Who Counts as “American”?

Ten-year old Mariachi singer Sebastion de la Cruz performed the national anthem at Game 3 of the NBA finals in San Antonio — and this is how the twitterverse responded:

De la Cruz is Mexican-American, a US citizen, born and raised in San Antonio.  Based on nothing but his name and appearance apparently, many simply categorized him as “Mexican” and assumed that meant he was a “foreigner,” not “American” (#yournotamerican), even that he was here “illegally.”

The Tumblr blog, Public Shaming (“Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem”) displays many more tweets in a similar vein.  What kind of assumptions about who counts as “American” are at play here? How do these claims relate to Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma (and stigma symbols) and Becker’s master status concept?

The “Public Shaming” blog is a good example of a means of destigmatization, by exposing the inaccuracies and hypocrisy of everyday negative stereotyping.

As the author Matt Binder describes: “I started retweeting people complaining about welfare, food stamps, etc. and then following it up with a previous tweet of theirs that makes them look hypocritical/dumb/etc.”