Although it was not necessarily to be more Anglo or less “ethnic,” I have in the past felt pressure to be more “American.” In fact, it didn’t really have much to do with ethnicity or race at all. It was about views toward the United States and the cultural phenomenon in this country of being a patriotic American. Although it’s happened a number of times, one example of what I’m describing is when my family and I went to an outdoor flea market in western Massachusetts’ town of Brimfield. Just a reminder: western Massachusetts is not Boston. At the time, though, the difference between the two sides of one of the United States’ most liberal states was not as obvious to me as it is today. During the day, there were many encounters that made me realize this and that pressured me to be more typically “American.” For example, at one point my brother, my mother, and I saw a table with nick-nack-type items trying to be sold by a man who was sitting in a beach chair nearby. Among them was a pocket-sized United States Constitution. My mother, citing the fact that I went to the High School of American Studies and that my interest in history and politics was budding at the time, asked me if I’d like it. I figured: why not get it? Within seconds, the man in the beach chair starting telling us—with a quite sharp and irritated tone—that today not enough children learn and know about our country’s Constitution. Whether that’s true or not, I instantly knew that this was someone with whom I did not want to get into a discussion about politics or US history or the Constitution or US culture or really anything for that matter. And then we look over and see a truck parked next to his spot in the flea market, with big letters on it reading, “Obama Sucks.” At this point, my mom—who had been trying to tell him that I go to a school specializing in US history and that some students are interested in the Constitution and that, after all, she was buying for her a son a pocket Constitution—realized what we had gotten ourselves into. Differences in political views aside, there was a clear cultural difference between this man and us. This dissimilarity didn’t disappear after that one encounter; in fact, there were several others—although most of them not quite as belligerent—that portrayed the same viewpoints about US culture: the importance of traditional US cultural values, love of the Constitution, and individualism. Throughout the whole day, I felt pressured to take on a façade of US traditional patriotism. Don’t get me wrong—I love this country. That doesn’t mean, however, that I have to believe that its Constitution is a holy document and that its government and polices are saintly. Everywhere I went at the Brimfield flea market that day, I felt that I had to agree with everyone about their views on US culture, such as American exceptionalism and blind (at least in my mind) patriotism—ideas to which I usually don’t subscribe. Similarly (except in this case it’s in relation to politics and culture as opposed to race), as the Gerstle excerpt describes, “becoming white helped the Irish gain public respect and offered them a psychological escape from their menial status.” Of course, immigrants such as the Irish faced sheer discrimination and injustice that is not comparable whatsoever to what I’m talking about, but the idea is similar. I felt that I had to try to be more “American” to be accepted, even just for that one day.
While I was in the supposedly second-amendment-loving, small-government-aspiring, patriotic, “American” western Massachusetts, I felt pressured to hide my beliefs and just to agree with what everyone else (at Brimfield, it’s easy and expected to get into conversations with strangers) argued. I was legitimately scared to reveal my political beliefs and my beliefs on US culture because I felt that I would be considered—at least by the people there—less American.
–Jonathan Eckman
