What is “America”?
If you caught the Super Bowl halftime show—the real one, not the Christian nationalist spinoff—you know that the beautiful and high-energy set covered a lot of different themes. Bad Bunny celebrated Puerto Rico’s history and culture, and he also managed to explore some of its political struggle.
But the performance wasn’t only about Puerto Rico.
It was also about love overcoming hate. It was about joy as the beating heart of resilience. And it was about belonging and identity and America.
The rest of this little reflection will be an elaboration of something I shared in a chat with Dr. Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi. So if you have 12 extra minutes, feel free to check it out now. (If not, just skip on ahead!)
The final section of the halftime show gave Bad Bunny’s answer to some big questions about my society: Who is American? Who is allowed to identify as American? Who belongs to America?
As we’ve all come to learn, there are many different ways to answer these questions. Some might say only US citizens. Others might say, more narrowly, that a real American is one who believes some particular political ideology. There are of course some even worse definitions of real Americans, like only White people in the US. You may hear more expansive and inclusive answers, too, like “anyone who lives here and participates in society.”
But all such answers, the better ones and the worse ones, center the USA. They take it for granted that the word America is shorthand for the United States of America—even though the word also appears in the phrases North America, South America, and Central America.
Bad Bunny gives an answer that does not center the USA. His view of America is related to what’s often called “Pan-Americanism”: while the various nations of the Americas are distinct and unique, they all together make up America. Accordingly, they should feel unity and work together for mutual flourishing.
In Bad Bunny’s own words:
God bless America.
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, República Dominicana, Jamaica, Haiti, the United States, Canada.
Together, we are America.
