Walking the streets of major US cities, we would naturally assume the long-held hype of the US being the most diverse country in the world. If we take that same walk down the Main Streets of many Small Towns USA, the immediate perception would be that nothing much has changed since the 1950s. In other words, the US is not the top country in the world for diversity; we don’t even come in second. In fact, the US ranks in the middle. Uganda surpasses US for the most ethnically diverse. So, it’s not any wonder that most people, both inside and outside the US, hold a rigid, outdated image of what an “American” looks like. And according to new psychological research, that image has little to do with legal citizenship — and everything to do with race and language.
Decades of studies show that many Americans, regardless of whether they consciously believe in equality, subconsciously associate being “truly American” with being white and English-speaking. One landmark study showed that even when participants knew every person in a lineup was a U.S. citizen, they were far quicker to link white faces with the label “American” than Asian or Black faces. Even more telling, Asian Americans and Hispanic participants themselves often showed the same bias — favoring white faces as more representative of “American.”
Language plays an equally powerful role. In a study of young children, both in the U.S. and South Korea, researchers found that kids as young as five strongly linked English speakers — regardless of appearance — with being American. But by age nine, children began layering race onto their perceptions, with white English speakers overwhelmingly seen as “the most American.”
The takeaway? Despite citizenship being a legal status — defined by birth, naturalization, or parental ties — in the minds of many, it’s still filtered through deep-seated cultural biases about race and language. Those perceptions shape not just social interactions, but also hiring decisions, assumptions of loyalty, and everyday judgments about who belongs.
Experts say these biases are not inevitable — they’re learned early and reinforced through culture, media, and politics. But acknowledging their existence is the first step toward dismantling them. So next time someone casually throws around the phrase “real American,” it’s worth pausing to ask: real by the law — or real by the stereotype? Go beyond the headlines…
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