Who Are We? : The Challenges to America's National Identity

by Samuel P. Huntington

• ISBN13: 9780684870533
• ISBN10: 0684870533
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-18
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

In his seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington argued provocatively and presciently that with the end of the cold war, "civilizations" were replacing ideologies as the new fault lines in international politics. His astute analysis has proven correct.

Author Biography

Samuel P. Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is the author or editor of a dozen other books.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xv
PART I THE ISSUES OF IDENTITY
Chapter 1. The Crisis of National Identity	3	(18)
Salience: Are the Flags Still There?	3	(5)
Substance: Who Are We?	8	(4)
The Global Identity Crisis	12	(5)
Prospects for American Identity	17	(4)
Chapter 2. Identities: National and Other	21	(16)
The Concept of Identity	21	(3)
Others and Enemies	24	(3)
Sources of Identity	27	(1)
The False Dichotomy	28	(9)
PART II AMERICAN IDENTITY
Chapter 3. Components of American Identity	37	(22)
Change, Continuity, and Partial Truths	37	(1)
Settlers Before Immigrants	38	(8)
More Than the Creed	46	(3)
"No Attachment to Place"	49	(4)
Race and Ethnicity	53	(6)
Chapter 4. Anglo-Protestant Culture	59	(22)
The Cultural Core	59	(3)
"The Dissidence of Dissent"	62	(4)
The American Creed	66	(3)
Individualism and the Work Ethic	69	(6)
Moralism and the Reform Ethic	75	(6)
Chapter 5. Religion and Christianity	81	(26)
God, the Cross, and America	81	(2)
A Religious People	83	(9)
Protestant America and Catholicism	92	(11)
A Christian People 98 Civil Religion	103	(4)
Chapter 6. Emergence, Triumph, Erosion	107	(34)
The Fragility of Nations	107	(2)
Creating an American Identity	109	(4)
National vs. Other Identities	113	(6)
Nation and Patriotism Triumphant	119	(18)
Fading Nationalism	137	(4)
PART III CHALLENGES TO AMERICAN IDENTITY
Chapter 7. Deconstructing America: The Rise of Subnational Identities	141	(37)
The Deconstructionist Movement	141	(5)
The Challenge to the Creed	146	(12)
The Challenge to English	158	(13)
The Challenge to the Core Culture	171	(7)
Chapter 8. Assimilation: Converts,
Ampersands, and the Erosion of Citizenship	178	(1)
Immigration With or Without Assimilation	178	(4)
Assimilation: Still a Success?	182	(2)
Sources of Assimilation	184	(1)
The Immigrants	185	(7)
The Immigration Process	192	(7)
American Society: Americanization Is Un-American	199	(5)
Ampersands and Dual Citizenship	204	(10)
Citizens and Noncitizens	214	(6)
Alternatives to Americanization	220	(1)
Chapter 9. Mexican Immigration and Hispanization	221	(36)
The Mexican/Hispanic Challenge	221	(1)
Why Mexican Immigration Differs	222	(8)
How Mexican Assimilation Lags	230	(14)
Individual Assimilation and Enclave Consolidation	244	(3)
The Hispanization of Miami	247	(4)
The Hispanization of the Southwest	251	(6)
Chapter 10. Merging America with the World	257	(38)
The Changing Environment	257	(1)
The Search for an Enemy	258	(6)
Dead Souls: The Denationalization of Elites	264	(9)
The Patriotic Public	273	(3)
Diasporas, Foreign Governments, and American Politics	276	(19)
PART IV RENEWING AMERICAN IDENTITY
Chapter 11. Fault Lines Old and New	295	(41)
The Shaping Trends	295	(1)
The Ending of Ethnicity	296	(7)
Race: Constant, Blurring, Fading	303	(6)
White Nativism	309	(7)
Bifurcation: Two Languages and Two Cultures?	316	(8)
Unrepresentative Democracy: Elites vs. the Public	324	(12)
Chapter 12. Twenty-first Century America: Vulnerability, Religion, and National Identity	336	(31)
The Creed in an Age of Vulnerability	336	(4)
Americans Turn to Religion	340	(15)
The Global Resurgence of Religion	355	(2)
Militant Islam vs. America	357	(5)
America in the World: Cosmopolitan, Imperial, and/or National?	362	(5)
Notes	367	(44)
Index	411

Excerpts

Chapter 1: The Crisis of National Identity Salience: Are the Flags Still There?Charles Street, the principal thoroughfare on Boston's Beacon Hill, is a comfortable street bordered by four-story brick buildings with apartments above antique stores and other shops on the ground level. At one time on one block American flags regularly hung over the entrances to the United States Post Office and the liquor store. Then the Post Office stopped displaying the flag, and on September 11, 2001, the liquor store flag flew alone. Two weeks later seventeen flags flew on this block, in addition to a huge Stars and Stripes suspended across the street a short distance away. With their country under attack, Charles Street denizens rediscovered their nation and identified themselves with it.In their surge of patriotism, Charles Streeters were at one with people throughout America. Since the Civil War, Americans have been a flag-oriented people. The Stars and Stripes has the status of a religious icon and is a more central symbol of national identity for Americans than their flags are for peoples of other nations. Probably never in the past, however, was the flag as omnipresent as it was after September 11. It was everywhere: homes, businesses, automobiles, clothes, furniture, windows, storefronts, lampposts, telephone poles. In early October, 80 percent of Americans said they were displaying the flag, 63 percent at home, 29 percent on clothes, 28 percent on cars. Wal-Mart reportedly sold 116,000 flags on September 11 and 250,000 the next day, "compared with 6,400 and 10,000 on the same days a year earlier." The demand for flags was ten times what it had been during the Gulf War; flag manufacturers went overtime and doubled, tripled, or quintupled production.The flags were physical evidence of the sudden and dramatic rise in the salience of national identity for Americans compared to their other identities, a transformation exemplified by the comment on October 1 of one young woman: When I was 19, I moved to New York City....If you asked me to describe myself then, I would have told you I was a musician, a poet, an artist and, on a somewhat political level, a woman, a lesbian and a Jew. Being an American wouldn't have made my list.[In my college class Gender and Economics my] girlfriend and I were so frustrated by inequality in America that we discussed moving to another country. On Sept. 11, all that changed. I realized that I had been taking the freedoms I have here for granted. Now I have an American flag on my backpack, I cheer at the fighter jets as they pass overhead and I am calling myself a patriot. Rachel Newman's words reflect the low salience of national identity for some Americans before September 11. Among some educated and elite Americans, national identity seemed at times to have faded from sight. Globalization, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, immigration, subnationalism, and anti-nationalism had battered American consciousness. Ethnic, racial, and gender identities came to the fore. In contrast to their predecessors, many immigrants were ampersands, maintaining dual loyalties and dual citizenships. A massive Hispanic influx raised questions concerning America's linguistic and cultural unity. Corporate executives, professionals, and Information Age technocrats espoused cosmopolitan over national identities. The teaching of national history gave way to the teaching of ethnic and racial histories. The celebration of diversity replaced emphasis on what Americans had in common. The national unity and sense of national identity created by work and war in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and consolidated in the world wars of the twentieth century seemed to be eroding. By 2000, America was, in many respects, less a nation than it had been for a century. The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of Americ