Considers how battles at the margins of US society have crucially shaped definitions of what it is to be American, drawing on several historical anecdotes. For most of its history, the US identity has been defined by a mix of civic & ethnic definitions. As the definition of US citizenship expanded in the 19th century, the deteriorating condition of blacks became its symbiotic condition. Reconstruction witnessed a symbolic revolution in the definition of US citizenship because it explicitly included blacks in that circle. However, by the Progressive period, when the substance of citizenship was expanding, its boundaries were being narrowed by economic realities. It was during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt period that US citizenship came to be defined broadly by civic criteria. However, the widespread acceptance of civic nationalism in the post-WWII period now may be vulnerable to new manifestations of scientific racism & overt hostility to nonwhite immigrants. D. Ryfe