Some white Americans assume that living here automatically means I owe them loyalty or support, but that expectation feels hollow. “Assimilation” gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean in practice? Too often, it comes across as pressure to abandon your identity, to conform in ways that feel like betrayal, or to accept a subordinate role just to be accepted.
There’s also a deeper frustration behind it. If U.S. foreign policy hadn’t destabilized my home country, I might not even be here in the first place. So being told I should support a country I associate with that kind of harm feels unreasonable. From my perspective, it shouldn’t be surprising that I still feel connected to China and view it more favorably. And if China continues to develop, returning to my home country could become a real option.
The “American Identity” is a joke. This is a country that bombs and invades others to pilfer resources. America is a terrorist country.
I am a white American, born and raised here. I’ve never been anywhere else and have no connection to anything else.
And yet I feel no connection to this country either. Everything looks and feels fake; as if somebody asked ChatGPT to invent a country and this is what it came up with.
There are the foundations of a society and a nation here but nothing built on top of that. No history or culture, just a hollow and vapid identity devoid of substance. It feels like it didn’t even exist before I was born. That’s how shallow everything about this country is. I don’t feel like I belong here at all and yet I don’t have anywhere else to go either.
I would say I feel this in my soul, but the soullessness of living in the US doesn’t make for much of a feeling of having a soul in the first place.