Aufgabe 2 · Abitur NRW Englisch LK · Neem: Unbecoming American 2023

Material

Johann N. Neem: An American Childhood

In the 1970s, the author’s family emigrated from India to the USA when he was two years old. They were part of the first wave of immigrants after the removal of a law that favored European immigration in 1965.

Mine was an American childhood. We were middle class and lived on a cul-de-sac whose

residents were diverse in many of the usual American ways. There were Japanese-Americans

and Catholics and Protestants. There were people without college degrees, and others with

graduate degrees. There were Republicans and Democrats. There were immigrants from

5 Germany, and of course we were from India. […]

I imagined that I could become anybody. I had no awareness then that this belief was the result

of more than two centuries of activism on the part of African Americans, feminists, and their

allies to earn equality within the American nation-state. It was California. The American Dream

was alive. Of course, that dream had been deferred for so many Americans for too long. But

10 after 1965, it was hoped, those obstacles would be behind us. Immigrants would be welcome.

African Americans would be equal. And despite the thus-far unsuccessful effort to enact the

Equal Rights Amendment 1, I grew up in a world that took for granted that women too could be

whomever they wanted to be.

There was a kind of amnesia. Maybe that’s not the right word. We were new. So maybe it was

15 that I just didn’t know the history, and my parents had experienced a different history. Whatever

it was, America was, for us, a blank slate. But it was not fully blank. It had rituals and traditions

for us to learn, such as giving gifts and spending time with family and friends on Christmas or

having barbecues on the Fourth of July. We gathered with neighbors to hunt Easter eggs. It

had norms, like saying “thank you” for any kind of service, a sign of the respect each American

20 owed fellow Americans for their contributions to society. It had a creed, too – that the United

States promised all people a better, freer, more prosperous life.

No doubt, my parents sometimes faced challenges and encountered prejudice. For all that I

shared with my neighbors and schoolmates, my family was also Indian American. I grew up

surrounded by family friends who were immigrants like us. That was fine too. In America, my

25 Indianness was part of a pluralistic civil society and market in which ethnic and religious groups

could sustain their beliefs and folkways 2. Growing up, I experienced no tension between going

to Berkeley for masala dosas 3 in restaurants full of immigrants (and a few hippies), and learning

in school about my Pilgrim forebears. Nor was I told that my recent arrival in America exempted

me from responsibility for the evils of slavery and racism. As part of the imagined community

30 of the nation, I understood that the past was also a shared burden.

Most of us have multiple communities to which we belong – and which make claims on us –

and it is the relations between these sources of our identity that make us who we are. It is the

tensions between some of these obligations, furthermore, that enable invaluable self-criticism.

As the political theorist Michael Walzer has written, a self whose identity is made up of only

35 one source is shallow and totalizing. What makes our differences - our pluralism - sustainable

is that one of the communities that define us – America – is shared by most of us. We are

many, but also one. This was the ideal of the so-called hyphenated American. All Americans,

native born or immigrant, had their particular ethnic and religious identities, but we shared a

common American-ness.

40 As a child, I thought that to be American was to believe in individuality, to support pluralism

and equality, and also to celebrate common holidays and eat common foods, such as the oozy

grilled cheeses and bean burritos that the school cafeteria dished up for us, or the sloppy joes

and tacos that my mom learned to cook (even though my favorite food remained dahl and rice).

On Halloween, it meant carving jack-o-lanterns and, in the evening, heading out with friends

45 for trick-or-treating. On Thanksgiving, it meant gathering with other immigrant families and

friends to eat turkey and express gratitude. Being American meant that during the Christmas

season, we kids would live in anticipation, poring through the toy section of the Sears catalog.

On the Fourth of July, we’d watch fireworks. At school, we said the Pledge of Allegiance.

I lived in a world where we could all be American, not because of our cultural differences but

50 because of what we could share. This shared culture – this sense of being a people – is a

precondition to sustaining the universal ideals of American democracy. We like to pretend that

principles are enough, but abstract ideas are thin gruel for flesh-and-blood human beings. We

are not disembodied reasoners. We belong to groups. We have emotions. Culture connects

us to our country and to one another. But that culture depends on shared rituals and

55 experiences. Today, we are so afraid of offense that we risk privatizing the very culture we

once could share together.

My childhood memories of a diverse neighborhood and public school where we could all be

Americans reflect good fortune. There are many Americans who experience discrimination and

prejudice […]. Since the American Revolution 4, activists have struggled to overcome exclusion;

60 we are still struggling today. But there is a meaningful distinction between seeking access to

the common life of the nation and deciding that that common life is itself the problem. A shared

culture requires something. It cannot simply be an absence.

Shared holidays are essential parts of culture. They mark time and endow it with meaning.

That is why the so-called “war over Christmas,” 5 while overblown, is not silly. It reflects what

65 happens when rituals with collective meaning become contested and diminished. Just like so

much that once could be shared but now must belong to a “group,” Christmas has become

something that divides rather than unites. If everything and everyone belongs to a subgroup,

there can be no group, and with no group there can be no Americans.

997 words

Neem, J. N. (2020). Unbecoming American. Hedgehog Review. Spring 2020.

This excerpt is taken from “Unbecoming American” by Johann N. Neem, an essay that originally appeared in The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2020, volume 22, number 1. It appears here with permission of the publisher.

1 Equal Rights Amendment – proposed in 1923 to guarantee equal rights for men and women but not added to the U.S. Constitution as of 2021

2 folkways – traditional behavior and customs

3 masalas dosas – an Indian dish made from flat bread and stuffing

4 American Revolution – war (1775–1783) in which the British colonies broke free from British rule

5 “war over Christmas” – cultural debate whether the public display of Christmas symbols is politically correct

2 Analyze how the author conveys his view on "American-ness".

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