ARTICLE
Trumpism: a disfigured Americanism
Mimi Yang1
ABSTRACT The current cultural turmoil in the U.S. is much associated with Trumpism. This
article asserts that Trumpism has its ideological root in nativism, a cultural tradition perpetuated
by John Higham. To point out the disfigured Americanism in Trumpism, this paper
theorizes the vertical America and the horizontal America, and dissects their complex
interplay and symbiosis in an evolving American culture. The vertical Americanism sets
hierarchies to secure power and control as well as maintain racial and cultural “purity;” the
horizontal Americanism, epitomized by Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, equalizes and
connects across races, creeds, and social classes. The color line (in Dubois’ term) thus
becomes a converging and diverging boundary between the two Americas; it harbors and
delineates Trumpism. It is argued that disfigurement of Americanism comes from a disruptive
and destructive interplay of the vertical and the horizontal in Trump’s America.
DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0170-0 OPEN
1 Carthage College, Modern Languages, Kenosha, WI, USA. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
M.Y. (email: myang@carthage.edu)
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Introduction
This land is your land, this land is my land From the
California to the New York island From the Redwood
Forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for
you and me As I went walking that ribbon of highway I saw
above me that endless skyway And saw below me that
golden valley This land was made for you and me
… …
W
hen the American “Troubadour” Woody Guthrie
composed the lyrics of “This Land Is Your Land” in
1940, he had just completed one of his major migrations,
the trans-continental journey from California to New York,
in search of job and shelter. He protested the Dust Bowl
experiences in his adulthood, imagined an idyllic America where
everyone has a place, and sought social justice in an environment
characteristic of inequality, discrimination, and exclusion.
Guthrie sang from his soul a land that flattens social hierarchies
and erases divides between us and them. It is an ideal and dream
land for a horizontal America.
In an unimpeded and sweeping horizontality, “from California
to New York island,” everywhere is replete with bright colors and
fresh air, celebrating this land and singing the symphony of
American voices. Guthrie’s song sings of an equalizing Americanism.
Clearly, he envisions a paradisiacal land where the most
impossible dream can come true. That is the American Dream,
meant for all of us, regardless of race, creed, color or gender. The
horizontal perspective is also a precursor of Martin Luther King’s
dream that one day we all cross racial barriers and level cultural
hierarchies and be judged by the content of our character not the
color of our skin, and that a racially harmonious and interconnected
society define America. However, between dream and
reality there is always a distance. It has been the vertical America
building walls and blocking the views. In a divisive and combative
time like the Trump era that we are presently living, bigotry, hate,
and intolerance distance Guthrie’s American Dream even further
from Trump’s American reality. In fact, we find ourselves catapulted
into an abyss that separates the two Americas: one envisioned
by Guthrie and one enacted by Trump. While both
claiming American values and interests, the question becomes:
which one is the true and undistorted Americanism?
Any ism needs a larger-than-life figure to be the face and the
voice of the system, the identifiable practice, and the movement in
which that particular ism is embodied. A U.S. president epitomizes
what means to be an American and embodies what
America is. He or she is a symbol, in a distinctive position to
create an era and a culture. Since Trump’s “Make America Great
Again” and “America First” replaced Obama’s “Yes We Can,” the
American culture has turned its tide from equity and inclusivity
to hierarchy and exclusivity. The Trump presidency has normalized
racially charged incidents through constant reminders of
“us” versus “them” rhetoric. This rhetoric effectuates racial and
cultural divides in this land and builds walls to make the horizontal
America contained and “quarantined”, and the vertical
America enhanced and energized. It has become a daily routine
that “this is my neighborhood,” “this is my city,” “this is my
country” reverberate with “go back to Africa,” “go back to
Mexico,” “go back to India,” “go back to China.” Trump’s rise has
made it loud and clear that this land is my land but no longer
your land. Recently, a swastika-wearing man in Ulysses, Pennsylvania
told a CNN reporter: “rural area spoke up when they
elected Trump” and “this is my country.” 1
By “rural area” he
means a vast political base that supports Trump and sees him as
the most visible and representative of this base. By “my country”
he means that America exclusively belongs to “us”, the Trump
camp, and thus we have sunk into a Trump America and now
have to play by its rules. A signature of acting-on-your-behalf is
scintillated in a magnified Trump:
Trump appeals to his voters and supporters with a
remarkable ego performance, as he sees American society
and the world as the stage of his “Reality Show.” He
projects himself as an invincible winner and an untouchable
tycoon in the business of real estate, a strong macho
man of bravado talking tough, the protector, and the savior
of a nation from the incursion and infiltration of
immigrants and Muslims (Yang, 2017, p.4).2
Trump magnifies his individual persona into a larger-than-life
and collective representation of an exclusive and vertical culture
as well as of a divisive and turbulent era. He intends to set the
world as the stage of his “Reality Show” so that he continues to
play the protagonist at its center and continues to win. “America
First” and “Make America Great Again” conceals the mindset of
“Trump First” and “Make America Trumpian.” In terms of race
and culture, Trumpism has been long harbored in fear, bigotry,
distrust and discrimination towards immigrants and people of
color. Trump has now personified Trumpism undisguised with
cheers of the alt-right, the white nationalist, and the KKK as well
as with false hopes of those less-than-equipped with a 21st century
mindset. All this, coupled with his showman’s stage performance,
enables Trump to create a tribalism to divide the
country and build a wall to verticalize America. National security
has become undistinguishable from the security of those who
endorse core values of the alt-right, the white nationalist, and the
racist. In disguise of Americanism, “America First” and “Make
America Great Again” have made America more disjointed and
more disconnected racially and culturally. Trumpism, in the
name of Americanism, verticalizes one America while diminishing
and dehumanizing the other—the horizontal one that Guthrie
embraces.
Throughout America’s history, race, economic status, religion,
and sexuality among other core-defining forces have determined
how to exercise “the unalienable Rights endowed by the Creator
—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” known to each and
every individual in this land. The nation was conceived from a
horizontal ideal that we are all born equal and endowed by the
Creator with the same unalienable rights; Guthrie’s song emblematizes
this horizontal ideal, which has galvanized many in
building and expanding a horizontal America. At the same time,
conflicting interests and competing values, associated with race,
creed, color and gender, have shaped a vertical and nonnegotiable
power structure, designed and implemented by winning
and subsequently ruling groups. Time and again, the status
quo of the vertical power structure has been questioned, challenged,
and destabilized by the horizontal America. Since the
beginning of the nation’s history, the paradox of the horizontal
and the vertical has programed Americanism with inherent
duality, conflict, interplay, peaceful or not-so-peaceful confrontations
and negotiations. Because of the two seemingly
opposite directions—horizontal and vertical—in the same constitutional
space, Americanism has never been a fossilized canon
set in stone but always an energetic and regenerative force in
taking shape, evolving, and transforming. By building and raising
cultural, racial and religious walls, Trumpism incarnates an
exclusionist, isolationist worldview, which disregards and disrupts
the vital symbiosis of the vertical and the horizontal at the core of
American culture, disfiguring Americanism.
To fully embrace Americanism, one needs to have a full and
integral picture in mind and in sight: Guthrie’s horizontal, ideal
America as well as the vertical America that has been put forth by
winners of history and maintained by ruling classes and
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institutions. Any attempt or practice to disassociate the two runs
the risk of disfiguring Americanism in its very essence. This essay
aims to grasp a full, integral and inherent picture of Americanism
in response to Trumpism, well stylized and blueprinted in the
slogans “Make America Great Again” and “America First.” In
doing so, we scrutinize what consists of the two Americas and
what divides while unites them. Most importantly, we point out
that Trumpism is a fake and disfigured Americanism that
undermines and dislocates the vital symbiosis within the verticalhorizontal
duality that has already made America great and
unique, and that has already and will continue to attract countless
dreamers to fulfill their American Dreams in this land.
The raising of the vertical America and the making of
Trumpism
Trumpism has surfaced from the collision of the vertical and the
horizontal Americas. At this moment of history, populists, conservatives,
and anti-immigrants, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and
anti-LGBTQ individuals are rallying behind Trump’s “Make
America Great Again” and “America First” slogans. Subsequently,
there surfaces a (mis)perception that American values and
interests can somehow be neatly and uniformly delineated into a
wall configuration, physically on the US-Mexico border and
culturally far beyond. “Make America Great Again” has made
nothing but Trump a U.S. president of the vertical America, and
also had made “wall-builders” lined up against “wall-crossers.” In
the nation’s cultural and political life, the proposed wall draws a
cutting line between the Trump support base, dubbed as patriots
and true Americans, and immigrants, Muslims, and all those “less
American or un-Americans.” This land is no longer made for you
and me when there is a Trumpism between you and me. The
Trumpism takes us right to the still bleeding wounds from history:
who gets counted in and who gets counted out along the
cultural and racial wall. The U.S.–Mexico border wall displays
Trumpism openly and stretches Americanism into a disfigured
and unrecognizable face.
Then, what is Americanism exactly?
Let us take a look of the possessives in Guthrie’s lyrics. “This
land is your land, this land is my land,” Who exactly do the
possessives “your” and “my” refer to? In other words, who are the
owners of “this land”—the American land, land of opportunities,
land of dream, land of freedom, and land of the brave? The claim
and reclaim of the ownership opens up a plethora of stories of
usurpations, oppressions, and contests, associated with economic
interests, sociopolitical power, class status, gender, religion, race
and ultimately, culture itself. The winner dictates the rules and
the rules dictate the cultural ownership. In a country whose very
lifeline depends on replenishment of fresh blood from successive
waves of immigrants, the ownership of the land and the ownership
of the very ideal embodied with this land—freedom and
democracy—have always been claimed by winners of history.
Winners in this land are typically from European (Anglo)
ancestry and possess a longer history of immigration and settlement.
Although American Indians are the original owners of the
land and the earliest dwellers, they have found themselves at the
bottom of the cultural and social pecking-order if counted at all,
because they are simply not winners of history. The combination
of winner and earlier settler secures dominance, power, and
influence on the part of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (the
WASPs). Most importantly, they set their foot in not only earlier
than other immigrant groups but also proved to be more organized
and more goal-oriented than later comers. The WASPs had
an upper hand to claim the ownership of this land, thus institutionalizing
their economic interest, social status, and religious
permeation, and cultural establishment. Human nature also
dictates that any group set up measures to protect, hold onto the
territories demarcated by those of the same group. The presence
of anyone different can anticipate “danger to oneself or to a group
to which one belongs—including economic, racial, ethnic, religious,
or other identity groups—it is among the oldest of human
forces” (Meacham, 2018, p. 15). Thus Americanism, from its
beginning, has been exclusively prototyped with the WASPs
design. The Indians, the African slaves, the Asian railroad labors,
the Hispanics, the Muslims, among many other groups have
found themselves disadvantaged and marginalized, due to the
blatant power hierarchy, the timelines of their arrivals, and the
historical circumstances of their arrivals. They all have had to
learn how to adapt to and fit with the “standardized,” “erected,”
and “set-in-stone” Americanism by the WASPs. If not, groups
and individuals, who differed from the WASPs in skin color, in
religion, and in language, would be perceived as less American or
simply as unassimilable aliens, if not a threat to the WASPs’
dominance. The “standardized” Americanism as such leaves
ample room for economic disparity, racial segregation, cultural
hierarchy, and religious divide; it creates a vertical and exclusive
America.
Paradoxically but in an extraordinary way, it was the WASPs
who had brought the ideal of equality, freedom, and democracy to
this land. They came with nothing but a vision for a land where
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could be carried out
uninhibitedly. They were first dreamers of the American Dream
in its audacious horizontality. The birth of the United States was
inextricably intertwined with a group of British Puritans who
were adherent to Calvinism. Marginalized and alienated by the
established Church of England and in conflict with the Catholics,
they encountered political and social barriers in the ecclesiastical
system to bring about the Puritan clergy. When Charles I dissolved
the Parliament in 1629, “the Puritans, probably quite
rightly, interpreted this as a hostile act towards themselves and
their religious practices, and so many decided to leave England
and settle in the Americas, where they could develop their own
communities based on their own beliefs.”3
This group of people
risked everything to cross the Atlantic, not unlike today’s
immigrants from troubled parts of the world in search for
opportunities in this land for a better life. More than 400 years
ago, the WASP immigrants landed on these shores. In the cultural
genetic make-up of this country, it is not difficult to identify
elements of courage, bravery, forward vision, and indomitable
spirit for freedom. Above all, the British Puritans had a dream for
a just and free society and a model “City upon a Hill” in their
minds when John Winthrop gave his sermon in 1630 “A Model
City of Christian Charity” to his first group of Massachusetts-Bay
colonists.4
That was Winthrop’s early American Dream to make
Boston a model city for the world to watch and emulate. The
British Puritans dreamed an American Dream so that they would
not face tyrannical oppression and religious persecution, so that
they could be their own masters to practice the religion of their
choice and live the life of their preference. What could be more
democratic, more individualistic, and more horizontal than these
values? The irony, however, lies in that the innate cultural makeup
did not permit them to share equal opportunities to immigrants
of other groups who came to these shores at a later point,
nor to the American Indians who are the original owners of this
land, nor to the African-Americans whose labor force impacted
the economic infrastructures of the colonial America. Once settled
in New England, the Puritans started to build religious
congregations and governmental bodies to proclaim, institutionalize,
and secure their dominant position and their ruling place
in this land. Since then, the WASPs have kept the American
Dream horizontal for themselves but erected it to be vertical and
exclusive for any other groups and individuals in this land. The
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double play has set out a cultural pattern that is both inclusive
and exclusive, both individualistic and collectivistic, both democratic
and hierarchic. The duality not only makes the WASPs
culturally paradoxical and politically loaded but also has determined
and affected how other immigrant groups are perceived,
rejected, or accepted, by the WASPs and within themselves.
In a vertically horizontal America, Guthrie dreams that the
ownership of American land and culture is meant to belong to all
of those who have made their way to these shores in pursuit of
life, liberty and happiness, disregarding their origins, colors of
skin, backgrounds or social classes. At the core of Guthrie’s
American Dream dwell these unalienable rights that have been
the founding and guiding force for this nation. Guthrie’s Americanism
is equalizing and leveling, and opens arms to those who
dare to dream and are willing to risk and sacrifice to bring the
dream to reality. As such, from the soul of Americanism emanates
a powerful and hopeful message that we can be equalized
through our shared humanity, that hierarchies can be flattened,
and that barriers can be removed. Guthrie’s song has given millions
of marginalized individuals, underdogs, and “outcasts” a
lyric space to hope, to dream, to live, and to fight. After nearly
eight decades, Guthrie’s voice has found its way into the nation’s
collective consciousness, and most significantly, it has challenged
head-on the status-quo of ownership and entitlement of “this
land,” at various landmark historic moments, especially at the
peak of the Civil Rights Movement as its rallying song. The
melody has epitomized an American horizontal spirit that
inspires anyone who fights for freedom and equality in this land.
Americanism encompasses both vertical and horizontal
Americas; the two exist separately, jointly, intertwinedly. As a
duality, the disjointment as well as the entanglement of the two,
challenges an authoritative, standardized, closed, and unalterable
definition of Americanism. If Americanism is a life energy, it
grows, evolves, and transforms as the nation moves forward in
history; it allows competing definitions that reflect the time and
the context in which we live.
In the racially charged and culturally bellicose Trump age,
more than ever we are in need to address, beyond our divides,
what America should be and what being American means.
Guthrie’s lyrics unfailingly prove to be a timeless source of
strength, hope, and inspiration when we confront unprecedented
rise in racially biased attacks and discriminations. In the name of
national security and American interest, Trump’s policy of
separating children from their families at the border, his “Muslim
ban,” among many other Trumpian practices, have reinforced
and even normalized a culture of deep hatred, bigotry and
exclusion. All this is a far cry from Guthrie’s free, open, and
sweeping America. The Trump wall, although physically located
between the US and Mexico, culturally it symbolizes an unsurpassable
barrier between cultures, races, and religions. It makes
this land disjointed and dismembered; it disfigures the face of
freedom and democracy. To examine Trump’s genetic disfigurement
of Americanism, we turn our eyes to Trump’s cultural wall,
which allows certain groups to enter and belong to this land and
call themselves American while fencing off certain other groups.
The Trump wall or Trumpism, centered on “America First” and
“Make America Great Again,” mutates into an Americanism that
polarizes us and them and draws a dividing line in between.
John Higham (1920–2003), a prolific historian, made his mark
with his work Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism,
1860–1925. He is regarded as a “founding father” of nativism,
and by extension, an authoritative voice in Americanism,
for generations of historians to study, emulate, and develop
scholarship in the field. Timothy Meagher’s article “Revisiting
John Higham’s ‘Strangers in the Land’: Comment” was published
in 2012. He describes Higham:
He was a member of one of the rarest or, at least, best
hidden of peoples in the twentieth century, white Anglo
Saxon Protestant (WASP) natives of New York City. He
grew up then as an American insider, but an outsider in
New York, where almost everyone else was a member of a
racial, ethnic or religious minority (Meagher, 2012, p. 282).
It is not difficult to discern that in the mind of a well-respected
Americanist (Meagher) there is a distinction between insider and
outsider of being an American. Higham grew up within the 20th
century WASP group in New York, therefore, he is an “American
insider,” whereas everyone else of diverse background represents
something that an American insider does not belong to and vice
versa. Meagher’s comments on Higham exhibit a culturally
embedded paradigm, inculcated with the nativism that its
“founding father” brought to light: Americanism is a cultural and
ideological anchor exclusively meant for the WASPs or for the
white and Christian. Everyone else may be around but cannot
possibly be an essential part in the American narrative.
Simon Van Oort in his “‘Strangers’ Revisited: Reading Donald
Trump through John Higham”5
digs into the roots of Trump’s
“America First” mantra and construct:
Foreshadowing the expressed foreign policy by the incumbent
President of the United States, the National Association
of Manufacturers confessed in 1920 that immigration
might endanger the nation and exclaimed that policy must
rest on “the needs and interests of America first”6
Trump’s “America First” is not exactly original but from a
culturally genetic and historic make-up that builds the vertical
America. The xenophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric has its
origin in nativism that harbors white nationalism, populism,
protectionism and isolationism. John Higham’s seminal work
Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925,
carves a breeding ground for the cultural nativism to take roots
and grow in the nation’s consciousness. Thus, a dividing line
between “Americans” and immigrants is drawn, differentiating
the vertical and the horizontal Americas. Each time the two cross
each other, they polarize more into two major cultural and
sociopolitical building blocs: conservative and liberal, with all
their swings and variations in between.
Higham’s Strangers in the Land deals with the American cultural
identity in 1860s, when the intellectual circles held an “open
gate” to immigrants in a welcoming mood while preoccupied with
an American identity. During the window of 1860-1925 that
Higham covered, immigrants, especially of Irish Catholic origin,
flooded in. However, anti-foreign movements and parties broke
out in New York and other parts of the country after 1835 and
then evolved into the “Know-Nothing” (Higham, 1954/2002, p. 4)
agitation of 1850’s. These organizations were known as native
American parties or simple American party (p. 4). Once nativists’
philosophy was baptized as Americanism, other possibilities and
efforts to define a culturally foundational precept have been shut
out of the wall. Higham elaborates that the grand work of
American party is “the principle of nationality” (p. 4), as proclaimed
in one of the Know-Nothing journals in 1855, “we must
do something to protect and vindicate it. If we do not it will be
destroyed.”7
If we translate these words into the 21st century Trumpism,
they would read: We are facing a national crisis to lose our
country to people of color, of different religions, of different
values, and of different languages. Trump is claiming that he is
the protector of America, the guardian of American values, and
the defender of our national interests. Hillary Clinton failed to
capture the public imagination of a savior-protector-defender
president and was beaten in the election. Indeed, Trump’s
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support base is vast and deeply embedded in Higham’s nativism.
Fear and bigotry motivate and mobilize the base to exclude, reject,
and alienate anyone or anything perceived “un-American,” with
or without an actual wall. The word “American” starts its
mutation from all-embracing to specified and discriminatory
inclusion/exclusion; that is, from horizontal to vertical. America
no longer means the original signified—the ones named after
Amerigo Vespucci. The earlier white English-speaking Protestants
feared that their entitlement would be contested and
stripped away by the later immigrants, and their establishment
would be threatened by newcomers. Higham called the Protestant
fear and resentment a “loss of confidence” (p. 158) for this nation.
The outbreak of “nativism” was a Protestant or WASPs’ reaction
to such fears, resentments, and loss of confidence. In Higham’s
mind, no one else but the WASPs are the true Americans and are
the only legitimate dwellers in this land. In Strangers, who is
“native” and who is “foreign” in relation to this land is filtered
with the WASPs as the central referential point and the ultimate
cultural authority.
The vertical America, grounded on nativism, designed to set up
a cultural hierarchy, and encoded in an exclusive blueprint of
being American, is a formidable construct. Its genetic make-up
backs Trump presidential campaign slogans fittingly and effectively.
Trump played into a similar fear and a similar “loss of
confidence” of many middle class Americans, who are typically
white and left behind by the globalization. Many conservatives
also find themselves highly receptive to “America First” and
“Make America Great Again.” The anti-immigration and antiMuslim
sentiments have been stirred up. The alt-right and white
nationalism have been geared up to kick the “strangers” out of
this land. Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon reincarnates
Higham’s nativism not only in a ghostly form as portrayed
by Saturday Night Live but in a flesh-and-blood force of
white nationalism. He fuels the alt-right, the KKK, and the neoNazi
movement in the country. Bannon is unapologetically proud
of his anti-immigrant ideology; in fact, he puts a glorified spin on
it. He told a far-right gathering in France on March 11 that they
should handle accusations of racism with pride. “Let them call
you racists,” Bannon said to the French National Front Party. “Let
them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as
a badge of honor.”8
If Higham’s nativism has made immigrants
feel unwelcomed and unwanted, Bannon’s “badge of honor” only
deepens racial divide and broadens cultural distance. Bannon
continues to build the vertical America with white nationalists at
its center.
In the vertical narrative, nativism bestowed “honor” on the
British Puritans and secured “honorable” dominance of the
WASPs in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. A
founding ideology of the vertical America was much in need then.
As a result, the existential question about cultural ownership in
this land had to be addressed:
Does nativism consist only of the particular complex of
attitudes dominant in the anti-foreign crusade of the midnineteenth
century? Or does it extend to every occasion
when native inhabitants of a country turn their faces or
raise their hands against strangers in their midst? (Higham,
1954/2002, p. 3)
By identifying WASPs as natives and nativists in this land,
Higham unequivocally constructs a nativist ideology for the
vertical America:
Here was the ideology core of nativism in every form.
Whether the nativist was a workingman or a Protestant
evangelist, a southern conservative or a northern reformer,
he stood for certain kind of nationalism (p. 4).
The ideology connects nativism and (white) nationalism
seamlessly; the two terms are now interchangeable synonyms.
Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers indicate that Higham
“had originally intended to write about American nationalism”
(p. 6), but it turned out to be a daunting task:
…as he (Higham) examined his material further, he began
to realize that American nationalism developed in-group
and out-group formulations. The in-group was composed
of those represented by the dominant white Protestant
culture who turned against large-scale immigration from
Europe after the 1880s. … He ended with a stunning and
brilliant book about the rejection of southern and eastern
Europeans who sought refuge in our country (Dinnerstein
and Reimers, 2004, p. 6).
The in-group nationalism possessed a religious, linguistic,
racial and ideological homogeneity that facilitated a nativismbased
nationalism, while out-group formulation tended to be too
diverse to have a unified narrative, and in fact, contradicted the
in-group uniformity. Flash forwarding in time, as a diehard white
nationalist, Bannon told the National Front crowd that he had
learned from traveling the world that “history is on our side” and
that “the globalists have no answers to freedom.”9
Bannon’s
statement is a direct echo, across one hundred seventy years, of
Higham’s nativism and his intended nationalism. An exclusive
cultural view has been canonized and inherited in favor of white
supremacists, the alt-right, and the neo-Nazi. Most significantly,
this worldview deepens and broadens the boundary between the
two Americas.
Moreover, there is a missing element in Higham’s nativism.
The earlier Protestant settlers and Higham himself completely
forget that the very first WASP settlers as well as of other European
origins were also foreigners in this land and immigrants
themselves. They dismiss, perhaps simply never on their cultural
radar, that American Indians were the most rightful and lawful
natives in America. If any native were to be called upon, American
Indians would be the first to respond; but they did not have a
voice in the construction of American nationalism. The forgetfulness
about or the gross disregard of the American Indians in
itself reveals an interplay of ethnocentricism, culturecentricism,
and theocentrism; no one else but the then-WASPs were considered
as the true Americans and de facto were in charge of the
nation. The collective egocentric worldview contradicts and violates
the founding ideal of this nation that all humans are created
equal and endowed with the same unalienable rights to pursue
life, liberty and happiness. The ideal of freedom and democracy
was brought to this land by the WASPs, but ironically the very
WASPs acted in every possible way to betray and disfigure the
ideal when practiced on later immigrants, American Indians, and
African slaves. Freedom and democracy for the WASPs while
discrimination and exclusion for all others has set up a double
standard; thus it has engineered the vertical America and concocted
the horizontal one as a cultural duality. The case of the
mid-nineteenth century Irish immigration testifies to the double
standard in inclusion and exclusion:
He (a nativist) believed—whether he was trembling at
Catholic menace to American liberty, fearing an invasion of
pauper labor, or simply rioting against the great English
actor William Macready—that some influence originating
abroad threatened the very life of the nation from within.
Nativism, therefore, should be defined as intense opposition
to internal minority on the grounds of its foreign (i.e., “unAmerican”)
connections” (Higham, 1954/2002, p. 4)
Irish, together with Mexican and Chinese immigrants among
other national origins, are labeled by Higham as “strangers” in
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this land. They are un-American, liabilities, and threat to “our”
way of life and our values. They take away “our” freedom and
opportunities. Catholicism is our enemy. This scenario looks a
little bit too familiar, when one lives in Trump’s America. The
21st century “nativists” are not too different from the ones in
Higham’s focal time period 1860–1925. The hegemony and ethnocentrism
embraced by the WASPs in the mid-nineteenth
century stirred up cultural, religious, and racial fear and resentment
among the dwellers in the vertical America. The selfproclaimed
and self-fashioned owners of the resources, institutions,
and cultures of this land feared that Irish would take away
their entitlement and opportunities; it is the same fear that many
in the white middle-class have today that Mexicans and all other
immigrants will do the same to them in the 21st century. Higham
called the fear “loss of confidence” (p. 158) and Trump capitalized
on the contemporary loss of confidence in the U.S. and grabbed
presidency. The then-bigotry towards Catholics parallels the nowbigotry
towards Muslim. Higham’s polarization of American vs.
un-American based on national origins still molds antiimmigration
sentiment in our time.
Embracing a similar homogeneity, contemporary nativists
perceive themselves as authentically American and standard
bearers of American values. Moreover, they claim and demarcate
a cultural territory to include and exclude, thus considering
themselves de-facto owners, defenders, and protectors of American
people, culture, and society. In a cultural sense, Trump
operates eerily “with intense opposition to internal minority on
the grounds of its foreign connection,” to quote Higham’s words
(p. 4) again. To rid the WASP’s nation of internal enemies and
minorities, the President’s 2017 January executive order, “Border
Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvement,” directs
the nation to build a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border. At the same
time, his another executive order, de facto “Muslim Ban,” directs
the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department
to lower the number of immigrant and refuse refugees from six
Muslim majority countries. To fuel a vitriolic culture in order to
appeal to his support base, Trump infamously called Mexicans
rapists and criminals, and regarded immigrants from African
(Haiti) countries as shithole countries. His attempts to revoke
DACA status kill the American Dream of young immigrants.
Trump’s policies remind the country of the days of the 1921
Immigration Restriction Act against Southern and Eastern Europeans,
Jim Crow Laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese
internment camps, glass ceiling, so on and so forth. The current
cultural turmoil in the Trump era mirrors the one almost two
centuries ago and carries on the same political and cultural
agenda of the vertical America.
In Strangers in the Land, who is stranger and who is American
is determined through the lens tinted with the nativist worldview.
This worldview promotes an undemocratically appropriated, feardriven,
and disfigured Americanism, and nativism is still much
tinted with the 19th century WASP’s ethnocentrism. In the 21st
century America, who gets in the border wall to be counted as
American and who gets blocked out as national threat now has to
be screened by Trumpism—a resonance of the undemocratically
appropriated, fear-driven, and disfigured Americanism, more
than a century ago. In the public presentation “Steve Bannon Full
Speech in France 10 March 2018 ‘history is on our side’,”10
Bannon slammed Hillary Clinton as a failed globlist, and openly
stated his position in relation with xenophobes, racist, homophobes,
misogynists:
If you defend nation’s sovereignty, they call you nativist;
you argue for your freedom, they call you xenophobe; if you
argue for your country, they call you racist. The thing of
smear is over, let them call you racist, xenophobe, nativist…
wear it as a badge of honor.11
This statement, on the surface, is decorated with patriotic,
democratic, and noble vocabularies, but underneath there is a
culturally coded message that this nation exclusively belongs to
Steven Bannon and those of his cultural genetic make-ups. His
sovereignty is the superiority of certain white nationalists and the
alt-right over those who do not share the white supremacy
worldviews; his freedom is a boundary-drawn and conditioned
freedom, it is a privilege to be defended for some but not for all;
his country is the vertical America only.
Trump’s “America First” rhetoric disfigures Americanism in an
even more deceitful and disguised manner. The rhetoric takes a
central stage at a time when the rapid influx of immigration
becomes an integral part of a globalized market, community,
communication, and network. Many are still wrapping their
heads around demographic changes and daily interactions with
people who are different form them. Many still hold tight the
belief that cultural identity relies on cultural hegemony, and social
stability comes from an unchanging and static demographic
landscape. Manipulating Americans’ patriotism and singling out
the setbacks of globalization, the rhetoric of “America First” and
“Make America Great Again” indeed sounds redeeming and
elevates Trump to a messianic figure to save and deliver America.
However, in the cultural depth, “America” is used with specifically
designated meanings for specifically designated groups; it
refers to the vertical America only. It is loaded with multiple and
embedded connotations in the vertical America as well as in the
horizontal America. When white nationalism, patriotism, protectionism,
nativism, and the alt-right become interchangeable
synonyms, “America First” appeals to those who are afraid that
their jobs and opportunities will be taken away by “foreigners”
and their ways of life will be interfered by a different religion or
people of non-white skin color. Many fearful individuals happen
to be the 21st century WASPs and white middle class or lower
middle class. Some of them may have lost jobs due to globalized
trade and market. Some of them may have not got an opportunity
to open their mental horizons educationally and culturally.
Nonetheless, they all get the less-than-nuanced and less-thanprocessed
message of “America First,” as they believe that no one
else but they are the only type of Americans and they are the
America. Trump succeeded in winning their votes.
While “America First” means patriotism in the vertical
America, in the horizontal America, it means renewed exclusiveness
towards legal and contributing immigrants. An example
in point is Macy’s Inc. The retailer had discriminated against
immigrant employees when verifying their eligibility to continue
to work. Beyond legal requirements, extra and unnecessary
documents were imposed in the name of national security and
“America First.” This resulted in “some affected workers being
suspended, terminated, or losing seniority.”12
The employment
discrimination based on national origins happens in the Trump
time; it happened to Irish immigrants in the peak of nativism,
also in the name of “America First.” “America First” also connotes
a different meaning to religiously diverse groups, the
American Muslims in particular. If the word “America” is
monopolized by the vertical America, does this mean that all
Muslims should be regarded un-American at best and terrorists at
worst? “America First” does not guarantee a place to be first for
African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans,
LGBTQ-Americans, Jewish-Americans. These groups are not
located in the vertical America and do not fall into a blood-andsoil
definition when scrutinizing their cultural belonging and
ownership.
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Trump’s most notorious act of “America First” in getting rid of
the “internal minority on the grounds of its foreign connections”
is perhaps the infamous and premeditated birther movement
against former President Obama. The core of the vertical America
simply could not and still cannot accept a Black man occupying
the most powerful office in the world and being their
commander-in-chief. In the land of democracy and freedom, they
are simply not able to cross the color line, to use W.E.B. Du Bois’s
term coined in his the Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Obama’s
political rise is a head-on challenge to the racial, cultural, and
political establishment and “norms,” perpetuated for centuries by
the white dominant and ruling class. Threatened, there was a
widespread need to delegitimize Obama by proving that Obama
was not born in the U.S., therefore ineligible for being a U.S.
president. This would be the only way to get rid of such an
existential threat. On the other hand, in the horizontal America,
the election of the nation’s first Black president was a watershed
moment. Obama’s victory signified the victory of the marginalized
and horizontal America over the vertical America; it also
gave the hope for the African-Americans and other minority
groups to have a say at the core of the white dominant institutions.
The incompatibility of two opposite cultural perspectives—
the white dominance and the victory of the marginalized—triggered
an organized racism against the one whose job is to protect
the very institutions and the very citizens who try to bring him
down. As U.S. President, Obama had responsibilities to protect
and defend both vertical and horizontal Americas, both his
supporters and detractors. A twisted and disfigured Americanism
situated President Obama in a position obliged to protect and
defend the rights of the Trumpian nativists who aimed to reject,
injure, and humiliate him because of his race. Taking Obama’s
Kenyan father out of context, Trump led the birther movement to
illegitimize Obama politically, thus eliminating the threat from
the horizontal America and protecting the vertical enclave. It was
done in the name of the Constitution, national interests, patriotism,
and “America First.” Behind the birther movement, the
ideology of Higham’s nativism and white supremacism became
resuscitated and more alive than ever. It is an ideology that does
not accept racial equality but defends racial hierarchy. The birther
movement has drawn an unmistakable color line between the two
Americas. It reveals a still vigorous support base in the vertical
America for nativism, white nationalism; it reinforces the rhetoric
of “America First.”
With all these exclusions, specifications, and discriminations,
Trump’s “America First” masks, twists, and disfigures the
founding ideal of this nation that all men and women are born
equal and endowed with the same unalienable rights. The more
Trump and Bannon intend to defend the status quo, the more
disfigured, reduced, and exclusive their Americanism becomes.
The more followers Trump/Bannon have, the further the nation
drifts away from the intended ideal of being American and the
deeper the cultural boundary between the two Americas cuts in.
Higham’s racially and religiously motivated nativism incubates
and fertilizes white nationalism, the alt-right, and white supremacism.
He twists the blood-and-soil worldview and helps instill
a culture of fear, distrust, paranoia, bigotry, and an ideology of
white nationalism in the vertical America. If the outbreak of
nativism is a cultural reaction to the loss of confidence in
Higham’s time, Trumpism is an identical reaction to the same
sentiments and elements in our time. Trump’s “America First” or
Trumpism erects racial and cultural hierarchies and sets out to
legitimize them, brings America to the pre-Civil Rights Movement
era to “make America great again,” sparks fear, bigotry, and
distrust among Americans, and deepens the boundary between
the two Americas. Trumpism is not Americanism, but a masqueraded
white supremacism and nativism; it is a disfigured
Americanism in its vertical form. In fact, “America First” has
proven to be one of the most un-American rhetoric and acts in
the nation’s history.
The mapping of the horizontal America and the make-up of
Americanism
As an immigrant nation with massive racial and ethnic diversities,
we have been confronting inevitable questions and choices: who
or which group owns the American culture? How should one
draw the contour(s) and paint the color(s) of an American cultural
identity? Attempts to answer these questions invariably
drive us into some irreconcilable frameworks of constructing
Americanism. This essay has grouped them into two main perceptive
modes: the vertical and the horizontal. The vertical
America needs a fixed boundary for hegemony and stability to
maintain its status quo and authority. The horizontal America is a
de facto byproduct of the vertical one; it does not have many
choices but an open and fluid boundary to collect and gather
everything and everyone that is not desired in the vertical
America. The fluidity keeps the horizontal America inherently
malleable, so malleable that it can even potentially permeate the
vertical America if the time is right. However, paradoxically, both
Americas use the same lenses looking at the divide between them.
These are racial lenses. The two Americas have been “genetically”
constructed and set apart by an intended color line, again to
borrow Dubois’s term. In both Americas, the color line has
interwoven with and drawn together with economic, sociopolitical
and cultural lines. To zoom into the horizontal America
that is now facing and confronting Trumpism, a culturally cognitive
frame on race needs to be established.
In any society and culture, there are myriad boundaries and
hierarchies that induce divides, competitions, and struggles for
control, ownership, and entitlement. The single most divisive
element is perhaps race. Unlike other defining elements, racial
difference is immediately noticeable and recognizable on the
surface when people come into contact in conducting daily life,
national life, and cultural life. If one is not equipped with racial
literacy, the perception can easily be governed by what is
immediately seen to the naked eye, skin color for example, or by
stereotypes with all the bias and prejudices. A lack of empathy,
knowledge or education likely impairs our perception and prevents
us from formulating beyond-the-surface judgment and
understanding. Race is the first separator and often a misled one
to hierarchize cultures, belief systems, and people. Race stands out
and cuts fatefully more than religion, gender, political ideology,
and social classes. Jacksonian racism towards American Indians,
Spanish Conquest of the Mayan and Incan civilizations, British
colonization in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, and
many other colonial and neocolonial patterns testify to the fact
that race builds social order, institutional structures, and cultural
hierarchies.
In the specifically American context, the color line is both a
converging and diverging front for the vertical and the horizontal
Americas. When the Mayflower landed on these shores in the
17th century, the English Puritans came into contact with the
American Indians. When African slaves were brought to this land
during the 17th and the 18th centuries, white, indigenous, and
black races met but not blended. Then, the rest is the great
American immigrant story that pertains to no race unknown on
the planet. In a multi-racial and multicultural country like ours,
race shapes our individual and collective identities, reveals the
core of our beings, constructs power relations, retools ideologies,
heightens our sense of equality and inclusion, defines liberal and
conservative politics and associated policies, transforms institutions,
and creates cultural tide waves. Most important, race has
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put the ideal of democracy into unmatched tests, time and again;
race has brought to light unseen color lines drawn in our minds
and in the fabric of our society, which deter the dwellers of the
two Americas to cross back and forth and reach out to one
another. American history is a racialized history in all its forms,
shapes, and colors; it gives rise to the vertical and the horizontal
Americas.
Víctora M. Rodríguez in reviewing Ronald Fernandez’s 2007
book America Beyond Bland and White cuts to the chase:
“While America is a nation of immigrants, immigrants have
been racialized, eulogized, and despised” (Rodríguez, 2009, p.
264). “…Fernandez, in leading us through this journey through
the history of race in the United States, is also able to remind us
of the interconnectedness of immigration, culture, and race” (p.
265). In a multitude of colors and shapes, race, culture, and
immigration interact as major mobilizers in the horizontal
America. Unlike the vertical America that dictates what
Americanism is, the horizontal Americanism, if at all, is
deemed by its counterpart to be culturally “alien,” “foreign,”
and simply “un-American,” as it does not fit with the vertical
“standards” and institutions erected by the vertical America. In
the absence of an explicitly unifying Americanism, the “colorblind”
ideology has been adopted to synergize the disenfranchised
and marginalized; it aims to erase the color line and
its associated economic, sociopolitical, and cultural lines, to
unite the horizontal America and to dismantle “racialization
and racialized thinking” (p. 265). The participatory entities and
components vary at different historical moments as the cultural
and sociopolitical landscape shifts and transforms. Nonetheless,
each wave of the “colorblind” initiative drags in and filters out
new elements of race, culture, and immigration. In facing
Trump’s racially and culturally coded and masked “America
First” and “Make America Great Again,” a colorblind approach
proves to be still vital to hold the horizontal America together
as an authentic definition of Americanism. To examine how
colorblindness concocts the horizontal America, let us focus on
two iconic figures who have already shaken the foundation of
the vertical America, and set up an architectural design for the
horizontal America: Martin Luther King and Barack Obama.
The two-America concept is not alien to Dr. Martin Luther
King. Dr. King purposefully engages in an ecumenical and unifying
approach. In 14 April 1967 at Stanford University, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to supporters participating in the
“Salute to Freedom” event, organized by the Local 1199 in New
York City. The speech itself was titled “The Other America.” 13
First, he depicts the prosperous and privileged America, or the
vertical America that we are theorizing in this essay:
… there are literally two Americas. One America is flowing
with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality. That
America is the habitat of millions of people who have food
and material necessities for their bodies, culture and
education for their minds, freedom and human dignity
for their spirits. That America is made up of millions of
young people who grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.14
Although no direct mention of whites and vertical society,
words like prosperity, equality, food, culture, education, freedom,
dignity and opportunity are more than enough to describe the
exclusive and privileged white America high above. Democracy
thus is an entitlement and property meant for and owned by
certain Americans, but not all of them. The very ideal of being
American thus belongs exclusively to those cultural “insiders” on
the top, who have means and access to education, resources, and
institutions. Needless to say, African–Americans are not among
these “insiders” but outsiders of the America “flowing with the
milk of prosperity and the honey of equality.”
Then, King turns his head to the other America—the marginalized
and disadvantaged under the same sun with the
privileged:
But as we assemble here tonight, I’m sure that each of us is
painfully aware of the fact that there is another America,
and that other America has a daily ugliness about it that
transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.
In that other America, millions of people find themselves
forced to live in inadequate, substandard, and often
dilapidated housing conditions… In this other America,
thousands, yea, even millions, of young people are forced to
attend inadequate, substandard, inferior, quality-less
schools, …not because they are dumb, not because they
don’t have innate intelligence, but because the schools are
so inadequate, so overcrowded, so devoid of quality, so
segregated, if you will, that the best in these minds can
never come out.15
Once again with no mention of any specific race or ethnicity,
King depicts the living conditions and education disadvantages of
the deprived Americans. He points out the segregated school
system as the bottom line that divides the two Americas; that is
the very color line that divides American culture in the impressionable
and formative young minds, whether black or white or
brown. There is a number of scholars in Cultural Studies, who
regard the racial line as fundamental in the complex construction
of American culture. Richard Merelman states:
In the United States, isolation between the races has been
more complete than isolation along gender, class, or white
ethnic lines. Federal law did not even require blacks and
whites to have access to the same public schools until 1954;
by contrast, men and women, rich and poor, Poles and
WASPs were never legally segregated in public schools. Nor
were these groups ever as segregated in practice throughout
the range of life as white and blacks still are today
(Merelman, 1994, p.5).
It is the school system where the color line starts to be drawn
socially and culturally, singling out African-Americans as the
cultural other and sending them the message of a not desired
race. As children, white and black, grow up in such a black/white
segregated educational system, their sense of segregation, racial
prejudices, and cultural ethnocentricism grow up together with
them. Merelman explains the racial disparity between the white
and the black:
For example, 39 years past Brown v. Board of Education,
most whites and blacks still attend different schools, …
This severe isolation has enabled whites to control the
definition and flow of cultural capital in most universities,
in the media, and in primary and secondary schools.
(Merelman, 1994, p. 5)
King further points out, the racial segregation creates two sets
of language that describes the same economic condition and
social status in the two Americas:
The fact is that the black man in the United States of
America is facing a literal depression. Now you know they
don’t call it that. When there is massive unemployment in
the black community, it’s called a social problem. But when
there is massive unemployment in the white community,
it’s called a depression. With the black man, it’s “welfare,”
with the whites it’s “subsidies.” This country has socialism
for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”16
The two Americas speak two different languages and they do
not understand each other. Are we going to leave them alone
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forever in discommunication and miscommunication? There is
no doubt that King intended to be the “translator.” He understood
that the translator must speak both languages, must be an
insider of both Americas, and must be trusted and respected by
both. However, in his time, race divided Americans into steeply
unequal economic and social statuses, and distributed power and
authority on a sharply uneven scale. He knew that singling out
the African-Americans, whether defending or discriminating
them, would set up the group as an isolated and point-blank
target. By correlating with other marginalized racial and religious
groups, King would have a broadened support base for his cause
and maximize the chance for his dream to come true. To be a
translator of different Americas, he avoided stepping on the most
divisive line of race, instead he used the universal language to
speak economic interest, livelihood, job and opportunities. This
language builds a shared front and unites all disadvantaged
Americans in their fight for equality and justice. This language
eradicates the vertical barriers and breaks up silos. To overcome
racial barriers - the most fateful demarcation of cultures and
institutions, and also to earn the trust and respect across races,
King practiced a relational “colorblindness,” which is the core of
his Americanism and his American Dream.
Race cuts the nation into fragmented and irreconcilable
Americas, and yet each holds onto its own ideal of Americanism
and American Dream. Not unlike the vertical America, the horizontal
America cannot surpass the color line either. As much as
King desires to expand the racial and cultural support base to
correlate with diverse racial and ethnic groups, he falls back time
and again to the color line between the white and the black. The
deep historic wounds that the nation has sustained pose unique
challenges to heal racial scars and to decontextualize economic
statuses and social classes from the racial milieu. Nonetheless, in
uniting the horizontal America, the African–American experience
has become “yardsticks” and “benchmarks” of marginalization,
discrimination, and rejection, brought upon by the vertical
Americanism. Other racial groups and new arrivals in these
shores in many ways identify themselves with the
African–Americans in their struggle for equal rights, justice, and
acceptance in both the vertical and horizontal Americas. They all
share an American Dream from the margins. This is an achingly
beautiful dream envisioned in King’s “I Have a Dream.”
Anchored in the African-American experience as home base but
not confined to it, once again, King calls for a rainbow like
coalition and unity in the other America:
Now, I said poor people, too, and by that I mean all poor
people. When we go to Washington, we’re going to have
black people because black people are poor, but we’re going
to also have Puerto Ricans because Puerto Ricans are poor
in the United States of America. We’re going to have
Mexican Americans because they are mistreated. We’re
going to have Indian Americans because they are
mistreated. And for those who will not allow their prejudice
to cause them to blindly support their oppressor, we’re
going to have Appalachian whites with us in Washington.17
Back and forth from the African–American to the color-palette
of America, King attempted to erase the color line and “baptized”
the movement of America’s poor across races—our “Poor People’s
Campaign.” His rainbow-like “the other America” merges
with Guthrie’s this land. African-Americans, Puerto Ricans,
Mexicans, and other workers of color are citizens of the poor and
disenchanted “Other America.” He made a call for his multiracial,
multi-religion, and multicultural “Poor People’s Campaign” to
resuscitate the dream, ignited with “I Have a Dream” in 1963.
King’s dream of racial equality becomes the synonym for the
American Dream of the Other America; “I Have a Dream”
defines the American Dream and Americanism in the horizontal
America. Fight for jobs, for equal wages, equal opportunities, and
most fundamentally, fight for the judgment of our character past
the color of our skin. King’s ultimate dream was that “one day
this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: we
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.” The color line will ultimately be erased in our cultural
minds, so he believed. His “the Other America” is the platform
for him to “… deal with all of this by using as my subject tonight
'The Other America.' ”18
King’s purposeful “colorblindness” is carefully constructed
on shared economic interest and struggle; it enables him to
transcend the African–Americans’ sorrow and pain, and reach
out to a broad range of economically disadvantaged Americans,
including poor whites. His Americanism epitomizes a horizontal
American Dream that everyone and anyone from a
marginalized position can have a dream, disregard their races,
religions, and origins. King’s “The Other America” gives an
inclusive and flattened definition of Americanism—a horizontal
Americanism from the margins. King’s Americanism empowers
and dignifies disenchanted and disenfranchised citizens to
aspire, dream, and act, just like the citizens in the vertical
America. It culminates in “I Have a Dream” for everyone. It
sends a powerfully democratic message: we are more similar
than different although in two Americas. King left an undeletable
blueprint in the horizontal Americanism. His trans-racial
spirit and qualities, coupled with non-violence, heal a divided
America, build trust and connection, and bring Americans
together as United States of America.
In the 21st century, racial tension, cultural contest, and religious
divide are far from over. Are they any different from King’s
time? While these themes remain disturbingly unavoidable and
continue to be real in the nation’s sociopolitical life, there has
emerged a cultural antithesis in racial and cultural politics:
Donald Trump and Barack Obama. The Trump age polarizes
even further the vertical and the horizontal Americas. Trump’s
rise revives the hierarchic and exclusive nativism, incarnated in
the white nationalists, the alt-right, the neo-Nazi and the KKK.
Trumpism fuels the vertical Americanism and channels the ghost
of Higham’s nativism. Led by individuals like Steven Bannon and
Richard Spencer, a renewed effort to rebuild an America that
exclusively belongs to white men, is well underway. Trump’s
presidential victory is the victory for the vertical America over the
horizontal one.
As Trump’s cultural antithesis, Obama’s presidential election
in 2008 marked a victory too, a victory that epitomized the
horizontal America, but it is not a victory over the vertical
America, a victory that has reinforced the horizontality within the
vertical America. Obama’s rise was a watershed moment: a
moment of white Americans’ transcendence of the color line, a
moment of the fulfillment of King’s dream of racial unity and
brotherhood, a moment of African–Americans’ dignity and pride,
and a moment of the acceptance of the horizontal America by the
vertical one. Given the statistics, securing white voters is crucial in
any successful national campaign. African–Americans,
Asian–Americans, Hispanic-Americans and American–Indians
would be needed too but can well be statistically secondary. In
relation to the U.S. racial politics and cultural identity, Obama’s
success has proven that white Americans are capable of erasing
the dividing lines between the two Americas; black and brown
Americans are eager and ready to enter the center of the establishments
and institutions as whites’ equals. Obama’s victory
proves that permeating the vertical America from the horizontal
one is possible and the color line is shiftable. He embarked on an
uphill journey, not only crossing the fatal line but also climbing
from the below-zero periphery to the top of the erected center.
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What Obama has achieved is a quintessential American story that
belongs to both Americas.
If MLK’s horizontal Americanism is anchored in his “colorblindness”
and in his command of a cross-racial language to
speak to the economically disadvantaged Americans, how is
Obama’s Americanism grounded? If MLK fought for his
transcendental and ecumenical dream for cultural unity and
racial brotherhood, what does Obama’s American Dream
consist of? We enter Obama’s horizontal America through
three open and connected doors: patriotism, hope, and “colorblindness”
a la King, squarely facing his antithesis Trump/
Trumpism.
Obama’s patriotism is the core of his Americanism. A biracial
kid, from early on, he has always been conscious about the color
line that regards and excludes him as an outsider. In the vertical
America, his skin color looks “un-American” and his name
Barack sounds “un-American” too. By default, he falls into the
horizontal America. Like a typical dweller there, he forges a
worldview that recognizes extra effort and additional struggle
entailed to achieve what is considered acceptable and successful
in the vertical America. The family and travel experience in his
young age has made him recognize the fact that the two Americas
do not start from the same departure point. His Kenyan father
was not much of a presence in his upbringing; but the father’s
American Dream to see this land from Kenya as a beacon of
freedom has passed onto the son. It was mainly his white mother
and white maternal grandparents who imbued him with another
American Dream, a typical dream of the white middle-class
Americans. The black Kenyan father’s American Dream, the
white American mother’s cosmopolitism, and the white grandparents’
American Dream, all these values and beliefs have converged
together in the making of the future president of this
country. Obama’s Americanism has multiple nurturing grounds,
which allows him to be equipped with culturally comparative and
integral views. After all, it was in the American soil where he was
born and it is in this land that he has found himself and his
American Dream has come true. Obama’s patriotism is characterized
with the desire for a home, where he is accepted with
dignity and warmth, where everyone is judged by his/her character
not by skin color, and where everyone has a chance to
dream and to hope and to become what she/he is meant to be. All
this has evidently grown into his unwavering belief and faith in
the greatness of America.
These multiple nurturing grounds for Obama, however, confuse
and dislocate many white natonalists, nativists, isolationists,
protectionists who happened to be Trump supporters. In their
worldview, because of his diverse background, because of his skin
color, and because of his “funny name” (Obama, 2006, p. 362),
Obama has to be an outsider and cannot possibly claim equal
American citizenship. If he does, he would be a threat to and
undermine the Trumpian establishment and institutions. Even
Obama’s birthplace had to become a question in the America
where his mother and maternal grandparents belonged to. Had
Obama’s father been a white Protestant European, would he have
been subjugated to the racist and discriminatory birth verification?
Trumpism has reduced being American to the membership
of the white nationalist/nativist club. On the contrary, Obama’s
patriotism, anchored in the plurality of cultural and racial perspectives,
has expanded the horizon of Americanism, and
enshrined it in a 21st century light. Trumpian supremacists and
isolationists consider themselves as sole owners of American
culture; they pose a vertical imposition and a hierarchic exclusion
in defining and determining who is eligible to be American. This
is done to protect the “purity” of the club and to maintain the
Trumpian ruling position. The 21st century nativism is thus
carried out in the name of Americanism, in its disfigured form.
Obama’s Americanism comes from an injured and denied
patriotism that intends to recover, heal, claim, and become
integral and whole. His patriotism cannot be separated from the
belief of a holistic and democratic humanism that can only be
regained by the ideal of this land. It goes with, first and foremost,
hope; it goes with unconditional love; it goes with faith. In his
keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic national Convention,
“Out of Many, One,” Obama defines his hope-based patriotism:
I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope
of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the
hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope
of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong
Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the
odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who
believes that America has a place for him, too.19
He wholeheartedly believes the greatness of the country, as this
is the place where he makes and writes his and our American
story. He knows no other place in the world that could possibly
be his home and make his heart fonder. “My heart is filled with
love for this country (Obama, 2006, p. 362),” and that love propels
him to hope and to reclaim the American Dream:
I stand here knowing that my story is a part of the larger
American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came
before me, and that in no other country on earth, is my
story even possible.20
By positioning his personal narrative in the historic and cultural
lineage of the country, he depersonalizes his individual
background and story, and inserts himself as a connecting link of
the two Americas, similar to King’s role of cultural translator and
synchronizer of the two Americas. Thus, “… a skinny kid with a
funny name” “believes that America has a place for him, too,” and
thus different types of personal American Dreams fuse together
into one big collective American Dream. The nation was touched
by the speech and the youth was electrified by the message of
hope. Right after that, Obama rose to national prominence as a
notable Illinois senator.
Equivalent to King’s dream, Obama’s hope quickly earned an
iconic place in the 21st century narrative of Americanism. Both
are charged with spiritual power beyond politics; both focus on
the commonality in the human nature rather than the differences.
Deborah Atwater argues:
I am defining a rhetoric of hope as the use of symbols to get
Americans to care about this country, to want to believe in
this country, to regain hope and faith in this country, and to
believe that we are more alike than we are different with a
common destiny and a core set of values” (Atwater, 2007,
p.123).
However, the dividing line between the two Americas can only
be erased once racial trust, mutual respect and understanding are
established. Law and affirmative actions bring legal sanctions to
regulate the behavior or the speech that violates the Constitution,
but cannot achieve interracial unity, racial equality, and “the
politics of hope”21
at the depth of the nation’s psyche and at the
core of a human being. It takes each individual’s willingness,
initiative, and commitment to achieve true racial integration and
cultural unity, there has to be a spiritual connection across races
for a coherent and undisfigured Americanism, transcending the
obstacles that races, religions, and social classes have erected.
Obama’s Americanism signals that it is possible that two Americas
connect with one another and it is possible to cross the color
line between the two, because of the greatness of our country that
he believes and because of his unwavering faith on the ideal of
freedom and democracy. His Audacity of Hope is an
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autobiographic account of his journey, sent off by his father,
mother, and grandparents, from being an outsider to the driving
seat that made American history. Obama’s Americanism is
thoroughly incompatible with Trump’s Americanism. One is
horizontal and one is vertical. One is still much of an ideal and
one remains in the depth of the nation’s psyche. History has given
birth to two Americas in the United States of America, sharing
the same nation and the same Constitution.
Like MLK, Obama is “colorblind” too, in reclaiming the
American Dream and reaching out to fellow Americans across
the color line(s). “There is not a black America and white
America and Latino America and Asian America—there is the
United States of America.” These lines have been quoted again
and again in cultural politics and cultural studies. Obama’s
reclaimed American Dream is a processed colorblind dream that
bears relevance to all Americans including white nationalists,
isolationists, and protectionists. Different from Trump’s Americanism
that amplifies racial division and creates cultural bigotry
and distrust, Obama’s Americanism projects a uniting, liberating,
and uplifting power:
…a vision of America finally freed from the past of Jim
Crow and slavery, Japanese internment camps and Mexican
braceros, workplace tensions and cultural conflicts—an
America that fulfills Dr. King’s promise that we be judged
not by the color of our skin but by the content of our
character. (Obama, 2006, p. 231)
Galvanized by King’s spirit, Obama touches Americans’ shared
humanity and sends a universal and inclusive message of a
marginalized voice, moving into the center, to be heard, to lead,
and to shape history. If the vertical America’s universal values are
about imposing certain groups’ monolithic authority to others,
out of fear to lose dominance and out of the need to be in control,
the horizontal America’s universal values are about bringing to
light our mutually resonant desire for dignity, respect, and
opportunity across races and cultures. If Trump builds a wall to
divide, Obama attempts to tear down that very wall to unite. He
ran for the highest office in the land to cross the color line and
bring the two Americas together in dialog:
Perhaps more than any other time in our recent history, we
need a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build
upon those share understandings that pull us together as
Americans. (Obama, 2006, p. 9)
He believes that “we can ground our politics in the notion of a
common good” (9). Our skin colors may be different, but at the
core of our beings and characters, we share the same human
nature and dream the same dream. No one wants to be rejected
and counted out, no one wants to feel like an outcast and alien; in
fact, everyone in different ways and in different contexts aspires
to grow happier, stronger, more successful, and more relevant.
Across cultures, this is a universally shared human nature. The
American land symbolizes the ultimate acknowledgement of
shared humanity and embodies the ideal that allows room for
expression and development of our humanity. Obama captures
that essence of being American. These innate ideals thus have
become the American Dream that has attracted Obama’s father
and millions from around the world to these shores for as long as
the country has ever existed. The American Dream, as a timeless
pursuit, “is a paradigm distilled from a collective origin and the
consciousness of a group; …” (Yang, 2014, p. 104):22
A dream brought a nation and a culture into existence; then
a group of dreamers created a dream land only to attract
more dreamers to come and create more dreams to live
for… It was a dream for a life not being persecuted and
coerced that brought a group of Puritans who risked their
lives to arrive at these shores; it was a dream that kept the
pioneers enduring the harshness and build something from
nothing in the New World (p. 104).
Obama’s American Dream is a spiritual unifier that glues
people from different walks of life together; it intends to be an
eraser that erases racial and religious divides; it aims to eradicate
social and cultural inequities and hierarchies. The shared hopes,
goals, sorrow and joy make the American Dream connect human
commonalities rather than alienate fellow human beings because
of different skin colors, religions, languages, traditions, and
worldviews.
When facing the reality of two (or multiple) Americas, race,
religion, gender, tradition, wealth, social classes, and other dividers
incessantly cut, draw, and shift the lines of inclusion and
exclusion. In a multi-layered and crisscrossed boundary drawing,
exclusion and ejection overweight inclusion and acceptance,
especially for the African-American community. Our society has
repeatedly failed to see that the promise of justice and freedom for
all people has not yet been completely delivered. As long as the
vertical America is more concerned about the monopoly of culture
and the status quo than about equality and inclusion, the
horizontal American will remain dismissed and subordinated to
the grand and authoritative narrative of Americanism. The vertical
Americanism with its chopping, cropping, and cutting features
disfigures the sense of self for those who are not fit,
undersized or outsized. This country has not yet been able to
erase these divides but tried time and again to minimize and heal
the cutting wounds. Americanism has always been a cultural
ownership. The one who owns it gets to have a say, claims power,
gets in charge of institutions, and ultimately, shapes culture.
Obama redefines Americanism by giving hope that our shared
humanity can dream the same dream, and every legal citizen in
this country is entitled of the cultural ownership, whether from
the vertical or the horizontal America.
In stark contrast with Trump’s name callings to disparage
immigrants and people of color and building walls to “make
America great again,” Obama’s horizontal America sets up a
grounded while relational paradigm for a 21st century cultural
identity. He first roots himself in his black identity and then reach
out horizontally:
I can’t help but view the American experience through the
lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of
how generations of people who looked like me were
subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so
subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives
(Obama, 2006, p. 10)
He is able to anchor himself while relating to others horizontally
from their perspectives. For white Americans, he displays a
remarkable optimism: “… That whatever preconceived notions
White Americans may continue to hold, the overwhelming
majority of them these days are able—if given time—to look
beyond race in making their judgments of people” (Obama, 2006,
p. 235). For immigrants, he opens his arms: “I am your friend”
and “you embody the American dream” (pp. 260–261). At the
same time, Obama’s American Dream forges common bonds and
demands patriotism: “We can insist to those already here that with
citizenship come obligations—to a common language, common
loyalties, a common purpose, a common destiny.” To Obama,
“America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams”
(pp.268–269). There is a distinctive spiritual element in his
American Dream, that is, diversity in unity and unity in diversity.
Obama’s Americanism heals the historical wounds and stiches
the current divides. He carries on King’s dream. More than what
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King has done, Obama has the audacity to develop his patriotism
and Americanism into a politics of hope in the heart of the
established institutions. His presidency has transformative effect
on the 21st century American culture. The subtitle of his Audacity
of Hope reads “Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”
Indeed, it was a lost dream recovered and reclaimed with his
presidency.
Conclusion
Duality consists of two opposites in interaction—in mutual
rejection, in mutual sculpting, and in mutual transformation, all
in a shared, simultaneous, and coexistent sphere. Together, they
form a willing or unwilling relation, sometimes with confrontation
and bloodshed, sometimes through negotiation and manipulation,
and sometimes through communication and connection.
Duality does permit a fixed and unmovable divide between the
two opposites as the constant interaction of the two shifts, erodes,
and redraws the divide. By nature, the duality of the vertical and
horizontal Americas is not designed for the color line to separate
and hierarchize them, but to weave, stitch, and reshape them, in
spite of all seemingly irreconcilable barriers and conflicts. The
following example from a recent CNN articles testifies to the
inherent invalidity and dysfunction of the color line in American
culture.
The article, “He came to this country with $200 and hope. How
Khizr Khan’s American dream led him into a battle with Trump,”
by Moni Basu Basu, (2018), reads:
He (Mr. Khan) arrived in America in late 1979, carrying a
single silver Samsonite suitcase and $200 in his pocket. The
life he led in his adopted homeland was, by all counts, quiet
and simple, though it was far from plain. He was a hardworking
Pakistani immigrant who had felt the sting of
martial law and developed a deep love and respect for the
Constitution of the United States; he eventually realized his
dream of graduating from Harvard Law School. He, along
with Ghazala, his wife of 43 years, raised three sons, one of
whom deployed to Iraq as an Army captain and returned
home in a coffin.23
Mr. Khizr Khan, a lawyer and a Muslim American, has left the
nation an undeletable image and an unforgettable voice at the
2016 Democratic National Convention. His son, Army Cpt.
Humayun Khan, born and raised in this land, sacrificed his life
for the country. As a Purple Heart family, the Khans “are proud
American citizens,” Khan said. “It’s the values (of this country)
that brought us here, not our religion. Trump’s position on these
issues do not represent those values.” When Trump calls a de
facto ban on Muslims entering the United States, there is an
underlying color line: only the vertical America is patriotic,
therefore, the white and Christian are patriots; an immigrant,
non-white and non-Christian, at best does not belong to this land,
and at worst is a suspect of terrorist, who poses threat to freedom
and democracy and to the security of the vertical America. Mr.
Khan, in Trump’s world and in Trump’s language, should be
classified as outsider of “our” culture, “our” race, “our” religion,
and “our” way of life, or perhaps a likely terrorist, synonym with
Muslim. To many who embrace the horizontal America and to
some in the vertical America, Mr. Khan’s loyalty to this land, his
understanding of the US Constitution, and his pride for being an
American are evidently exemplary. However, this is unconceivable
and unacceptable in a cultural mind hardwired with nativist
and white supremacist values. How can an immigrant, an individual
of color, and a Muslim love this country as much, if not
more, as a white Christian who was born and raised in this land?
How can the Khans live and die in order to defend the
Constitution of the US, freedom and democracy? Mr. Khan’s
voluntarily acquired Americaness powerfully breaks and erases
the color line that draws apart the two Americas and confronts
head-on Trump’s disfigured Americanism that exclusively pertains
to the white and Christian vertical America.
In the crisscrossed currents of race, culture, and politics, the
21st America constantly challenges the assumptions of the two
mutually exclusive Americas. In the case above, the duality of the
vertical and horizontal Americas enters a new phase of interactions,
displaying more of a mutual definition and dependence
than mutual rejection and exclusion. In the case of Khizr Khan,
the love for the U.S. Constitution and the country is so unconditional
and powerful that it crosses race and religion, and crosses
the boundary of life and death. The vertical America is built upon
the nativist ideology and self-proclaimed exclusive patriotism.
Then, will it accept Mr. Khizr Khan, an immigrant of Pakistani
origin and a Muslim American, as peer among white patriots?
Wouldn’t the vertical America ascribe Mr. Khan’s “un-Americaness”
to the unwanted horizontal America, put him into his
place—the culturally unfit group, and even consider him a threat
to national security because of his religion? Any attempt to
address these questions triggers out whirlwind and emotional
reactions nationwide. No American, whether from the vertical or
horizontal milieu, can be exempt from this soul-searching process
to confront oneself, rather than finger pointing the other.
Nonetheless, Khan has risen to be an icon of the American
way. The Trump era hardens the color line and broadens the
division of the two Americas, but also, for better or worse, brings
the two together in the cross-racial and cross-cultural patriotism
that the Khans personify. This is precisely how the duality of the
two Americas functions and it reveals a more profound truth
beyond race, religion, and politics; it is our shared humanity that
makes us more similar than different. Whether through hatred or
love, we connect while dividing and discriminating. The shared
humanity is colorblind and does not discriminate by race, religion,
nor politics, but paradoxically is also color sensitive at the
same time. The shared humanity always revolves around the
dichotomy us/them, my interests/others. When my/our existence
eclipses race, religion and politics, the shared humanity dismantles
the structures and configurations of the two Americas
and deletes the divisive color line. In Mr. Khan, the shared
patriotism erodes the boundary between the two Americas.
Americanism in theory allows ample room for human duality
to play out, negotiate, and transform. The Statue of Liberty “takes
the hand of the tired and poor, leads the huddled masses to
breathe free, and welcomes the homeless and tempest-tossed,” as
penned by Emma Lazarus in 1883 on the tablet at the base of the
Statue. Americanism gives hope for a sense of belonging and
acceptance disregarding race, creed, gender, social classes. The
Americanism from the horizontal America is open, malleable,
and also vulnerable. It attracts individuals of all walks of life and
from all corners in the world. Although racial “legitimacy,” cultural
“fitness,” financial resources, and education opportunities
are often questioned, the horizontal Americanism does not
recognize the color line and matches the ultimate definition of
Americanism. Both Martin Luther King and Barack Obama
acknowledge shared humanity as a base to erase the color line and
to link the two Americas. Although mistreated and abused by the
vertical America, the two American cultural icons did not set out
to antagonize or compete or exclude, but to reach out to and earn
respect from the oppressors and abusers, as they focused on the
shared humanity and the commonalities in all Americans.
The Americanism from the vertical America is hierarchic and
sets structures and boundaries to exclude and to maintain racial
and cultural “purity.” Therefore, the vertical Americanism is an
authoritative and “heresy” filtered narrative, designed to rule, to
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impose, and to dominate. By tracing back history and Higham’s
nativism, we recognize cultural mutations that Trumpism has
emboldened—white supremacism, white nationalism, isolationism,
protectionism, and the alt-right, the neo-Nazi, and the KKK.
Nativism explains the roots of the current cultural turmoil in our
society. The vision in the vertical America tends to be static and
unalterable, and it often blocks and impairs the cultural duality; it
distorts the sense of self and alters the sense of belonging, as one
needs a special “ticket” to enter. Trumpism, encapsulated in
“America First” and “Make America Great Again,” enforces the
we/they dichotomy that goes against history and against human
nature. The more Trump inserts himself as leader, defender, and
protector of the vertical America, the more revealing his racial
prejudice and xenophobia become, and the more he disfigures
Americanism. The existence of the disjointed and antagonistic
vertical and horizontal Americas in itself is a disfigurement of
Americanism. In making America great again, Trumpism is
making America more vertical and Americanism more disfigured.
Received: 3 April 2018 Accepted: 11 September 2018
Notes
1 Erin Burnett out front, “Swastika-wearing man: this is my country” https://www.cnn.
com/videos/us/2018/08/10/ulysses-pennsylvania-sidner-erin-pkg-vpx.cnn
2 Mimi Yang’s “Crossing between the Great Wall of China and the “Great” Wall of
Trump” was published by Palgrave Communication in November 2017. This was the
author’s first writing on Trumpism.
3 Why Did the Puritans Really Leave England for the New World?
4 “City upon a hill”, has its origin in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world. A
city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” The phrase was rephrased by Puritan John
Winthrop in his sermon in 1630 “A Model of Christian City” to his first group of
Massachusetts Bay colonists. It is now a political lexicon in American English.
Winthrop, J (1996) “A Model of Christian Charity.” The Journal of John Winthrop,
1630–1649, Harvard University Press. p.1 and note 1. Also see Wikipedia https://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill
5 Simon Von Oort, “Strangers Revisited: Reading Donald Trump through John
Higham.” http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/strangers-revisited-reading-donald-trumpthrough-john-higham/#_ftn1
Accessed 17 March 2018
6 Indirect quote from Oort. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American
Nativism, 1860–1925, (Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 303.
7 My secondary quote of the Know-Nothing journal, from Higham, p.4
8 https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/10/politics/steve-bannon-national-front/index.html.
Accessed 12 March 2018
9 Ibid
10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loN56tcy5QQ. Accessed 12 March 2018
11 Ibid
12 Huffpost, Business, “Macy’s Discriminated Against Immigrant Employees, U.S.
Finds” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/macys-immigrants_n_3511324.
html. Accessed 18 March 2018
13 Throughout the article, all quotations from Martin Luther King’s speech “The Other
America” were first transcribed from youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=m3H978KlR20 and then compared with the excerpts from The Radical King,
published by Beacon Press, 2015,. http://www.beacon.org/The-Radical-King-P1049.
aspx. The transcriptions are mine
14 This quote is based on both the youbue (Ibid.) and excerpts from The Radical King,
published by Beacon Press, 2015. http://www.beacon.org/The-Radical-King-P1049.
aspx
15 Ibid
16 Ibid
17 Ibid
18 Ibid
19 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html
20 Ibid
21 Ibid
22 Mimi Yang, The Tricultural Personality
23 My narrative of Mr. Khizr Khan’s personal story is based on Moni Basu’s CNN
article. https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/us/khizr-khan-the-making-of-an-activist/
index.html.
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Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this paper as no datasets were analysed or generated.
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