Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America

This essay opens just after Donald Trump’s 2016 election as president of the United States on a nationalist and largely anti-immigration platform. While Lalami is on a plane, her seatmate complains that Korean people in his neighborhood have not assimilated, as they teach their children both Korean and English. This prompts a discussion of the continuous role of immigrants in American history. Lalami cites white supremacist views of the founding of America, in which only white men would have rights, as well as later incidents of anti-immigration sentiment, all of which are grounded in the same term: “assimilation.” Laws in the late 19th century banned Asian immigration, and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 set limits on the number of immigrants that could come from each country, favoring white immigrants over immigrants of color.

Recalling that her teachers in Morocco often spoke only French, despite living in a majority Arabic-speaking country, Lalami discusses examples of the ways that colonization effectively sets the course of assimilation. From Indigenous peoples to enslaved Africans, people of color and even some European immigrants are expected to assimilate by leaving behind their languages and cultures in favor of the European-inspired culture and language of the US.