I’m not really American, and I couldn’t be prouder of that.
I hope you, my fellow Californians, feel the same way.
Because sometimes there’s no greater compliment than an intended insult.
This time, the backhanded praise came in a recent Los Angeles Times survey, conducted by the Canadian firm Leger, that examined how Americans feel about California.
Among the findings: half of American adults believe our state is in decline. Dislike of the Golden State runs even deeper among conservatives. Two-thirds of Republicans surveyed say that the national impact of California has been “net negative.”
And nearly half of Republicans consider California and Californians to be “not really American.”
The media treated this label “not really American” as harsh criticism. Newspapers dwelled on how such anti-California perspective reflected a terribly divided country. Two L.A. Times columnists, taking the bait, defended California as being very American.
But why bother? Who in their right mind wants to be “really American” now?
In this century, our country has become defined by its anti-democratic fascism, rage and violence. Being considered less than American by other Americans should be considered a badge of honor. Reading the poll, I wanted to print “Not Really American” T-shirts.
Disdain from the Americans isn’t new, either. It’s one of the few things that never changes here. The first best-selling book about California, The Land of Gold: Reality versus Fiction—published in 1855 by Southern author Hinton Helper — called California “an ugly cheat” and said “there is but lank promise in the future.”
Meanwhile, California partisans have appreciated our state because it isn’t too American. The journalist Carey McWilliams, perhaps California’s greatest interpreter, wrote in 1949: “One cannot, as yet, properly place California in the American scheme of things…California is no ordinary state; it is an anomaly, a freak, the great exception among the American states.”
Even Republicans, back when they ran the state, considered California’s singularity a virtue. But in the past two generations, as California grw more liberal, our distinctiveness came to be seen as disloyalty.
In 2015, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declared that California “does not count” as a “real” American state or as part of the U.S. West. Tellingly, he included this insult in his dissent from the decision legalizing same-sex marriage — which makes it just another compliment.
Californians ought to be prepared for more such compliments. Donald Trump’s backers have published plans for an initiative called Project 2025, which would treat California as an American enemy — because, of course, our values are not really American. The plans seek not just to overturn California policies, but to punish Californians for having backed them in the first place.
For instance, California’s “un-American” support for women’s rights and reproductive rights would be met with a Trump federal abortion ban at 15 weeks, as well as harsh penalties for Californians who continued to provide the services.
Our wise extension of health insurance, including Medicaid, to all our people, regardless of their legal status, would also be targeted.
In addition, we’d lose the power to establish higher-than-American standards for fighting climate change and improving air quality.
And of course, we’d pay a price for our not-really-American commitment to gun control. And we’d pay for protecting immigrants from Trump’s promised military-led deportation scheme, which is all but certain to sweep up U.S. citizens too, since half of California’s kids have an immigrant parent.
Trump has promised to overturn the 14th Amendment’s protection of birthright citizenship, which would take U.S. passports from five million naturalized California citizens.
In this context, is it any wonder that a majority of our not-really American state is ready to leave before the Americans kick us out? According to another recent poll from the Independent California Institute, 58% of California adults say we’d be better off than we are now if California peacefully became independent — its own country — in the next 10 years.
An even higher number, 68%, say California would be better off if, instead of seceding, the state obtained a special autonomous status within the U.S. that allowed for more control of our land and infrastructure.
All that said, while many Americans seem to hate California, we don’t hate Americans back. The same Independent California Institute poll asked Californians if they felt more Californian or American.
Fifty-one percent said that they felt equally Californian and American. Only 21% said they felt more Californian. Still, 63% said they wouldn’t live anywhere in America other than California, our less-than-fully American home.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square, an Arizona State University media enterprise.