Why does it matter where I'm 'really' from? Mar 27, 2019 at 7:53 pm

People often find ways to identify with and exclude others. We categorize ourselves by using gender, class, race and even age to connect with people like ourselves or separate ourselves from others. As a society, why are we more comfortable questioning our sexuality than our nationality and ethnicity?

In this episode of RadioActive Youth Media, youth producers Kamil Saad and Jadenne Radoc Cabahug explore nationalism in the United States and what identifying as a "hyphenated American" means.



Hyphenated American: an American citizen who can trace their ancestry to another, specified part of the world, such as an African American or an Irish American Definition from the Oxford Dictionary

Kamil and Jadenne started to wonder why their white classmates would often identify as American, while non-Native students of color usually identified with the countries their families came from, even if they immigrated generations ago. We can't have a conversation about race and ethnicity in the United States today without looking into our history as a country, from Theodore Roosevelt's infamous speech, "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism," to the deadly 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.