Author Lewis Lapham appeals to the American public in his 1992 essay “Is There an American Tribe?”, excerpted from his longer essay, “Who and What is American?”. According to Lapham, Americans are known for tolerance, but he warns us that the media and politicians with their own capitalistic interests are trying to cast an opposite public perception, in attempts to divide and rule.

Lapham’s opinion is that the modern day trend of prefixing the noun “American” creates more than just a grammatical hierarchy. It downplays the American ideology and promotes exclusivity. This, Lapham claims, opposes the attitude of our past successful immigrants, “mongrels”, who by definition were unafraid of mixing in and of having an unknown ancestry. He even draws on a quote from as far back as John Quincy Adams, one of the U.S.’s past presidents with European ties, who required potential immigrants to separate from their former ancestry and never go back to it. Adams also advised immigrants to, “Look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors”.

Lapham views the U.S. as a world model in terms of past successful immigrant assimilation, but he wonders why, in a country whose citizens mutually respect one and other, the masses are falling for this current media-created fad of exclusiveness.