As mentioned above, many U.S. Americans view their ethnicity as a product of their
ancestors’home of origin prior to immigrating to the United States, such as Italy, Mexico,
Vietnam, Liberia, or any one of a host of other geographic locations. Members of genera-
tions following the original immigrants frequently refer to themselves using such terms as
“Italian-American,”“Mexican-American,”or“Vietnamese-American.”For Chen, the
hyphen both separates and connects the two social groupings.^29
The United States is commonly characterized as a nation of immigrants, and
during the nation’s formative years, new arrivals often grouped together in a specific
location or region to form ethnic communities, such as Germantown, Pennsylvania,
founded by German settlers. Some of these communities continue today, as seen in
San Francisco’s Chinatown and Little Italy in New York. Newer ethnic enclaves,
like Little Saigon in the Los Angeles area and Hong communities in Saint Paul, Min-
nesota, have developed in the wake of more recent immigrant arrivals. In these areas,
the people’s sense of ethnic identity tends to remain strong because traditional cul-
tural practices, beliefs, values, religion, and often language are followed and perpetu-
ated. However, as time passes, members of the younger generations often may move
to areas of greater ethnic diversity and many marry into other ethnic groups. For
some, this may dilute their feelings of ethnic identity and today it is not uncommon
to hear U.S. Americans explain their ethnicity by offering a lengthy historical
account of their family’s many ethnic mer-
gings. Others, especially those with a Euro-
American heritage, will often simply refer
to themselves as “just an American” or
even “a white American.” Frequently,
they are members of the U.S. dominant
culture that grew out of Judeo-Christian
religious traditions imported from Western
Europe and whose lineage is characterized
by an extensive history of interethnic
Euro-American marriages.National Identity
The majority of people associate their national identity with the nation where they
were born. However, national identity can also be acquired through immigration
and naturalization. People who take citizenship in a country other than their birth-
place may eventually adopt some or all aspects of a new national identity, depend-
ing on the strength of their attachment to their new homeland. This attachment
can be influenced by where the individual resides. For example, someone originally
from Mexico may retain strong ties to their native land if they settle in the south-
western United States, where there is a large Mexican immigrant community.
Strong nationalistic ties can be sustained in an immigrant enclave, like Little Sai-
gon, in Orange County, California, where displaying the flag of the former South
Vietnam government remains common practice. Alternatively, those ties may be
eroded if the new arrival settles in an area of the United States that has a limited
demography. Normally, national identity becomes more pronounced when people
are away from their home country. When asked where they are from, international
travelers will usually respond with their national identity, for example,“I’mfromCONSIDER THIS
How have you observed the dominant cultural values of the
United States coming into contact with people of different
nationalities or ethnicities? What have been some of the
effects, both positive and negative, of these contacts as
they apply to the beliefs and values of the dominant
culture?National Identity 251Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).