The "Un-American" Citizen: Reimagining American Identity in a Polarized Nation

• In Event: How Americans See Each Other across Lines of Division

Abstract

Consensus surrounding America’s national identity is withering, generating in its stead perceptions that certain groups of citizens are un-American. While not a new phenomenon in U.S. history, un-American labels in current public opinion have assumed a more troubling form as they reflect a polarized and sorted two-party system. To understand how Americans psychologically make sense of the socially diverse and politically rancorous nation in which they live, I propose a theory of exclusionary partisan national identity wherein the landscape of 21st century American citizenry is too racially, ethnically, religiously, and ideologically dissimilar for its members to differentiate between the American "us" and the un-American "them." This diverse social landscape, on its own, is insufficient to make people view their fellow citizens as un-American. Political leaders must alert citizens that their country contains others who do not look, feel, or think like them. These conditions are satisfied in current American politics, where the two-party system and media narratives exacerbate partisan conflict and turn elections into competitions for the heart and soul of American identity. As a result, mass perceptions of who is American or un-American reflect two mutually exclusive visions of national identity, because, paradoxically, as the United States moves towards full citizenship rights and privileges, un-American labels emerge in political rhetoric and public opinion. Thus, the path to full multi-ethnic democracy is also the path to conflicting beliefs regarding who does (and does not) count as an American, including who is deserving of receiving democratic representation. More troublingly, these two conflicting paths by which citizens perceive one another as un-American are particularly dangerous to American democracy because they are aligned with the current Democratic and Republican party coalitions and values, respectively.

This paper focuses on the conceptual and empirical measurement of American national identity as it pertains to my overarching exclusionary partisan national identity theoretical framework. I first introduce the concept of an “un-American” citizen – a person who by all legal criteria is an American but is viewed by their co-patriots as existing outside the boundaries of American national identity. I then develop a novel survey measure that taps into citizens’ explicit perceptions of various social and political groups as American or un-American. My measure builds upon extant treatments of American identity that focus on which characteristics are considered “truly” or “typically” American, by also asking what makes someone un-American. Additionally, I expand the number groups and behaviors assessed as American or un-American by including political movements that shape political discourse (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Trump Supporters, Feminists, LGBT+ Community, People not following COVID-19 precautions) and the parties themselves.

From there, I delve into the rates by which Americans label 30 different racial, religious, gender, political, and non-political groups of their fellow citizens as American or un-American (or neither) across eight nationally representative public opinion surveys conducted between 2016 and 2022. For any given group, approximately 10% of Americans (ranging from 0% to 50% depending upon the group) classify it as un-American, with these views remaining stable across these years. I then address potential methodological concerns that can arise from the use of self-reported measures of group ratings. Importantly, I demonstrate that labeling social groups as un-American is distinct from other measures of group sentiments, including feeling thermometers and closeness. Further, views that groups are un-American are distinct from denial of American identity to these groups, as people who view groups as un-American differ from those who do not rate groups as American in their levels of patriotism and national identity attachment. This means that people view more groups, and on a wider spectrum of belonging to the American national community, than previous measures have indicated. Finally, I use exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to show that the ways people perceive groups as un-American are clustered around the Democratic and Republican party coalitions. I then show that Democrats and Republicans diverge in their views about which groups are un-American, with groups associated with the out-party more likely to be classified as un-American. Taken together, I establish that the paths by which Americans view one another as un-American are based upon partisan identities and conflicts.

Author

• Julie Wronski, University of Mississippi