What Does It Actually Mean to Be an American

I think it is a very evocative story for Pennsylvania, because what started as a noble experience with whites and Indians living together had been transformed into a kind of atrocious racial war, in which the distinction between the good and the bad Indian has been completely erased. This leads to one of the problems of American white settlers: What does it mean to be an American? What is there in America as a place that defines the people who live here? When the Boston Tea Party took place in December 1773, as a protest against London's tea taxes, we have patriots, rushing to the ships of the British East India Company and throwing tea into the sea, dressed as Indians. For me, this is very interesting because they dressed up as Indians to prove they were Americans. When the phase of military domination of the Indians passed, they became quite culturally useful when articulating Americanism, the idea of ​​being American. So there is reason to have cars called Cherokee and Pontiac.

If we list the main Indian chiefs or the main indigenous tribes, we are likely to find a vehicle or weapon named after them. The Apache helicopter, the Tomahawk missile, we don't have to go far to find that connection. As many people cite, the Indian appears on the five cent coin, but the African does not appear on any. The Indian was a kind of American style symbol. America's destiny was to be civilized and the Indians had to become civilized or disappear. But they continued to be identified more in the American style than Africans could be. The only thing that comes to mind, Considering a long period, it is that one of the main hallmarks of the relationship between whites and blacks in the USA was the idea of ​​the “Law of the Single Drop”, the purity of blood. To be white, I couldn't have a known black ancestor. This was not always imposed, but it was the law. Interracial marriage to Indians, which dates back to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, was not taboo. When Oklahoma became a state, in its constitution, a group of Indians became involved in the installation of the state government in 1910. And the law said that there could be no marriages between whites and blacks, and between Indians and blacks. But they left the Indians and whites free to marry. To be white, I couldn't have a known black ancestor. This was not always imposed, but it was the law. Interracial marriage to Indians, which dates back to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, was not taboo. When Oklahoma became a state, in its constitution, a group of Indians became involved in the installation of the state government in 1910. And the law said that there could be no marriages between whites and blacks, and between Indians and blacks. But they left the Indians and whites free to marry. To be white, I couldn't have a known black ancestor. This was not always imposed, but it was the law. Interracial marriage to Indians, which dates back to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, was not taboo. When Oklahoma became a state, in its constitution, a group of Indians became involved in the installation of the state government in 1910. And the law said that there could be no marriages between whites and blacks, and between Indians and blacks. But they left the Indians and whites free to marry.

What Does It Actually Mean to Be an American?

The middle of the 18th century is considered the perfect historical moment, when the Enlightenment dream of the universal brotherhood led by philosophers like David Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau and the encyclopedists was present. This period gave rise to the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. Principles that fostered the American and French Revolutions. But these democratic principles have not been applied universally. Choose any major intellectual of the Enlightenment and, almost without exception, you will find a proponent of equal rights who believes that some men are actually more equal than others. Kant is considered one of the most important philosophers of the modern period of the past hundred years. And he is certainly considered the most important moral philosopher, where the crucial idea is that of personality, of respecting others, of not disdaining them. However, simultaneously Kant also has articles on anthropology and physical geography in which he describes a kind of four-layered level of human beings. This is a racist and restrictive view of personality, where the prerequisite for personality is to be white. Only the European layer, the first layer, which has what it takes to be complete people. Asians are below Europeans, and blacks are below Amerindians. Those are the layers. And even though they are human beings, they are not complete people. who has what it takes to be complete people. Asians are below Europeans, and blacks are below Amerindians. Those are the layers. And even though they are human beings, they are not complete people. who has what it takes to be complete people. Asians are below Europeans, and blacks are below Amerindians. Those are the layers. And even though they are human beings, they are not complete people.

Enlightenment is a double-edged sword. It provided the basis for the argument for social and political equality for all men, but at the same time it provided an opportunity to look at human beings not as children of God, but as varieties of an animal. If you decide that certain human beings are not human, that they do not belong to the same species. So they will have no right to sign contracts and they cannot be part of the social contract that forms our political system. And that is exactly what happens in these early democracies. Blacks were not entitled to vote. Many of the philosophers who wrote in this period played a crucial rationalist role in justifying European imperialism and in justifying white rule over people of color. So why aren't these things better known? Why didn't Kant's followers address him on this issue? Its marginalization is somewhat consistent with the sanitizing vision of the mainstream philosophers in order to know that it represents Locke, Kant and Hegel. He represents them in a way that does not refer to the kind of racist dimensions of his thinking. This contributes to an image of the modern period from which the race was erased.

In the name of their majesties Fernando and Isabel, king and queen of Castile, Leon and Aragon, I take possession of this land and baptize it as San Salvador. Despite the atrocities perpetrated by Spaniards and Portuguese after the discovery of the New World, the colonizers ended up developing a society in which Europeans mingled with Indians on an unimaginable scale in Franco-English North America. But in the south this was convenient for the colonists, they had to multiply or they would be extinct, as there were not many of them. The Spaniards saw the Indians differently than the British.

Outcomes of Cultural Mixes for America

I think that since colonization, Spaniards have tended to see Indians as people who could fit into their social system. Not because Spaniards were necessarily good, but because for a number of reasons there were fewer whites in Spanish America. Because Spain never colonized America with the same number of colonists brought in from Britain and England. The number of peninsular Spaniards, as the people of the Iberian Peninsula who came to Latin America were known, was much smaller. It emerges in the period of the Enlightenment, at the end of the 18th century, as abolitionism begins to reach this part of the world, a much more vigorous form of racial interaction mixed with that found in other parts of the world. It is a different tradition that arises from the South European colonization. Portuguese on the one hand. Spaniards on the other. And this great willingness to engage in forms of mixed interaction and mixed sexual relations. And to identify and recognize the emergence of mixed populations.

This mixture is obtained, in the last 30 years, from 1760 to 1790, in Mexico, in Mexico City in particular, but also variations in Peru and elsewhere, what is called painting of varieties, or mixture of races. Grape painting, as you want to call it, which is characterized in explicit classificatory terms. And classification is an emerging way of rationalizing Enlightenment thinking. The caste painting encompasses the descent that arises from types of mixtures. The mixture of what they call Spanish and Indian on the one hand, and Spanish and black on the other. In relation to Europeans or whites with other racial forms, Indian and African, and then mixes the mixtures of the mixtures so to speak. Thus, several gradations are obtained, or we can call them degradations of racial mixture, which go from the mestizo to the next. The color lines were not defined between these two races. But there is at least one intermediate race. Mulattoes or brunettes. The presence of the mulatto in these colonies and in Brazil, as an intermediate group, and the mestizos in the Spanish colonies with a large indigenous population is something that I think distinguishes them from the USA with this basic system of two categories, where either one is white or one is black.

South American Hyper Racist Society 

South America is very complex and fascinating. It is different but not necessarily better. It is easy to be fooled by the system because there are blacks and whites mixed up there among the poor, but that is not the case in the United States. Because what the United States did with the “Single Drop Law” was to encourage a sense of solidarity among whites as a way of separating them from blacks. And the reason why there was never solidarity among the working class in America was because of the “Single Drop Law”, and the binary race system was a powerful tool for dividing the working classes and whites from blacks. And the more we go deeper into the system, the more economically vulnerable and marginalized the white person is, the more he tends to be racist because it is the only way he has any status. She thinks: 'At least I'm not black'. Like this, the poor white and the poor black are totally opposed to each other. It becomes a perfect division system. Latin American society is far more racist in the upper classes than the United States.

Brazilian military chiefs are completely white. The Brazilian political elite was, until recently, completely white. In the USA, the higher it is observed, because of the Civil Rights laws and so on, the more integrated the population is. And the American political elite is fully integrated. The Secretary of State is black, the group of black leaders in Congress is very powerful. The likely reason for this was the way in which African-Americans took the “Single Drop Law” and used it for their own purposes, for mobilization and solidarity. While Brazil maintained racial democracy, meaning that the white man sleeps with black women without feeling guilty, generating mixed-race children of great beauty. But the system remains perversely uneven. Brazil is the most unequal society in the Western world. And blacks are completely at the bottom of the base. It is a pernicious system. It is an Apartheid without the laws of Apartheid. And at the top it is absolutely racist. If contemporary democracies can be called racist, then it should not be surprising that more than 200 years ago, an early democratic experience in Sierra Leone failed.

Freetown became the home of black legalists, ex-slaves who won freedom by fighting alongside the British in the American war of independence. But his freedom proved to be quite limited, due to the orders of his former British owners. To some extent what is interesting in Sierra Leone is how accidental this whole story is. People became refugees because they had become British by crossing the lines of battle during the American Revolution to fight for the British. In 1775, the British governor of Virginia said that: 'If blacks, who were slaves, crossed the lines of battle,' left the plantations and the Americans 'and fought for the British, they would gain freedom.' But the British were not very committed, during the American Revolution, to racial equality or emancipation. It was a strategic military move. When this colony was founded in 1787, it was to be free, but for a number of reasons this was not how it worked. Problems with colonial inhabitants came to the fore with the arrival of the Nova Scotian settlers, who were blacks who helped the British during the American War of Independence and were promised a land in Nova Scotia. They were called black legalists. Many of the British's promises were not kept. who were blacks who helped the British during the American War of Independence and were promised a land in Nova Scotia. They were called black legalists. Many of the British's promises were not kept. who were blacks who helped the British during the American War of Independence and were promised a land in Nova Scotia. They were called black legalists. Many of the British's promises were not kept.

Conclusion

What does the term 'American' mean? What characteristics of America as a nation characterize its inhabitants? Patriots rush to the British East India Company ships and toss tea into the water while posing as Indians during the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, which was a protest against London's tea taxation. This is highly intriguing to me since they pretended to be Native Americans to demonstrate their American citizenship. Indians were quite culturally valuable in expressing Americanism, the sense of being American, after their military dominance phase had passed.