Make “American” a New Option When Answering Surveys About Race

The United States of America is the great melting pot. The original 13 colonies were formed by peoples from a diverse set of backgrounds so much so that they agreed to a formula in which there is no official language of the United States which avoided conflicts and signaled to one another that this new nation would be formed from all of its people. After over four centuries it is time to acknowledge that Americans are a nation formed by all of the social interactions of its citizenry and thus is worthy of its own national identity. Americans can trace their ancestors to many places but their lives to one place, the United States of America. Is it fair to still call the far off descendants by the continents or countries their ancestors came from that they have never seen or visited or that may no longer exist except in history books? Let us finally acknowledge our oneness by introducing a new racial, ethnic and linguistic affiliation on all government surveys that is simply American. By checking this box, you say all that you are and all that your fellow countrymen constitute the definition of American. End the divisiveness and political ploys of divide and rule and stop forcing Americans to declare their allegiances to the color of their skin or the country their ancestors fled for a reason. Make American Everyone Again.

The American spellings of words and the incorporation of new words constitute a distinct linguistic identity. Let us also call the language we speak with all of its foreign loan words, and invented terms that derive their origins from the American experience as American. We are American, we speak American, we define American. E pluribus unum is not a description for the state, it is a description for the people by the people. After four centuries, we are as much a nation as any other as the maps of the world are in constant flux.

Allow us to declare our American identity on all surveys, forms, official documents, and let us not portend to be American first, we are first American and all else will follow!