The first question to ask yourself when you start to think about how to tell your own American stories is: “Does it have American values in it?” The list of values that follows is admittedly subjective and nowhere near exhaustive, but it is based on a lifelong interest in American history, literature and popular culture. It makes connections between the listed values to show what they mean to Americans, both separately and as a system of values. Ideas like courage or hope are, of course, prized by cultures around the world—to speak of them as American values is to try to explain how they play out in our culture, and how they make up part of a coherent whole.
What Makes an American?
America, more than most countries, defines itself and the members of its society by reference to a set of shared values. In many ways, they define what it means to be American. While many other nations define their members on the basis of birthplace and blood relations, Americanness is based on a social contract involving an understanding and acceptance of its unique set of democratic values. As sociologist Carl Friedrich once said, “To be a Frenchman is a fact, while to be an American is an ideal.” By embracing that ideal, organizations fighting for justice and equality, whether they are working for immigration reform or against felony disenfranchisement, can stake their claim to the American story in a way that will make it difficult for their opponents to attack.
Reaffirming our commitment to our shared values can be a powerful tool to promote inclusion of all the individuals and communities that make up the American nation. This isn’t to say that using values-laden language will somehow magically erase the barriers between us and win acceptance of marginalized communities, but rather that it will be extremely difficult to win that acceptance without reference to the values that underlie the social contract that binds us together as a nation.