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Heritage American

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Imagery of the American frontier is associated with the trope.

Heritage American is a designation that became popular in American national conservatism and the MAGA movement in 2025. Definitions vary, but it generally encompasses "present-day Americans who trace their ancestral roots to the colonial period, or shortly thereafter".[1][2]

It is mainly used to identify people descending from Anglo-Protestant and Scotch-Irish white settlers who lived in the original colonies and later moved west to settle the American frontier.[1] Some definitions include Native Americans and the descendants of enslaved people.[1][3] Proponents of the heritage American identity have opposed what they call "propositional nationalism" (referring to civic nationalism) as having emerged as a result of immigration changes brought about by the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 that abolished the US immigration system's usage of national origin quotas.[1] Proponents of heritage American identity claim that the Hart-Celler Act lead to a fundamental alteration of American citizenship to a propositional nationalism which they would like to reverse.[1]

The term has been criticized as a euphemism for white Americans with New York Times writer Ezekiel Kkweku claiming that the term has been used "to launder white nationalism with facially neutral language".[1] C. Jay Engel contests the association of it with white Americans in general because he claims it cannot be reduced down to racial or ethnic categories noting that today a second generation Swedish American would be a white American but would not be a heritage American.[1]

History

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In July 2025 United States Vice President JD Vance said "we’re a particular place with a particular people [...] Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from new land meant creating new tangible things, new homes, new towns, new infrastructure to tame a wild continent. That is our heritage as Americans."[4][1]

Heritage vs creed

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An 1869 Thomas Nast cartoon espousing a creedal civic nationalist conception of Americans being of different ancestries and ethnic backgrounds sitting together at a dinner table with Columbia to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal as equal members of the American citizenry while Uncle Sam prepares and sets the table, where membership in the nation is not dependent upon ethnicity.[5][6]

The idea of a Heritage America is distinct from the notion of a creedal America, which is the view that America is defined by a set of values rather than shared ancestry.[7]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Ward, Ian (July 31, 2025). "The Online Right's Favorite Nativist Slogan Is Gaining Traction in the Real World". POLITICO.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  2. ↑ "Commentary: With Manifest Destiny art, DHS goes hard on 'white makes right'". Los Angeles Times. 2025-07-26. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  3. ↑ https://www.rehumanizeintl.org/post/the-heritage-americans-concept-who-does-it-include-and-exclude
  4. ↑ Vice President JD Vance Accepts The Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award. Claremont Institute. July 8, 2025 – via YouTube.
  5. ↑ Kennedy, Robert C. (November 2001). "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner, Artist: Thomas Nast". On This Day: HarpWeek. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on November 23, 2001. Retrieved November 23, 2001.
  6. ↑ Walfred, Michele (July 2014). "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner: Two Coasts, Two Perspectives". Thomas Nast Cartoons. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  7. ↑ Wood, Gordon S. (2025-11-21). "Opinion | Why America Is a 'Creedal Nation'". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2026-07-07.

Further reading

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