My sophomore year in college I had an uncharacteristic moment of extroversion, knocking on the door of the guys across the hall to introduce myself and tag along with them to dinner. They adopted me without a second thought and we became pretty tight. Their rooming group was a classic Ivy League mashup of diverse backgrounds: one had cousins in Northern Ireland and India; one spent holidays with grandparents in Greece; the third was part of the close-knit Jewish community on campus. By contrast I was a WASP-y “legacy” kid, the granddaughter and niece of graduates (though very much on financial aid), and they jokingly called me Mayflower Girl. To me, the phrase was short-hand for privilege, a hint that my bland cultural identity was so far removed from its roots as to be meaningless.
To be fair, I couldn’t really think of any family traditions that signaled a specific heritage. I did grow up attending church, but the truth was that my parents had switched from their childhood faiths to the Episcopal denomination almost entirely for the music; no deep faith tradition to be found there. The cardamom bread that I associated with my grandmother turned out to have been bought in from the Swedish bakery down the road. The closest thing to a cultural signifier I could think of was the Forbes tartan tie that my dad and his brothers would wear for special occasions (my sisters and I had even worn kilts in the same plaid when we were little). When I asked, though, nobody could remember when we’d had relatives actually living in Scotland.
Everyone in the family was much more focused on the present, getting on with things and working hard. Probably my family’s strongest tradition was a loyalty to America itself. We had a strong New England work ethic and quiet pride in our deep roots…although not with blinders. My great-great grandmother had joined the DAR only to quit again in disgust over the Marian Anderson debacle, and we all knew without being told that achievements of American colonists had come at the expense—direct and indirect—of Indigenous Americans. When your family has been here since the 1600s, you’re likely to be related to both visionaries and murderers.
So, like my great-grandmother, I’ve remained wary of throwing in too hard with self-described “patriots.” That term is too often associated with othering and gatekeeping, an outlook that feels pretty dog-in-the-mangerish for an American. By definition, as a Mayflower Girl I have an exponentially greater number of (willing and unwilling) immigrants in my American family than did, say, my Greek friend. The same would be true for any member of the DAR or the zillion other lineage societies in the United States. Over time, we seem to lose sight of the fact that our ancestors were almost all driven here to escape pain, poverty, or persecution.
I guess what I’m saying is that gatekeeping citizenship is both revisionist and deeply ironic. Americanism is not about preserving some idealized past; it is about visualizing an idyllic future. The founders aspired to a more perfect Union that could offer its people opportunities previously denied. We haven’t yet achieved this, or even come close. But we could look to our own country’s worst failures—genocides, slavery, internment camps—to fuel the desire to keep reaching for this better future. Pain has always motivated Americans to build something better. What else is the immigrant story?
Wall-building watchdogs will continue to defend a non-existent “American purity” that has never existed. Those voices are louder now than they have been for years. But speaking for my inner Mayflower Girl, I believe—deeply, passionately, without any doubt—that the United States was founded as the “Yes, And” country. We embrace Indian-Irish boys and Greek immigrants and people from Jewish and Indigenous and Asian and Lutheran and Hispanic and Black and [fill in this blank with all things outside of your own experience] cultures. We delight in the energy and excitement and optimism that can be fostered in a diverse citizenry. It’s what makes us proud and (yes!) patriotic Americans.
We may never achieve an ideal, but if we don’t fight for it here, I fear it ain’t gonna happen. Happy Independence Day, fellow patriots. Let’s get loud.