Nathan Reese's Post #4: Proud to be an American?

Are you really proud to be an american? After 9/11 that question became a unanimous "YES" to anyone in the United States. Americans have been easily accepting of their American-ness since that unifying event. Generally people will answer that some charismatic unifying moment like 9/11 is what makes nationalism tick. Charismatic unifying events are memorable to the everyday joe, winning a war, an olympics win, or even killing a terrorist. But I think more along the lines of Anderson, that nation-ness comes from a the culmination of external factors. Unlike Anderson I believe that Americanness emanates from the smallest of interpersonal interactions between peoples.

I come from a very unique perspective for an "american. I am a minority who has spent most of his life being the majority. I am an African American who has grown up in a majority African American area. My high school was about 40% black, 25% hispanic/Latino, 10% asian, and 25% white; economically skewed towards lower middle class. Being a minority who isn't treated like a minority allows me to have a different viewpoint of how Americanness works.  My viewpoint encompasses more than the average viewpoint, I have the experience of being an outsider to "true" americanness which can sometimes be synonymous with whiteness, and also have the experience of being the most american. Unlike Anderson I feel like Americanness, or more generally Nation-ness, is maintained from the bottom up. I feel like the interaction of someone in my community with someone else in the community fosters Nation, albeit these interactions have to be multiplied to form a nation much as a molecule must be multiplied to make a human. In my community we generally agree on certain morals, for example everyone I see I wave to. Specifically Hurricane Katrina was a black mark of government oversight should treat its citizens but at the same time when faced with an even like that Americanness can emanate. It is not the event itself but the small gestures that one person does for another not only in the face of tragedies that makes Americanness.

I feel that Anderson's idea of Nation is somewhat correct, but I feel that my problem with the chapter is a matter of semantics. I think that to create a nation-ness there needs to be a top-down approach i.e. tighter government and the spread of capitalism. I feel like Anderson could have better explored the notion of how we maintain "americanness", which is where my argument may better fit.