Citizenship : The Identity Of The United States

ONE-PAGER Unit 2: 1754-1789 American and National Identity (NAT) Explain how ideas about democracy, freedom, and individualism in the colonial period found expression in the development of cultural values, political institutions, and American identity during and after the Revolutionary War.

Citizenship is an outdated notion in the 21st century. Critically discuss this statement. Citizenship can be defined as the position or status of being a citizen in a particular country (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). This definition is not very broad, nor does it cover the many aspects of citizenship that exist in the 21st century. It is not only about being a legal citizen of a particular country, it is also about being a social citizen. You can be a citizen of Australia but choose to live elsewhere for the majority of your life. In terms of citizenship it is relevant on a political and social level. If you are actively contributing to the country in which you live in some ways you are fulfilling your duties as a citizen.

Upon granting citizenship to all persons in the United states, the government created an environment in which anyone can be a part of something greater. No longer would immigrants and slaves be treated of lower value, or given less. This was an immense step in allowing workers to work for themselves, while at the same time also bettering the country as a whole due to greater overall patriotism and employment rates. Any worker who is given fair opportunity, free land, and rights far greater than their old country will be more than willing to go to war for said country. This creates a strong military, a strong sense of nationality, and another reason for Americans to support and value individualism. Without the governments constant efforts to direct power away from the government and into its peoples hands, i doubt our country would be as strong and individually based as it would today. Its no wonder than Americans are so proud of their individually acquired successes in life, as its been done in history many times before

Citizenship and the Constitution “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.” Without the right that the Constitution brings us, we wouldn’t have rights therefore the United States wouldn’t be a good place to live in. The Constitution brings us the right of freedom of speech (first amendment) , the right to bear arms (second amendment), and the right to protect against unreasonable government actions such as search and seizure of person property (fourth amendment). Being an American citizen means that you have rights that they would like you to fulfil. As an American citizen is it voluntary to vote, but others are required such as obeying the law and paying taxes. The Magna Carta, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and the Petition of Rights explains the rights and the responsibilities of an American citizen.

Jacobson spends a great deal of time analyzing the way in which ideas about citizenship played into changing perceptions about race and whiteness at the turn of the Twentieth Century. This is expressed in the constant evaluation of a given group’s “fitness for self-government” and how this concept was used to promote inferiority among particular “races” and thus maintain traditional power relations. Jacobson states that “citizenship and whiteness were conjoined,”(p.29) and in saying so he is commenting on the very foundations of the American power structure as it took on the task of deciding who would be entitled to the rights and privileges of being American. It is to this point that further discussion of gender is necessary. If citizenship is understood as being fundamentally connected to the right to participate in democracy then it must be noted that this right was systematically denied to women as well as non-whites at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Therefore to truly benefit from the privileges of American citizenship one need not only be white but also male, a reality that is not expressed in Jacobson’s analysis. By not including a further analysis on gender, Jacobson leaves the reader with the impression that race relations operated independent of gender relations, when in fact sexuality was deeply connected to the construction of racial identities. Jacobson

Since its inception, America has been called the land of opportunity, but around the late nineteenth century the United States started limiting the entry of European and Chinese immigrants. These closed door policies for European and Asian immigration in the 1920s were a result of increased racism in the United States. People living in the United States began to redefine and selectively narrow the amount of ethnicities that the word white included. The book Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant stated that the white race can be broken up into superior and inferior races. According to Grant, people who were of Nordic descent made up the superior upper class, while the other European immigrants and Jews were considered low class and inferior. Grants novel defined who is considered to be white which subsequently led to the mistreatment of the inferior white race in America.

The Concept of Earning One’s Citizenship Citizenship is defined as a being a citizen or a person owing allegiance to and entitled to the protection of a sovereign state. Citizen preferred for one owing allegiance to a state in which sovereign power is retained by the people and sharing in the political rights of those people. The concept of which in one of its earliest was given to us by the Romans, who had just began to understand the importance of a populace contributing to the decisions of its own fate. Modern American citizenship as we know it today was defined for us in the constitution of this nation by the founding fathers. Citizenship as they had envisioned it even back then was not free, but came with a price. A citizen was

people gain being a white citizen, but also spoke openly of how male entitlement was an equally

(1) Why was the last half of the 1800s a time of conflict over the meanings of citizenship in relation to race, ethnicity, and gender? During the late 1800’s America, economic growth was diminishing due to the greedy wealthy leader and the after effects of the Civil War.

The colors of red, white, and blue reflect the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness established over two centuries ago by the nation’s forebearers. Being American is about anticipating change and being provided with the environment to dream. Americans have dreamed of a more equal union,

The class material give us some example of being American citizen. America have two types of citizenship, one is Birthright citizenship, to have U.S if born on U.S soil. Or the Naturalized citizenship, that means you are not born in U.S., you became a U.S. citizen. At 1790, government pass a law called Naturalization Law, and in this law I discovered that American government provide citizenship to any free white person, who was in resident for 2 years. So from here we can find that government only provide citizenship to white people, or, rather, white male. Because female can only get the citizenship from their husband or their father. All

America’s society has been built on racial beliefs. As much as we believe that America is a country of acceptance, freedom, and equality, people of color have been thought of and treated as inferior races. As research continued, scientists believed that other white races like the Europeans, Germans, and Irish, were white people in transition and would eventually meet their high standards. They believed that they could assimilate into American society and become white Americans; however, Asians, blacks, or any other minority was immediately disregarded as ever becoming American. Being white was a ticket to citizenship. In 1790, congress passed an act called the Naturalization Law, which stated that only free white immigrants could become naturalized citizens. Later on in 1870, the law expanded

August Jason Babasa Fey Engl 1301 Feb. 01 2013 What Citizenship Means To Me So what does citizenship means to me? Is it just a piece of paper that says you are a citizen of a country or does it mean something more in a deeper level. When I was just a little boy my mother always talks about that when we move to the United States we should apply for citizenship immediately. As I was growing up here in the United States I slowly understand what citizenship means to me. Being a citizen for me is fulfilling my obligations toward my country, Living a lifestyle that benefits myself and my community and having good sense of patriotism.

Congress later passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 which granted citizenship to all Indians. This citizenship decree was the logical political manifestation of the assimilation program, and brought with it the expectation that Indians would be brought in line with other Americans in the areas of civil and criminal law. The Indian Citizenship Act supposedly gave Indians the privilege of voting, the obligation to perform compulsory military duty when called, and to pay taxes on off-reservation revenues. It is estimated that two-thirds of the Indians had acquired citizenship before the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. Still, some Indian nations did not recognize the Citizenship Act because they did not feel that one sovereign nation

4. Discuss the reasons for America's By the end of the war, the new immigrant groups had been fully accepted as loyal ethnic Americans, rather than members of distinct and inferior “races.” And the contradiction between the principle of equal freedom and the actual status of blacks had come to the forefront of national life.