What makes an American

If you asked my mother her nationality, she would say "English." The last relative from England was a woman named Elizabeth who settled in Maine in 1636.

She thought of my father as a foreigner, a Frenchman. His family had migrated from Canada in the early 1920s. He took citizenship in 1925. At that point he was considered a British national as were all Canadians.

His ancestor, Michel Boudreau, migrated from La Rochelle in 1740. Once in Nova Scotia, he produced 11 children and became a general. John Sargent on my mother's side was only a common soldier in the Revolutionary War.

I was raised with the concept that being English was superior to every other nationality possible.

I grew up in a very white New England community. The only blacks were Viv, who owned the Chevron gas station, and Celtics star Bill Russell.

Even if my mother looked down on anyone not of English ancestry (French, Germans, Irish, Italians) for her the blacks were fine. As for other nationalities there were too few for her to feel superior to. Catholics were also a no-no and Jews? Well, they were good business people and ran a good grocery store in town.

For the short time we lived in West Virginia, she looked at our black staff as equal. The neighbors criticized her for sitting at the same table and sharing a cup of tea with them.

She had experienced some level of prejudiced there. When she called in our grocery order, she could hear people in the background saying things like, "You take it. I can't understand a word that damned Yankee says." She took it as a compliment that she spoke superior English.

She kept her maiden name Sargent as a middle name on everything, including her newspaper byline and all documents requiring a signature to offset the stigma of the Boudreau name. If I had kept my maiden name instead of my married name (to match my daughter's and to save having to go to the work of change) I would be much more in tune where I've spent the most part of my adult life (France and French-speaking Switzerland). Technically in France my last name is Boudreau, because women retain their maiden name even if using their spouse's. More than once, when people don't find me under N, I tell them to look under B.

As a staunch Republican I suspect she may have been a Trump fan were she still alive. She certainly believed in Joseph McCarthy. My father, so proud of being American, was more analytical. He still voted Republican more often than not. If asked what he was, he would not say French, Canadian or British. He was American.

Both parents knew American history and understood the Constitution. Voting was a duty and a privilege.

I do not know how or why I escaped prejudice. To me it didn't make sense when my friend, who came from all kinds of backgrounds,were nice people. I couldn't accept that they were less than I was or at least less than the 50% English side. I felt I had no national identity. I couldn't step dance like the Irish and although my mother made great spaghetti sauce, it wasn't the same at the Italian kids' mothers.

Only when I left the states and made my grandmother's Boston Baked Beans in my great grandmother's pot did I feel I had an identity and that was more New England Yankee than American. This makes me to better or worse than anyone else. DNA is not a predictor of national goodness or badness.

After Brexit, in France, I've been told to go home. Locals, probably not unlike my mother, see me as English, especially when I speak French.

I am thrilled that the Swiss accepted me as a citizen. I think my new country works about as well as any country can, which means it is not perfect. But having lived in other countries and gathering habits and tastes from them all, I think of myself as an international-Swiss-New England Yankee. I do not think of myself as superior having arrived at this combination because of a series of life's accidents. It just makes me another human.

The current bruhaha of Trump's attacks on immigrants takes my mother's attitude to a disgusting new low. It is trying to be superior by making others inferior. Once it involves the safety and freedom of those disparaged, than it becomes dangerous.

Nationalism, when it means the country where someone lives can do not wrong, is equally dangerous because it perpetuates the faults that they will not see. When those that want to correct those faults are reviled, the danger zone burns hotter and hotter.