ABSTRACT
Who are we? This question arises from a profound human need for identity that comes to being when consciousness of difference begins. In the United States, the question draws added significance from the country's history as a nation-state. Though born out of a successful rebellion against the British and ultimately taking a different form of government, the United States adopted the basic features, particularly the civic, from the English model. One did not have to be born American; one could become an American through citizenship: "To be or to become an American, a person did not have to be of any particular national, linguistic, religious or ethnic background. All he [sic] had to do was commit himself to the political ideology centered on the abstract ideals of liberty, equality and republicanism" (Gleason 1980:32). More than a decade later, Liah Greenfeld reasserted the principle: "In contrast to the European nations, where the primacy of the nation over the individual imposed general uniformity, the unchallenged primacy of the individual [in the United States] allowed-even guaranteed-plurality of tastes, views, attachments, aspirations and self-definitions, within the national framework. Pluralism was built into the system" (1992:482). Diversity, therefore, was not an unintended consequence of migrations from Europe, Asia, and Africa, nor merely an accident of history, but part of the ideological foundation of the new nationstate. It was an intrinsic part of American self-definition.
