Benefits Of Being An American Essay

Most people think that being an American is something we are born with. Or this is just a so-called “status.” An American is not just a legalized citizen of the United States. It’s actually more than that. To be an American, it means having the ability to exhibit your own freedom of speech and self-expression, hard work, and multiculture without others taking it away from you. We tend to do things on another level that most people from other countries can't. As an American, you are given the rights of having freedom of speech no matter what. We are granted this right for us to speak without any limitations. For example, in the speech, “The Four Freedoms,” by Franklin D. Roosevelt, he discusses the four key human rights as a reminder

It doesn't matter what your culture is. America endows you with respect for who you are. Sometimes it might be a challenge to know who you are as a person. For example, in the essay “Growing Up Asian in America,” by Kesaya E. Noda, she expresses her trouble growing up with two different racial backgrounds. Noda had a hard identifying as a Japanese-American woman. She couldn't understand whether she was racially Japanese. Things changed for Noda as she states, “But now I can say that I am a Japanese-American. It means I have a place here in this country, too” (Noda 36). An American is not someone who should be racially stigmatized. Americans are not always one specific race; they can be multicultural. Being an American does not mean that you should constantly identify as one culture. If you were born somewhere else in the world, celebrate that culture as well as your American culture. America is a nation where diversity is celebrated by everyone. You don't need to be racially American to recognize yourself as an American citizen. Noda’s self-realization about the crossover between Japanese and American helped her understand that she is eternally Japanese and American. Therefore, being multicultural is part of the definition of being an