Must be different parts of the US.

If you're here and you speak any form of american English, you're american.

We still stereo type though. Like, Asians are extremely smart/good at games, if you're black you can jump and dance really well, if you're Irish you can drink really well.

But I am closer to a "melting pot" point. Back 15 years ago though, I would have noticed it and it got pointed out.

Not being considered american and being treated as an inferior is neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. It's also similar to being a foreigner in Japan.

New York City is considered a melting pot but it still happens here all the time. As for suburbs near NJ: "Everyone here is white, even the black people" This area has varying ranges of meltinpotness but it seems that people are usually dissatisfied with "American" as your answer in the friendliest of introductions (as in, aside from pressing you for a different answer they wouldn't treat you differently from anyone else because they aren't actually racist). Or perhaps they are just of the mindset that no one is actually "just american" which is sensible.

I had one pedestrian say "Yo when you're in this country..blah blah driving blah blah." while I was driving in manhattan (melting pot area). Also in high school (suburbs near NJ, not as melting pot) you had this guy who would make comments like "one phone call and I'll have you sent back where you came from" which of course would be back to America, which is where we currently were. He was of Italian descent (and back when Italians were first immigrating to america they weren't considered americans).

There was a tv commercial for reality tv with some asian guy who at one point says "I'm an american citizen and i like reality tv" implying a duality between citizenship and ethnicity. This may seem legitimate but when talking about americans people generally aren't referring to indigenous ethnic groups or possibly norsemen.

In the U.S. racism isn't really citizenship based, as in racial discrimination can be directed at a group of people that include both citizens and non citizens while racial favoritism is being directed at a different group of people that include both citizens and non citizens.

In Japan (at least among younger generations in cosmopolitan areas like Tokyo) being a foreigner makes you an outsider in terms of distinction rather than value. Some people treat foreigners as equals, others don't, some prefer hanging out with foreigners. A friend of mine would get offended when an employee at a restaurant would flip the menu to the english side for her but that's probably done as a courtesy of trying to be helpful rather than as a slight to imply ignorance.

I feel like I'm going off on tangents, as opposed to on off secants.

Learning about the dynamics of 内 and 外 (uchi and soto) within Japanese culture can help others gain a better understanding and perspective about this issue.

no. unless all your friends are douchebags. nuff said.

I knew this woman who left home to go to japan, and married a japanese guy and now runs a beauty parlor there. She's def not an outsider, and people pretty much think she's japanese. (she's chinese btw, so i guess its probably easier for her compared to a caucasian)

"We are the Americans. Existence as you know it is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."

Nice.

For a large subset of americans being accepting of diversity is a core value and almost all of those people believe that adding new and different people to the mix makes us stronger.

I recall seeing a study sometime last year that looked at rates of assimilation in various European cultures. If I remember right, immigrants to Germany that had been there for 3 generations only had about a 1 in 3 chance of feeling like they were accepted as German. Similar numbers existed for France, Switzerland, Italy and so forth. But in the United States something like 70% of 2nd generation immigrants would say that they were accepted as Americans. It was the highest rate of acceptance, by far, in the study. Japan wasn't included in that study, of course, but I get the impression that the number for Japan would have been very close to zero.

I listened to a story about an american that moved to japan shortly after his tour of duty in korea in the 1960's. He had written a few books, and the story was a memorial because he had just passed away. He wrote a comment that traveling through areas of japan could be like walking backwards through time, but that he appreciated that he could never quite be a part of it. He would always be an outsider observing, even after living there for 50 years.

I think his views on the subject were somewhat romantic, but all the same, there are some advantages to being an outsider.

To tell you the truth I think that there will be hard feelings against Americans for what happened in WW2. I know that we can't be forgiven for what we did, but we were neither the catalyst.

So I believe there will always be some cultural tension between Americans and the Japanese.

But I hope that they/we can get past it, because someday I want to go and visit Japan, maybe move depending on the visit :)

Plus Japanese girls are really hot