Essay On Hyphenation Of American Identity

For far too many Americans, their national identity is torn in two, loosely held together by a paper thin hyphen. This hyphenation minimizes their identity as an American and creates a divisive multicultural nation of outsiders-insiders. Superfluous and unnecessary, the hyphenation of Americans, creates suspicion of national allegiance, preserves prejudices rather than overcoming them, and threatens to defile the unique American culture created through assimilation and acculturation. Propagated by the invocation of politically correct multiculturalism and overly liberal immigration policies; it creates a society that is disunited and in direct opposition of the American national motto of E Pluribus Unum – Out of many, One.
This hyphenation of national identities (example: German-American), while initially viewed as an immigrant in the …show more content…
We can witness this hyphenated America today, “Chinatowns and Little Italys have long been part of America’s urban landscape” (Chua 335). It is not too farfetched to believe that if the current environment of politically correct, over tolerance to multiculturalism, and non-acculturation persist, America could become “...a loose confederation of ethnic, racial, cultural, and political groups, with little or nothing in common apart from their location in the territory of what had been the United States of America” (Chua 336). America needs to shed this flawed politically correct, multiculturalist ideology and embrace the virtues and values that it was founded on “to vindicate cherished cultures and traditions without breaking the bonds of cohesion-common ideals, common political institutions, common language, common culture, common fate-that hold the republic together” (Verhoeven