all, one’s supposed to be taking the oath intelligently (as in “of sound mine”), IIRC. But even if he could have gotten naturalized, the simple fact is that he didn’t. Thus he was a foreign national. The media reported his status correctly: South Korean national.