AITA for telling my boyfriend he shouldn't get a tattoo in a language he doesn't speak?

You guys are really obsessed with being anything but American.

I think that's a little harsh. I'd classify it more as "American" being a very broad term compared to your other examples.

In America, you are considered to be "American" if you have citizenship. If you gain citizenship when you're 80, having lived in other countries for your entire life, you're still American. If you were born to American parents but have never stepped foot in the US and don't even speak English, technically you could be considered American.

I understand that a lot of countries have a more strict idea of national identity. I hear Japan often offered as an example of a place you can move to and live in for 20 years and still be considered an outsider. You can argue that that's messed up, but you can't argue that that also makes "Japanese" a very strong identity. In America, if you said something like "he's not really American, he just moved here when he was 17" that would be seen as bigoted, nationalist and possibly racist. So "American" ends up being a very weak identity despite the US actually having a very distinct identity. Inclusivity is the death of specificity.

So if "American" means anybody the government allows in regardless of their experiences, where do you go to find an actual culture? Well, you either zoom further in to a more local community (Midwest/South/Northeast/Wisconsin/Texas/Chicago/LA et all) and find pride in that, or you go back through your family and find the cultures that were special to them.

/r/AmItheAsshole Thread Parent