America is Plural - But it is not Undefined
During the Super Bowl LX halftime show, Bad Bunny closed with a simple phrase when he was exiting: seguimos aqui – we’re still here. It was not a policy demand or a partisan statement, it was a declaration of presence and continuity. While that message deserves to be taken seriously; presence alone does not constitute a nation.
America has always been accepting of different ethnicities, backgrounds, and eclectic cultures that have shaped the fabric of our nation. What is new is the growing assumption that because America is multicultural in that sense, it therefore has no shared culture or that such a culture is illegitimate, optional or morally suspect. In this framing, the United States becomes less of a republican project and more of a geographic area: a place where differing identities coexist without any shared fabric.
As a son of two Latino parents, one immigrating from the Dominican Republic and one from Puerto Rico, I reject that view not out of defensiveness, but out of lived experience and shared traditions passed down from my hard-working parents. My parents did not come to the United States because it was undefined, they came because of the definition it stood for. They came for the institutions, the stability, its language, its rule of law, and its promise that hard work could translate into the sought after American dream. They did not arrive seeking a blank slate with a culture they already knew, nor did they come believing that mere presence meant belonging. They understood that becoming American was something to be earned, embraced, and upheld with the upmost honor.
As President Ronald Reagan once put it, “America represents something universal in the human spirit. You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman…But anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.” America is certainly different. Here, people from anywhere can become American, but that difference rests on a condition, the adoption of a shared American culture. Without that America is no longer exceptional but merely a permissive, geographical nation-state.
America is inheritance, it is historical, it is eclectic, it is welcoming, it is diverse, and it is free. The American project has never required uniformity of origin, but it has always depended on shared civic culture, belief in individual liberty, knowledge of the country’s laws and history, equal justice under law, republican self-government, freedom, and responsibility both civically and morally. These principles are not just writing on the wall, they are embodied in traditions, symbols, institutions, and a common English language that allows a nation of strangers to function as one.
While Bad Bunny’s phrase is simple and true, America historically has asked for more than just presence. It has asked for participation, and this expectation is not hostile to immigrants. But it is precisely what has allowed immigrants, including my own family to become Americans rather than permanent guests. It is what transformed waves of newcomers on Ellis Island into citizens with a shared stake in the American dream.
To say that America has a culture is not to deny its diversity, but it’s to recognize the framework that has created the most culturally cohesive nation to ever exist. A house can welcome many families, but only if it has a foundation.
We can say “seguimos aqui” and mean it with pride. But we should also be able to say, this is America and we are proud to be American, that it is worth inheriting, sustaining, and building for future generations to enjoy the fruits of the greatest experiment in modern history.