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Who is an American?
According to Eric Foner, American nationality constitutes of both civic and ethnic definitions. In the history of American, African-Americans (blacks) were not considered American citizens. Blacks were by then slaves and were not regarded as constituent members of the society, as Edmund Randolph would say. However, there is no definition according to the original constitution of who is an American citizen. However, the constitution gave congress the power to create an equal naturalization system through the naturalization law of 1970, which offered the first definition of American nationality. Congress eliminated the process of free whites becoming citizens, and for a couple of years, only whites could become citizens through naturalization. Through the years, members of different ethnic groups were added to become citizens by naturalization. This included Asians and blacks.
Professor Foner goes ahead and distinguished citizenship in America from other parts of the world. He cites that the western worlds created the idea of freedom; however, not forgetting the west of worlds also invented race. Nationalism thereby is birthed from these two beliefs. In the past, scholars have differentiated civic nationalism, which views the nation as a community based on shared political institutions and values, unlike ethnic nationalism, which considers a government as a community of descent based on shared ethnic and linguistic inherent. Germany illustrates the complete ethnic form, and whiles France presents the inclusive civic brand of nationhood. Scholars in America have identified America with the French model. From the time of independence, the nation’s most essential purpose has always rested on universal and not provincial principles. Therefore, to be an American citizen, all one was supposed to do was to be committed to the ideology of liberty, equality and democracy.