In the United States and other places, nationality is usually defined by a set of legal parameters. These may include the birthplace, the citizens of the parents or the naturalization procedures.
However, for many Americans, these objective notions of citizenship are somewhat confusing, as we have documented social and development psychologists like me. Psychologically, some people may seem a bit more American than others, based on factors such as race, ethnicity or language.
Reinforced by identity policies, this generates different ideas about who is welcome, who is tolerated and who does not feel welcome at all.
How the breed affects belonging
Many people who explicitly defend egalitarian ideals, such as the notion that all Americans deserve citizenship rights regardless of their race, still implicitly prejudice on who is “really” American.
In a classic study of 2005, American adults from all racial groups were the ones who quickly associated the concept of “American” with white people. White, black and American adults were asked if they supported equality for all citizens.
Subsequently, they were presented with an implicit association test in which the participants related different faces to the “American” or “foreign” categories. They were told that each face corresponded to an American citizen.
White and Asian participants responded faster by relating white faces to “American”, even when they initially expressed egalitarian values. African Americans implicitly considered black and white faces as equally American, although they also implicitly considered Asian faces as less American.
Similarly, in a 2010 study, several groups of American adults implicitly considered the British actress Kate Winslet more American than the American Lucy Liu, despite knowing her real nationalities.
It is important to highlight that the development of prejudice can even include feelings that disadvantage the group itself. This is observed when the Asian-Americans who participated in the studies found that white faces were more American than Asians. A 2010 related study discovered that Hispanic participants were also more likely to associate whiteness with “Americanity.”
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English as a ‘fundamental’ language of the ‘true’ American
These biased visions on nationality begin at an early age, and the spoken language can often be a main identifier of who belongs to which group.
Although the United States has not had a national language, many Americans consider that English is essential to be a “true American.” And the president recently issued an executive order that claims to designate English as an official language.
In a 2017 study conducted by my research team and led by psychologist Jasmine Dejesus, we proposed to the children a simple task: after observing a series of faces with different skin colors and listening to them, they were asked to guess their nationality. The faces were white or Asian appearance and spoke English or Korean. “Is this person American or Korean?” We ask them.
We recruit three groups of children for the study: White American children who only spoke English, children from South Korea who only spoke Korean and Korean-American children who spoke both languages. The ages of the children were 5 to 6 or 9 to 10 years.
The vast majority of younger monolingual children identified nationality with the language, describing the Angloplants as Americans and Korean speakers as Koreans, despite the fact that both groups were equitably divided between people of white or Asian appearance.
As for the smallest bilingual children, their parents were Korean, not English, and lived in the United States. However, like monolingual children, they thought that the Americans were the Angloplants, and not the Korean speakers.
However, as children grow up, racial characteristics are increasingly seen as an integral part of nationality. At 9 years old, we observed that children considered white angloplants as the most American, compared to the Korean speakers of white appearance or the Angloplants of Asian appearance.
Interestingly, this impact was more pronounced in older children than we recruit in South Korea.
Deep roots
Thus, it seems that, for both children and adults, the evaluation of what it means to be American is based on certain features that have nothing to do with the legal requirements for citizenship. Neither whiteness nor fluency in English are requirements to become American.
And this bias has consequences. The investigations showed that the degree to which people link whiteness with Americanity is related to their discriminatory behaviors when contracting personnel or questioning the loyalty of others.
The fact that we find these biases in children does not mean that they are absolute. We know that children begin to perceive this type of cultural signals and values biased at an early age. However, it does mean that these biases have deep roots in our psychology.
Understanding the existence of prejudices can facilitate its correction. Therefore, those who celebrate on July 4 should reflect on what it means to be American and if social prejudices distort their beliefs about belonging.
*Katherine Kinzler She is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.
This text was originally published in The Conversation
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