Like one of the family: race, ethnicity, and the paradox of US national identity

Abstract

The tensions between individual rights promised to US citizens and group discrimination targeted against African Americans and similar racial/ethnic groups constitute one enduring paradox of US society. This essay examines this paradox by exploring how a gendered family rhetoric contributes to understandings of race and US national identity. Using African American women's experiences as a touchstone for analysis, the article suggests that African American women's treatment as second-class citizens reflects a belief that they are 'like one of the family', that is, legally part of the US nation-state, but simultaneously subordinated within it. To investigate these relationships, the article examines 1) how intersecting social hierarchies of race and ethnicity foster racialized understandings of US national identity; 2) how the gendered rhetoric of the American family ideal naturalizes and normalizes social hierarchies; and 3) how gendered family rhetoric fosters racialized constructions of US national identity as a large national family.