By Stanley A. Renshon

What are the implications of changes in American national culture and psychology for the very large number of dual-citizenship immigrants entering the country in these new circumstances? Two very basic consequences seem clear. First, the cultural stability of the receiving country makes a critical difference. Immigrants, whether from countries that allow or discourage multiple citizenships, enter into different cultural circumstances in countries in which the primary culture is stable and secure and those in which it is not. Conversely, multiple citizenship has different meanings and implications in these two different circumstances.  It seems quite clear that immigrants entering into a country whose cultural assumptions are fluid and "contested" will find it harder to assimilate, even if they wish to do so. In such a circumstance, dual-citizenship immigrants are more likely to maintain former cultural/country attachments than risk the development and consolidation of newer cultural/country identifications.

Second, a country in which the institutional operation and legitimacy of assimilation to its ways of life is under attack and weakened is different than one in which is not. In the past, assimilation, with its implications that there is a legitimate and worthwhile national identity and immigrants choosing to come here should, in good faith, try to accommodate it, was both the expectation and the reality.²⁴ Today, neither is true. Assimilation is equated in some quarters (Takaki, 1993) with forced and unnecessary demands for conformity to a culture that has little legitimate basis for asking for it.

There is also a question as to which America immigrants should assimilate. Is it the traditional America of personal responsibility and initiative, hard work, and an eye to the future? Or, is it the America of narcissism, self-indulgence, and entitlement-level expectations? Both exist and operate here.

The evidence seems to suggest that if assimilation means internalizing the latter, immigrants may be right in thinking twice. A recent study by the National Research Council (1998) found that adolescents born in the United States to immigrant parents suffer poorer health and engage in riskier behaviors than children born in other countries who then move here with their parents. Dr. Kathleen Mullan Harris (quoted in the press release accompanying the study) who headed the study of 20,000 randomly selected students said, "Foreign-born youth experience fewer physical health problems, have less experience with sex, are less likely to engage in delinquent and violent behavior, and are less likely to use controlled substances than native-born youth." For example, foreign-born Mexican youth are less likely than native-born youth of Mexican parents to miss school for a health or emotional problem, to have learning difficulties, to be obese, or to suffer asthma. They also  are less likely to have had sex, to engage in delinquent or violent acts, or to use three or more controlled substances.

Arriving into a solidly assimilationist receiving culture is very different from entering into a porous and "contested" one. Yet it is also true that arriving in a culture that contains powerful and corrosive elements raises the question: Do we want immigrants and citizens to assimilate these elements? The evidence suggests that the idea that immigrant values will rescue those aspects of American culture that need revitalization is a hopeful fiction.

This is one further reason why immigrants might well be tempted to maintain and further develop psychological attachments and loyalties to their "home" countries, and their traditions, values, customs, ways of viewing the world, and the psychologies that these reflect. Technology aids and abets the processes that discourage immigrant integration. In the past, one might be an Italian, but the ability to read Italian newspapers, or to keep up with the news in your local village or city were limited and the chance to see your country of origin was a seminal life event. Today that is far from the case.

Jet travel and its accessibility to all but the most financially marginal have erased boundaries of time and geography. Paul Slambrouck (2000) wrote that Mexico’s Consul General estimated that Christmas holiday pilgrimages back to Mexico by Mexican-Americans averaged two to three million border crossings a day last year. Internet access to newspapers and people has likewise eroded distances. Anxiety about finding psychological grounding in a culture that allows, perhaps even encourages, the diffusion of the traditional sources of individual identity leads people to seek it somewhere, anywhere. The unprecedented search for "roots" can best be understood in a society with anxieties about rootlessness. Whether one applauds or laments this development in the United States, it is important to keep this fact in view.

The impact of multiple citizenship immigrants coming into this country varies as a function of the context in which their older and newer attachments unfold. Surely when over 85 percent of the very large number of immigrants that the United States admits each year are from countries which encourage multiple citizenships, it is time to carefully consider the implications. When immigrants enter a country in which the assumption that they should be motivated to adapt to the values and traditions of the country they have chosen is fiercely debated and the question of "assimilation to what?" is increasingly difficult to answer, dual citizenship in America is indeed truly an issue of vast proportions and broad significance.

The United States is facing a unprecedented set of circumstances with regard to multiple citizenships. It is a country whose culture and politics were forged around allegiance to a set of principles and practices contained within a specific territory, with a specific history and a specific identity — American. It was not organized around a specific ethnically-based nationality, as were European countries, but rather a more generalized one — American. You could come from any geographical, ethnic, racial, or religious origin and still be welcomed, though not always unambivalently, to develop an American nationality.

That American nationality does have distinctive elements. It has long been associated with the American "creed," which is to say, support for democracy and tolerance (Huntington, 1981). Yet it is also a nationality that prefers and works to develop a specific set of psychologies. We prefer self-reliance to dependence, moderation to excess, optimism to futility, pragmatism to rhetoric, and reflection to impulsiveness — to name a few of those elements.

These are, of course, the core characteristics of the "Protestant ethic." Yet critics like Aleinikoff (1999) are wrong in asserting that concerns with assimilation mask a demand to conform to what he terms  "Anglo/White culture." The genius of American national culture and identity is that over time they have become decoupled from ethnicity, separated from religion, and detached even from "race." In all these aspects, this ethic — really these elements of national psychology — have repeatedly proved to be open and inclusive, even if not always wholeheartedly.

Successive waves of immigrants — the Irish, Jews, "blacks" from Trinidad or the Bahamas, educated Hispanics of all nationalities, South Asians, Chinese, and Japanese — were certainly not Protestant, definitely not "Anglo," or never considered "white." Yet all of these groups have found a successful place in American society. Not a place realized without difficulty, not a place in which everyone is a success, but a place realized nonetheless.

Becoming an American then is not simply a matter of agreeing that democracy is the best form of government. It is a commitment to a psychology and the way of life that flows from it. And it ultimately entails an appreciation of, a commitment to, and even love for, all that this country stands for and provides.

It is easy to view America instrumentally. It is a place of enormous personal freedom and great economic opportunities. America has always recognized that many arrive seeking those treasures which are in such short supply in so many of the countries from which they come. The fear that self-interest will come at the expense of developing an appreciation and a genuine emotional connection to the country has, I think, always been the sub-text of attempts to ensure that new arrivals became "American."

That has been the trade off. America takes the chance that it can leverage self-interest and transform it to authentic commitment. Immigrants agree in coming here to reorient themselves toward their new lives and away from their old ones. This involves some basics — learning English, understanding the institutions and practices that define American culture, and reflecting on the ways in which their search for freedom and opportunity fit in with the history, with all its vicissitudes, that have shaped the idea and promise of America. It is only at that point, that the transformation from self-interest to genuine emotional connection can be made.

Bourne’s Vision Revisited

It is important to underscore here that the recourse to "common values" as the glue which holds America together is directly contrary to the vision that Bourne (1916) enunciated of a "Trans-national America." Hyphenated Americans would retain and develop their ties to their "countries of origin" or home countries and that would make each group more "valuable and interesting to each other." Moreover, these sustained and enhanced national origin differences would spur the development of an "intellectual sympathy," which gets to the "heart of different cultural expressions," and enable each person in one group to feel "as they [the other group members] feel." That, in Bourne’s view, would be the basis of the new cosmopolitan outlook, transnational identity, that he favored. Americans would be bound together by the sum of their differences, a remarkable psychological assertion, as is his further assertion that such an "intellectual internationalism...will unite and not divide."

There are several basic inconsistencies at the heart of Bourne’s vision. An "intellectual sympathy" that "gets to the heart of different cultural expressions" and allows one to feel as the other group members feel is inconsistent with known psychological theory. Empathy is primarily an emotional attunement, not an intellectual one. The idea that I know how you feel, because I check with my own views of how I would feel if I were in a parallel circumstance, essentially assumes you are just like me.

Is "intellectual internationalism" only an agreement to disagree? You have your group tie and I have mine and we agree to allow each other to do so? Bourne doubtlessly modeled his idea on Americans’ allegiance to common values like democracy and liberty. However, beneath the superstructure of abstract principles, there are some clear limits and the mechanisms to enforce them. I may advocate the violent overthrow of the government if I am a communist theoretician in a study group, but not if I’m the leader of an action cell buying guns.

Whose view prevails when different understandings of "intellectual internationalism" are at issue? Who gets to decide?  This is not a matter of an abstract and ethereal belief that differences rooted in basic cultural experiences and views "will unite and not divide." These matters comes up routinely in newly multicultural societies with democratic traditions. Consider the question of whether a democratic country committed to the equality of women should allow what, to some groups, are the accepted cultural practices of female circumcision or polygamy.

Bhikhu Parekh (1996, 254-55) has thoughtfully tried to square this intellectual circle. However, like all such attempts at theoretical alchemy, there is a large element of substantive evasion of the basic realities. He lists five possible resolutions of these dilemmas: (1) the hope for universal values which will eventually transcend differences (moral universalism), (2) the primacy of core values which allows a society to distinguish those it will and will not tolerate (core values), (3) the view of society as so deeply split among class, gender and other lines that no values can hold and the uniting principle must be "do not harm," (4) "human rights" as the ultimate value, a combination of 1 and 2, and (5) the encouragement of an "open minded and serious dialogue with minority spokesmen and to act on the resulting consensus" (dialogical consensus).

He focuses on each view’s weaknesses and not their strengths and concludes (1996, 255) obviously enough that none of these views is "wholly satisfactory." Nonetheless, choices must be made, as for example, whether a democracy should allow the cultural practice of polygamy. Parekh is a tolerant democrat which means he is loathe to impose values on anyone. Therefore, he favors "dialogical consensus." The only problem here is that conflicting, deeply held beliefs may generate more talk than agreement. What is to be done then?

He answers: Minorities whose beliefs run directly counter to the premises on which the society operates must acquiesce. Or to put it in Parekh’s (1996, 259) more gentle phrasing, "Since deep disagreements cannot be always satisfactorily solved...if the majority remains genuinely unpersuaded [after serious dialogue], its values need to prevail."  Why?  The reason is found in the fact that every society develops "operative public values," those that they live by and which are embedded in their institutions, practices, and moral understandings." They are (1996, 261), "the only moral standpoint from which to evaluate minority [cultural/social] practices."

Parekh (1996, 265-83) goes to great lengths to urge a real dialogue with those whose practices are inconsistent with "operative public values" and gives a good accounting for the arguments for and against the practice of polygamy.  Yet, in the end, he is both judge and jury. The demand from some quarters to ban arranged marriages because they are coercive, for example, he calls "unjustified" because the practice, "while it has no religious or cultural basis.... means a great deal to Asians." (1996, 267)

A request for circumcision from an adult female? Well, she "should be at liberty to demand any circumcisions she prefers." (1996, 271)  However, there are "complicating factors." What are these? Well, perhaps there is community pressure. How can one tell? Simple — if one woman wishes to do it, there is no pressure, but if more than one wishes to, there is, and it shouldn’t be allowed. Why community wishes which have no basis in group religion or culture (for arranged marriage) are not seen as coercive, while those that do have such a basis are seen as unacceptable, is not made clear.

Polygamy? After rehearsing the arguments that Muslims might make in favor of that practice, Parekh pronounces them "unconvincing" (1996, 282).  Assigning his own weighting system to the arguments he presents in favor of banning the practice, he says they "ought to go a long way in convincing the Muslim clerics of the value of monogamy." Perhaps. However, it is quite unlikely that a devout Muslim would weigh the arguments as has Parekh.

He concludes, "Western society, then, has the right to ban the practice of polygyny [polygamy]." What of possibly accepting polygamy? Well (1996, 283, emphasis mine):

If the current inequality of power and status, self-esteem, etc. between men and women were to end so that women could be depended upon to make equally uncoerced choices, if a sizable section of society were freely to opt for polygamy, and if the latter could be shown not to have the harmful consequences mentioned earlier, there would be a case for permitting it. Since this is not the case today, we are right to disallow it.

Parekh’s willingness to entertain the practice rests on what can only be called a wholesale and fundamental transformation of the very culture and its practices that give authority to the claim. He is essentially saying that polygyny would be allowed when the culture reaches the stage where it no longer wishes it. One is reminded here of Stanley Fish’s complaint about "boutique multiculturalism":

A boutique multiculturalist may honor the tenets of religions other than his own, but he will draw the line when the adherents of a religion engage in the practice of polygamy. In ... these cases (and in many analogous cases that could be instanced) the boutique multiculturalist resists the force of the appreciated culture at precisely the point at which it matters most to the strongly committed members...(1998, 69-70).

Yes. Exactly. And, doesn’t it have to be exactly that way for a coherent, integrated, and functional culture to exist and work? I will return to that central question at the conclusion of this analysis.

Bourne’s enthusiasm for his vision is understandable. He was a social critic, and  he wrote well before the advent of advances in the understanding of human psychology which might have caused him to question some of his premises. The same cannot be said for his contemporary champions (Aleinikoff, 1998a, b).  No psychological theory of identity with which I am familiar finds that the more deeply immersed and central your own cultural identity becomes, the more open you are to experience other equally strongly held, and very different, identities.

Clinical and psychological literature is quite clear. People who have deeply held convictions, an identity based on common values, cultures, psychologies, world views, and so on, are much more likely to take their identities as given, the ways things are and the way they ought to be. There is no evidence historically or empirically that taking your Japanese identity seriously makes you more open-minded toward Africans. Or, that growing up with a strong identity as an Italian or Moroccan makes you better able to feel what it is like to be an Israeli. When cultural identities are "contested," a lack of sympathy and empathy can easily turn to hostility and hatred.

Finally, in a country whose citizens are drawn from every country in the world, is it realistic, and not just fanciful, to believe that Somalis will learn about and empathize with Italians, who will in turn do the same with Filipinos, who in turn will now do the same with all the remaining peoples and cultures that make up this diverse country?  Simply to ask the question is to underscore the limits to such a vision.  There are cognitive, emotional, and practical barriers to the amount of information one can take in and make use of, even if one is inclined to, which is another large presumption of Bourne’s theory. To add to this burden the view that it is possible to have the desire and capacity for empathy for all the different cultures and groups that now populate America stretches that vision past reality.

Continue to: Dual Citizenship and Conflict: The War of 1812 Redux?

Back to Table of Contents

End Note

²⁴ In an early work on American national character, the English psychoanalyst Geoffrey Gorer (1964, 25)  wrote,

With few exceptions, the immigrants did not cross the ocean as colonists to reproduce the civilization of their homes on distant shores; with the geographical separation they were prepared to give up, as far as lay in their power, all their past: their language. And the thoughts which that language could express; the laws and allegiances they had been brought up to observe, the values and assured ways of life of their ancestors and former compatriots; even to a large extent their customary ways of eating, of dressing, of living.

This is the immersion into the "melting pot" which colors the myths of both assimilation’s advocates and critics. The former see that process as natural and desirable, the later see it as little better that the cultural rape of immigrant identity. Yet both sides would do well to keep in mind Gorer’s answer to the question he raised of why early immigrants might not wish to reproduce their homelands here. The answer was to be found in the fact that most immigrants had "...escaped...from discriminatory laws, rigid hierarchical structures, compulsory military service and authoritarian limitation of the opportunities open to the enterprising and the goals to which they could aspire." On the ambivalent implications of assimilation, see Skerry (2000).