Every week, AllSides Roundtables connect members of the AllSides audience for guided discussions about our common issues, helping them see the full picture and understand the world better.
After celebrating America’s 250th birthday, we invited our readers to an AllSides Roundtable discussion on what it means to be an American. And just as you’d expect from a diverse group of Americans, they expressed both disagreements and common ground on the philosophy of being a member of our nation.
Where People Agreed
Teamwork is Essential
During the discussion, a common analogy for the American community was a sports team. And what’s more American than that? “It means believing in something and putting in their individual efforts and teamwork to make that community better,” said one guest. “Or to have pride in where they live or want to make a company great or they want to make their family amazing.”
“A lot of other countries are much more collectivist in nature,” they added “ However, the thing is, when you really think about it, any sort of “greats” in a certain area… they did not do it alone.”
“Yeah, I guess we celebrate individual freedom,” added another speaker. I feel like we celebrate community too, and they're sort of like sports teams. You can have individual stars, but they're not going to do anything if they don't have a team to help them.”
We Shouldn’t Be Taken Advantage Of
When some speakers raised concerns about immigrants coming to the US with bad intentions, others concurred.
“I've heard of this other thing where people were coming across from different countries, landing on a beach somewhere, and next thing you know, the whole family comes over because now they have an American citizen… We can't really get into people's heads and know what their intent is.”
“There's a difference between someone coming here legitimately wanting to live here and someone coming with illegitimate, not well-intended purposes.”
“I understand the sentiment of not wanting people to come here with ill intent,” one responded.
“I might not come to the same sort of legislative conclusion, but I think I could understand and kind of share in that, not wanting people to come here and take advantage of it,” another added.
“American-ism” is Hard to Define
One speaker opened with doubt: "The ‘American,’ that's kind of vague. Like, what's the American identity?"
Another reinforced this: "When you talk about belonging, it's unclear what we're belonging to, because for any characteristic you can name, we have differences."
“The diversity and complexity of our country, where we don't have cookie-cutter sameness and not everybody is the same, is both beautiful and complex,” added another. "There's something undeniable that rubs off on you."
Have feedback or questions about this discussion? Email us.
Where They Didn’t
Is ‘the Individual’ or ‘the Collective’ More Prevalent?
"We celebrate individual freedom, but it seems like we're in a time when a lot of people are thinking and acting in terms of group think all the time and hyper partisan divisiveness creating us and them," one participant suggested.
Another partially agreed but didn't fully accept the framing: "I feel like we're always going to have this tension between individual versus collectivism. I mean, we're an individualistic society, first and foremost."
How Much Do Immigrants Contribute?
One person expressed a strongly negative view: "So many people are coming over here and just living off the system, not really part of the community, just soaking in whatever they can soak in and sending it back home to their relatives… If immigrants just come in to take advantage of all the perks and freebies, that's taking advantage."
Another responded by treating this as an open, genuinely uncertain question rather than a settled fact:
"To what extent do people create a burden on the economy versus, for a short time, need help getting started and then want to work hard?," they asked. "If you listen to Fox, you hear that people there are living off the system."
A third chimed in, distinguishing types rather than generalizing: "There's a difference between someone coming here legitimately wanting to live here and someone coming with illegitimate purposes."
How to Handle Birthright Citizenship and Birth Tourism
This was the key area of disagreement.
One speaker lamented the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold birthright citizenship: “These parents have their children here, return home, and their children become citizens who can come back and do whatever they want once they turn 18."
His historical interpretation was also pointed: "It was meant for slavery and this kind of thing... but it's being taken to the extreme advantage and abused right now."
Another was indifferent: "I think the Supreme Court is pretty clear, but it's just, that's the way our country currently is constructed. You know, you come here, you have a baby, then that's it."
A third speaker went the other way: “The US is one of the few places on earth where citizenship is tied to the ground you're born on, not to your heritage,” they said. “Changing that means changing what we’re about as a country.”
RELATED: Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship
Most in the discussion agreed birth tourism was a problem. But their suggested approaches to legislation differed.
“I think the constitution definitely needs a little bit of a work over to be modernized, to eliminate all these things that can be taken advantage of,” said one speaker.
“If anyone meddles with the constitution, then it opens the door to other people meddling with other parts of the constitution,” another person countered.
“Ideally, there'd be some way to do it through a separate act of Congress.. But then, as someone else suggested, it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon.”
RELATED: Media Blindspot: How Wealthy Chinese Are Taking Advantage of US Birthright Citizenship
How They See the Future
There was broad agreement that broken information ecosystems were an obstacle to any path forward.
"The news does not give you good information these days," one person said. "People over-identify with political parties, and that's clearly a big problem."
"I don't trust much of the news anymore. It's so divisive, and they just make things worse," another said.
Social media wasn’t spared, either. "Social media creates a group mindset where people are unable to get out of that mindset," argued one speaker, who also connected it to a broader structural question: "Social media and the fact that people are maybe too isolated ties into the question of hyper-individualism."
One pointed to AllSides as a rare exception: "This is the only one I've ever heard of that covers both the left and the right and the center in their news articles."
When asked directly what next step they would take, the group's answer was essentially: more dialogue like this.
One suggested the concrete action: "How about do another discussion?"
Someone else agreed and reflected warmly. "I really like being able to hear from other people."
Want to have respectful conversations like these with your fellow Americans? Sign up for future AllSides Roundtables. And if you have feedback or questions, please send us an email.
Henry A. Brechter is the editor-in-chief of AllSides. He has a Center bias.
