The issue of romanticizing the American identity has been trending for many years now. It is claimed that American authors from the past have written on and given the American an identity that is not consistent with the realities on the ground back home. Most people view America as a place full of positives and rarely are there the common problems that define other societies. American is portrayed as a land of opportunities where every person has access to quality services and that all respect their rights. Authors have described the American as identity as civilized, advanced and independent thinking, an aspect that is not true to most other identities across the world. The criticism regarding the romanticizing of the American identity has focused on the negatives and the disregard of the realities in America, an issue that has been detrimental to the American dream.
American romantic literature was popularized by the views of some of the most famous authors in American history. For instance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a popular essayist and poet in the United States, reiterated that the American identity was free from any religious influence. Emerson believed that all things in America were divine because of the existence of a God who was divine in all aspects. Other scholars like Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow, and Irvine all wrote on the aspects that made they believed made America different from all the other regions of the world (Behdad, 2005). Through their work, the authors popularized the idea that America was a superior society to the rest of the world and that it was a far much better destination and place to live in than the rest of the world.
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Romanticizing the American identity indeed worked to the benefit of the American society in the early years. Many people of foreign decencies were influenced to immigrate to the United States, an aspect that led to the economic and social developments that have defined the United States to date. The American community evolved to be one of the most advanced in terms of industrial development. To maintain the positive depictions that the United States had received, successive political regimes focused on developing the infrastructure of American cities and the result was highly developed living conditions, better than most places on earth. Clearly, the romanticizing of the American identity worked to improve the situation of the 18th and 19th century America, but as years progressed, the idea has turned out to isolate America from the rest of the world.
Grewal (2005) writes that efforts to romanticize the American identity further have seen America being depicted negatively across many parts of the world. Indeed, the existence of most terrorism groups in the world can be blamed on the efforts to portray America as a romantic destination. The portrayal of America as a superior country in the world has ignited enmity and non-cooperation from several of its traditional allies. Further, the efforts to romanticize the United States have led to the arms race, an aspect that has been detrimental to the efforts to maintain global peace. Back in the United States, locals have developed an intolerant towards new immigrants, an aspect that has increased the challenges of homeland security. Cases of fatal killings, mostly involving minority groups are on the increase due to the racial competition in the United States. Clearly, the romanticizing the American identity has ended up being detrimental in the efforts to portray America as the most superior nation on earth. Everything that fell within the aims of the romanticizing efforts seems unattainable today. In conclusion, it is important that modern scholars and other leaders develop a better strategy to meet the earlier vision that led to the romanticizing of America.
References
Behdad, A. (2005). A forgetful nation: On immigration and cultural identity in the United States . Duke University Press.
Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: feminisms, diasporas, neoliberalisms . Duke University Press.
