What it Means to be American

America, the land of the free, home of the brave. Founded on ideals of justice and equality, unless, of course, you weren't white, rich, and male. Sadly, in parts of the world, some of these prejudices carry over, but America is one of the leading countries to eliminate the discriminations and truly practice impartialness. Unfortunately this comes with an air of entitlement, which leads to stereotypes on American "culture". Yes, as sad and unbelievable as it is, there are people who don’t particularly like Americans. Typically Americans are thought of as shotgun-cheeseburger loving, obese, self-centered slobs. Having that in mind, it makes it a lot more difficult to conform into one united nation. Many times you will hear someone describe themselves as Polish, Columbian, or Ethiopian, but do not fathom themselves American. It becomes derogatory (you selfish American!), not only because of the connotation to the stereotypes mentioned above, but also because it comes with an idea that we are no longer connected to our former relations or heritage. We are reminded that, through globalization, we become more and more uniform every year, loosing the individuality that was our culture.

            But America isn’t a bad place and being American shouldn’t be a negative thing. Through much hardship, we are still the land of opportunities and very accepting or all races and religions. With this idea, it becomes more difficult to define the American nation. How could one call themselves American when America has no normality? There is no national religion language or race and it doesn’t appear evident that there will ever be one. Given the ideas from above, people are reluctant to convert to any one thing and given the founding constitution, nobody has to. Until things change, Americans will be unified by three main concepts, equality, Liberty, and opportunities.