ABSTRACT
Understanding American national identity as an ethnic identity is the theoretical foundation for arguing, in this chapter, that an axiomatic relationship between American-ness and ‘whiteness’1 informs diverse interpretations of collective symbols and ideals, such as the Flag. What makes American identity an ethnic identity is that it is established and maintained in the transactional process of social identification between the boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Barth 1969; Jenkins 1997). As long as there is a ‘them’, or Others, to identify against, there will always be a sense of American community. Depending on space and time, this ‘them’ can reside outside the territorial borders of the US, as in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. However, a sense of Otherness can reside within America itself. Cohen’s (1985) notion of community, which is drawn from Turner’s (1969) work, is significant here. Community is a multifaceted concept sheltering, like an umbrella, differences and a sense of similarity simultaneously. Individuals are aware that their lives are structured by caste, class, or ‘race’; however there remains a sense of ‘communitas’, an undifferentiated unstructured sense of ‘we-ness’ (Handelman 1990; Jenkins 2004: 151; Sturken 1998; Turner 1969: 96).
