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What makes an American? Three in 10 Republicans say: Being White.
(National Archives) There's a car in my neighborhood (and perhaps in yours, too) that sports a confounding pair of bumper stickers. One advocates for making America great again, an idea recently popularized by marketing mogul Donald Trump. The other endorses fealty to the U.S. Constitution, an...
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There’s a car in my neighborhood (and perhaps in yours, too) that sports a confounding pair of bumper stickers. One advocates for making America great again, an idea recently popularized by marketing mogul Donald Trump. The other endorses fealty to the U.S. Constitution, an idea recently eviscerated by President Donald Trump.
I am obviously aware that “we must adhere to the Constitution” was a GOP mantra for the past 20 years or so, given how often it was invoked in opposition to Barack Obama’s tremulous expansions of executive power. But it is rather jarring to see this idea presented alongside explicit support for the president who’s doing everything in his power to relegate the Constitution to second-tier status.
Last month, YouGov conducted a poll to measure how Americans viewed the concept of “American.” What was it that made someone “American,” exactly, a status that traditionally has been applied more generously than, say, “French” or “Nepalese”?
The second-most commonly agreed upon characteristic, tied with being a citizen, was “supports the U.S. Constitution” — something that 86 percent of respondents believed was very or somewhat important to being considered an American. The most commonly agreed upon characteristic? Obeys U.S. laws.
The pollsters also asked respondents if they themselves met the conditions which were part of the survey. The result is fascinating, with views of what constitutes being an American generally increasing along with the characteristics held by the respondents themselves. You can see that below; the larger the number of people who indicate they possess a characteristic, the larger the percentage who identified that characteristic as being very or somewhat important to being an American.
Dots that sit above the diagonal line are characteristics that were more likely to be seen as important for being American than they were possessed by the respondents themselves.
The YouGov poll also allows us to break down responses by party. If we take the same measure as above and look only at Democrats, this is the result.
Notice how low “supports the U.S. president” sits on both axes.
Where things really get interesting is when we look at the responses among Republicans.
Notice that, across the board, Republicans are more likely to identify the presented characteristics as very or somewhat important for American-ness than are Democrats. In fact, we can compare those directly. On the chart below, any dot that sits above the diagonal was more likely to be seen as important by Republicans than by Democrats. You will notice that all of the dots sit above the line.
The two that sit closest to the upper right corner are, again, adherence to laws and to the Constitution, neither of which seem to be Trump’s strongest suits.
I haven’t yet discussed the most striking finding in this poll, however, the one that I mentioned in the headline. YouGov included “being White” as a possible option for being important to being American and nearly one-fifth of respondents said that it was. Among Republicans, 3 in 10 did, with a fifth saying it was “very important.”
How important is being White to making someone an American?
On the plus side, I haven’t yet seen a car with an “only White people can be Americans” bumper sticker. Here’s hoping that this continues to be a sentiment that people are unenthusiastic about endorsing so publicly, however energetically the Trump administration may be putting it into practice.
