Black Americans are about as likely to have native born grandparents as white Americans, though. (I would guess.) It's amazing how strong the subconscious correlation between "not white" and "foreign" is in the US.

The use of "native" in this thread is confusing. My understanding is that in the US, the term is normally used to refer to "Native Americans"

I'm not sure what the correct term would be though. "Natural born citizen" normally means someone who is a citizen through birthright, usually, but not always, because they were born within the US.

The phrase that I've most commonly heard is "Nth generation American", but does this require all members of N generations to be citizens? My daughter is eligible to be a "Daughter of the Revolution", but I'm not (yet) a citizen

"Native American" is used to refer to Native Americans, but the term "native" by itself just has the normal range of meanings.

I always wonder how the word alien in the USA points to either a non-american human or a being from another planet. What kind of world view causes people to think there are 2 kinds of sentient beings in this universe: Americans and everything/everyone else.

Is easy to read to much things into something you don't have a good understanding of. But from my experience, assuming racism or something similar is usually premature and overly simplistic. There may be many reasons why a white persons process can take less time than someone black, when if he is naive born. Similarly if two white candidates have very different backgrounds.

>There may be many reasons why a white persons process can take less time than someone black, when if he is naive born

Obviously there can be reasons in specific cases, but there should be no reason why it takes longer in general. At least, no reason that I can see. What are you thinking of?

It is no doubt overly simplistic to assume conscious racism, but as this thread demonstrates, Americans who are not KKK racists nonetheless have a lot of subconscious attitudes regarding race that can have an influence.