Inductivist: Americanness

Showing posts with label Americanness. Show all posts

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Who is a real American?

General Social Survey participants were asked the following: "When you think of social and political issues, do you think of yourself mainly as a member of a particular ethnic, racial, or nationality group or do you think of yourself mainly as just an American?"

I consider this to be a key indicator of assimilation. If you think of yourself as something other than American when considering issues important to the country, you are not fully an American. You are at least partly something else.

So what predicts identifying as something else? I conducted a logistic regression analysis in order to answer this question. This technique tells you what matters after you have adjusted for the influence of other variables. Here are the coefficients for variables that might matter:

Factors predicting ethnocentricity

Age -.02**

Male .02

Nonwhite 2.21***

Education .12**

Church attendance .06

Liberalism .07

City size .00

Immigrant 1.38***

Some of these are expected: immigrants and non-whites are less American. These are the strongest predictors in the models. But some factors might be a bit surprising. Older people are less ethnocentric. Gender doesn't matter. Education (the 3rd strongest effect) encourages ethnocentricity. It is the opposite of an assimilator. Church attendance is unimportant. So are liberalism and the size of the place where you live.

So the picture that emerges for the "partial American" is a young, educated, non-white immigrant. Not surprising. And the profile of a real American is a less educated, older, white native. God bless 'em.

UPDATE: I looked at region of the country, but nothing jumped out.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Want Americans to identify as Americans? Being white helps

The US will function more effectively if its inhabitants define themselves as one people, as Americans.

The General Social Survey asked 1,450 participants: "When you think of social and political issues, do you think of yourself mainly as a member of a particular ethnic, racial, or nationality group or do you think of yourself mainly as just an American?"

Here are the percentages by race of immigrants who responded, "Just an American."

Percent of immigrants who say they are just Americans

Whites 76.8

Blacks 36.4

Other Non-Whites 57.1

Even when all people compared are born in other countries, whites are more than twice as likely as blacks to say their identity is American. While not as severe as blacks, a majority of other non-whites also do not feel they are simply American.

What happens when people are born here?

Percent of people born in US who say they are just Americans

Whites 96.0

Blacks 68.3

Other non-whites 74.2

Being born here makes almost all whites define themselves as Americans, and while native-born non-whites feel more American than non-white immigrants, there is still a large segment that has ethnic loyalties.

It looks like the "melting pot" idea works best for whites. White immigrants moved here and sooner or later melted into Americans. This doesn't seem to be working so well for non-whites. Many black families have been here for centuries, and Natives have been her for millennia, but the melt for them is still far from complete.

A similar dynamic seems to be happening to recent non-white immigrants. Some melting happens, but not like it has been for whites.

Is this difference due to the fact that immigrants were expected to assimilate when most whites emigrated? And now that most immigrants are non-white, US elites encourage people to hold on to their ethnic identity? Maybe, but recent white immigrants don't seem follow the liberal desire for them to hold on to their roots.

Maybe non-whites are simply more clannish than whites.

Liberals would say it's due to discrimination, but 95% of Americans of Irish descent identify as American only, and they weren't received with a big wet kiss. America has gotten more and more welcoming, yet it's the New Immigrants who are more reluctant to let the ethnic loyalties go.

Whatever the case, Americans are on a course to be less and less on the same page about where to take the country. And that's putting it nicely.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Immigrants and being a real American

General Social Survey respondents, both Americans and immigrants in America, were asked: "Some people say that the following things are important for being truly American. Others say they are not important. How important do you think it is to have American ancestry?" I've listed the percent who answered "very important" by ethnic group (sample size = 1,184):

Percent

Amerindian 56.0
Black 47.4
Irish 40.7
Italian 34.7
English/Welsh 27.5
German 27.1
Mexican 23.3
Jewish 9.4
Chinese 0.0

I'm surprised how common it is to believe that you need to have American ancestors to be truly American (I shouldn't be surprised, given that just about every country in the world focuses on ancestry). "Ancestors" sound pretty old, but I take it that it means at least that your parents had to be born here. So it suggests that people who agree don't think that immigrants can be real Americans. I didn't put the numbers in the above table, but 54 percent of all respondents and 52 percent of whites feel it is very or fairly important to have American ancestors to be truly American.

In the table, you can see that old American groups with a history of mistreatment are most likely to think that immigrants cannot be real Americans. Those of English or German ancestry, on the other hand, are more likely believe that Americanness is not an ancestral thing. Groups with many recent immigrants and (pro-immigration) Jews are least likely to place importance on ancestry.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Americanness according to the World Values Survey: Readers and I listed in an earlier post those values that we thought of as elements of "Americanness," but what do the data tell us? I looked at responses of representative samples of people from countries all around the globe to more than 300 hundred questions from the World Values Survey. Sample sizes range from around a dozen to about 50 countries, and I included the question in the list below if America ranked in either the top 3 or the bottom 3:

Top 3

Belongs to a religious organization
Belongs to an educational, cultural, art, or music organization
Belongs to an organization that does youth work
Belongs to a women's group
Does voluntary work for a religious organization
Does voluntary work for educational, cultural, art, or music organization
Does unpaid work for an environmental group
Does voluntary work for a group that does youth work
Does voluntary work for a women's group
Does voluntary work for organization concerned with health
Does voluntary work out of compassion for those in need
Does voluntary work to give something back

Felt proud in the past few weeks because of a compliment about behavior
Feel like you have control over how your life turns out
People are poor out of laziness and lack of will power
Proud of work
I work because I have to; I wouldn't if I didn't have to
The owners should run the business or appoint managers
If boss and I disagree, I should follow the boss

Believes in the soul
Believes in the devil
Believes in hell
Believes there is a personal God
Partner shares religious, moral, social, and sexual attitudes
Faithfulness is important for a successful marriage
It is important that children learn religious faith at home

Personal freedom is more important than equality
Has confidence in the political system
Proud of my country because of scientific achievements
Proud of country
Trusts neighboring countries

Bottom 3

Does voluntary work because of extra time and wanted to do something worthwhile
Does volunteer work to meet people

Doesn't want Jews for neighbors

When jobs are scarce, people should be forced to retire
When jobs are scare, preference should be given to own nationality over immigrants

A child need both a mother and a father
A woman needs a child to be fulfilled

Government ownership of business and industry should be increased
The state should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for
Success is a matter of luck and connections
If an unjust law were passed, I could do nothing about it

Okay, let's attempt a description of what makes the U.S. distinctive in terms values. Americans value volunteer work, and they do it out of compassion and because they want to return the favor done for them.

Americans feels thay have control over their lives, and they can change things. If someone is poor, it's his own fault.

Americans are very proud of their work, but strangely wouldn't do it if they didn't need to make a living. They believe in top-down business organization.

They identify with a religion, they are theists, and they believe religion is important for children.

The country is feminist.

Americans are very proud of their country; they believe in personal freedom over equality; they have faith in the political system; and they trust neighboring countries. They are tolerant and pro-immigration. They are anti-socialist.

Let's reduce that to a list like the one before:

Americanness based on the World Values Survey

belief in volunteerism
belief in free will
hierarchical at work
religious
feminist
homogamous
patriotic
freedom-loving
trusting
tolerant
anti-socialist

Keep in mind that, according to these data, the United States is somewhere in the middle on more than 80% of the questions asked. These questions cover just about anything you can think of on politics/government, religion, family, work--all the stuff sociologists are interested in.

The next step is to see if immigrants to the U.S. are likely to change these values. Any guesses which country I'll look at next?

Monday, July 09, 2007

"Americanness": On July 5th, Peter Beinhart and Jonah Goldberg debated immigration on their "What's Your Problem" web TV show, but I was interested in their raising the question of what is "Americanness." This seems to me to be a very important topic that people are starting to talking more about. Off the top of my head, I'd say a values list would include the following:

freedom (minimum limitations)
individualism
self-reliance
practicality
technology
work ethic
competition
materialism
religiosity
can-doism
optimism
self-determination
belief in progress
belief in enlightened self-interest
cultural egalitarianism
tolerance
nuclear over extended family

I'm focusing more on cultural than political values. Other ideas? Am I wrong on any of these? If I can get a list together, I can look at the data to see if the values are currently held, and I can look to see what kinds of immigrants support such values, and which do not.

Inductivist