Hagåtña, Guam.

I was born on a very small island, in a very small town. Hagåtña, Guam.

Guam is a US territory. Which means, yes, it’s part of the United States, but also, no, you don’t really have to think about it unless you’re in the military or way too into American history.

Here’s the relevant part: I’m an American citizen. I was born on Guam, and under US law, people born there are US citizens.

And yet, no one has ever asked me (not even once) if I’m “really” American. It’s not because everyone’s well-versed in US territories. It’s because I’m a white woman.

^ That’s me (on the right) circa 1992.

If you’re wondering how the United States ended up with Guam: it’s not because America woke up one day and thought, let’s expand our cultural tapestry.

Guam was ceded to the US by Spain in 1898, after the Spanish–American War. It mattered because it’s a strategic point in the Pacific. A place you can use, hold, stage from, defend, and project power from. That’s the cleanest way to say it.

World War 2 is the part most people vaguely remember, because Guam was invaded and occupied by Japan and later retaken by the US. But the reason the US had Guam in the first place was already baked in: strategy.

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Puerto Rico also became a US territory in 1898. Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship by federal law in 1917.

So: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is also an American citizen.

And yet, every time Bad Bunny reaches a new tier of cultural relevance, some dipshit on the internet asks if he’s “even American.”

It’s not that people don’t know Puerto Rico is connected to the US. It’s that, emotionally, they don’t want it to count. Or they want it to count only when it’s convenient: enlistment, labor, markets, culture. Pick your category.

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American Samoa is also a US territory, but it sits in a different legal bucket: people born there are generally US nationals, not automatically US citizens, at birth.

Which is the kind of legal language that makes you realize how hard the US works to maintain a system where “belongs to us” and “belongs with us” are allowed to be two different things.

And yes: Tulsi Gabbard is an American citizen. She was born in American Samoa and is a US citizen. Right now, she’s also the US director of national intelligence.

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The citizenship question is rarely asked like a sincere administrative inquiry. It’s asked like a little test. A little gate. A way to say: You can be famous here, but you still have to prove you’re allowed to belong.

I have never been asked to prove it. And I’m not special. I’m just the kind of American people accept as default. That’s it. That’s the whole magic trick.

So when someone does the whole “Bad Bunny isn’t American” routine, I hear something else underneath it: Not “I’m confused about US territories.” More like: “I have a narrow, private definition of what an American is.”

For the Record:

• I’m an American.

• Bad Bunny is an American.

• Tulsi Gabbard is an American.

• The fact that we keep having to say this out loud tells you exactly what kind of country we are.

If we're being honest, the real question isn’t “Is he American?” It’s: who gets to be American without the cross-examination.

I’m not saying anything people can’t already see. I’m just stating the difference: citizenship is a legal status, but “American” is something people decide in their heads.

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If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

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Every Wednesday, Open Woods tracks the cultural moments worth paying attention to. Curated weekly for brands that want to move first.

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Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

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Every Sunday, Above the Fold breaks down what’s running in advertising, what’s landing, and what’s a total disaster.

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