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Most white Southerners are descendents of the Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots, which were Scotsmen who relocated to the northern counties of Ireland, or present day Northern Ireland, in the 1600s.
I read somewhere that because of most white Southerners having this descent, they have similar facial features. So a white person from elsewhere in the US would look slightly "different" in the face.
Their family and ancestors may have been in North America for a very long time. There ancestors probably arrived here in the 1700s or the early 1800's.
They may be patriotic.
They may not know their exact ethnicity or ethnicities.
A person may identify as American because they don't identify with their ethnic origin, or they have multiple ancestries/ethnicities. For example, a person who is 1/4 German, 1/4 French, 1/4 Swedish, 1/8 Irish, and 1/8 English may choose to identify their self as American because no one ethnicity dominates their bloodline and lineage.
I'm a mixture of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and French. However, if I'm asked about my ethnicity, I'll just state that I'm Scandinavian and French. My nationality is American. My race is white/Caucasian. My ethnicities are Scandinavian and French
Very good point nationality is different from ethnicity which is different from race. Those of us who were born here are American as far as nationality but no one is ethnically/racially American except maybe Native Americans or anyone who lived in America in the pre-Columbian era.
Their family and ancestors may have been in North America for a very long time. There ancestors probably arrived here in the 1700s or the early 1800's.
They may be patriotic.
They may not know their exact ethnicity or ethnicities.
A person may identify as American because they don't identify with their ethnic origin, or they have multiple ancestries/ethnicities. For example, a person who is 1/4 German, 1/4 French, 1/4 Swedish, 1/8 Irish, and 1/8 English may choose to identify their self as American because no one ethnicity dominates their bloodline and lineage.
I fit all of this. I can't trace my ancestry much past six or so generations on any branch of my family. All of them were Texan except for one great grandparent and his ancestors. The only reason I have any idea what I am ethnically is because of last names. I don't know what proportions, but I know that I am English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, French, German, Czech, and Native American. There is even some speculation that there is some African American in our background. What else could I put on a census form but American?
hey here's another observation: there is an ancestry on that map called "Hispanic/Spanish" - first of all, Hispanic and Spanish are not the same thing. People from Spain don't call themselves Hispanic (to my knowledge), and there's no country called "Hispanic".
hey here's another observation: there is an ancestry on that map called "Hispanic/Spanish" - first of all, Hispanic and Spanish are not the same thing. People from Spain don't call themselves Hispanic (to my knowledge), and there's no country called "Hispanic".
And some people, both black and white, refer to Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, etc., as "Spanish". That annoys me.
And some people, both black and white, refer to Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, etc., as "Spanish". That annoys me.
I know Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, and Hondurans that call themselves Spanish almost as much as they do Latino/Latina and Hispanic.
Personally, I feel like lumping Hispanics under Spanish is no better or worse than affixing Afro in front of the ethnicity of most Black people around the world that have no direct link to Africa.
I am an Irish-American. When my Catholic family came to the States from Ireland in the 1860s they fought for the Union. They didn't receive the persecution that the ones back home in Ireland received from the English and the Irish Protestants but they still lived among their own for many decades and developed a hybrid culture that was uniquely Amerixcan and Irish. I'd say that after Kennedy's election in 1960 really made the Irish-Americans bonafide Americans. I think we cling to an Irish-American identity because we're Catholic and we don't quite like all of the things that WASP American represents. I think Southerners don't care about their ethnic group because it's more important to be from the South than anything else. People from the South are Southerners before they're American. Americans from the South also conform more because to be different is something they can't stand. They all are Baptists, college football fans and vote Republican because that's what southerners do. I still like them however.
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