Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America

Broaching the topic of postcolonialism more directly, Lalami addresses the double standard regarding different groups of immigrants and the expectations placed on them. Her teachers spoke only French in Morocco, which mandated her learning French despite living in an Arabic-speaking country; she considers this in contrast to the idea of an Arab immigrant teaching only in Arabic in the US. The French colonized Morocco, and the difference is largely of culture and race; the cultures of people of color are placed in a secondary position to European cultures and languages. The idea of assimilation, then, requires that people of color assimilate into white culture. However, white people are not required to assimilate to the cultures of people of color, even when they move into countries that are predominantly non-white. Such a double standard establishes white cultures as superior to those of people of color, and this process is enforced socially through much of the discrimination that is seen and discussed in prior essays in the collection. The crux of this discussion is that restricting immigrants’ abilities to practice their own cultures, speak their own languages, and participate in their own religions is essentially a rejection of their citizenship, serving as another way in which social and cultural pressure create conditional citizenship.

As in the “Borders” essay, Lalami discusses anti-immigration laws as efforts to keep America predominantly white and English-speaking. The Johnson-Reed Act restricted immigration from “nonwhite” countries and those “deemed insufficiently white—eastern and southern Europeans, for example” (75). Such policies established distinctly rational lines along which Americans were or were not willing to accept new citizens, and the rhetoric surrounding these decisions often revolved around the likelihood of successful assimilation. Analyzing patterns of immigration, though, Lalami notes that many of the original non-white people in the US were not brought into America by choice; they were either already present in Indigenous populations or brought over as enslaved people. Later immigrants came by choice, facing discrimination socially—and then legally—over time. For enslaved and Indigenous people, assimilation was a forceful and violent process of oppression and restrictions against practicing or acknowledging their own cultures and customs. Even among remaining descendants of these groups, most do not speak their culture’s native language, and many languages and customs have disappeared in the name of assimilation.

Lalami notes that this is the normal pattern for immigration from different regions, following “initial suspicion, a period of conflict and adjustment and eventual integration into the mainstream” (89), but this pattern has been successful only with certain predominantly white groups. While discrimination against Italian Americans has decreased to the point that they are now included in the group Lalami notes is just called “Americans,” this change has to do with shifting ideas of whiteness that incorporated Eastern and Southern Europe, which were excluded from the Johnson-Reed Act. For groups that are not already European or European-adjacent, the bar for assimilation is much higher, carrying an expectation of total rejection of prior culture and language. Lalami’s seatmate on the plane, for example, is upset that the Korean people in his community are teaching their children Korean, even though they are also learning English, and the Korean lessons occur on the weekends outside of a public-school setting. The expectation, then, is not only that these members of his community would know and speak English but also that they reject any other language, even that of their country of origin.

However, Lalami identifies language acquisition as the easiest part of assimilating, with cultural and social norms being much harder to master. For immigrants from non-European cultures, this includes wearing American-style clothing, avoiding locations that are visibly non-European, and, as noted in previous essays, constantly voicing loyalty to the US and rejecting one’s native country. This runs in direct opposition to the behavior of self-proclaimed “expats” who move from majority-white nations into countries that are predominantly occupied by people of color. These migrants rarely learn the language and customs of their new home, preferring to take their own culture with them wherever they go. Expats’ behavior shows that the desire to remain connected to one’s home cultures and customs during and after the immigration process is normal, and it is an injustice to demand that certain cultures be left behind. The immigrants’ struggles that Lalami notes, such as missing family gatherings and celebrations, are only deepened by social and cultural pressures to avoid anything that could be conspicuously foreign. Her airplane seatmate reinforces this expectation during his conversation with Lalami.