I have a beautiful American friend from Hawaii. Her mother is an ethnic Hawaiian and her father is a Southern Black American male from Atlanta. She was born in Honolulu! (She's a US AMERICAN through and through!)
Well she now lives in Europe and for some reason many ignorant Europeans often tell her that she doesn't look American, that she looks like she comes from somewhere else! When she asks how do Americans look like their reply is.... Well like the British! (What could be more American than the mixture of a Hawaiian islander and an Atlanta black man?)
I do not know where Europeans got this silly idea from!
I also met Europeans who visit the US and are often shocked to see how diverse it is. Many go to Miami and are shocked to find out that the city resembles the UK in absolutely nothing, and it has so many similarities to the Caribbean islands and to South America in culture, history, food, etc. (they were expecting Liverpool by the caribbean perhaps!)
Many in fact are quite surprised to know that not all of the US was colonized by the British. It was only 13 states on the Atlantic coast, the rest belonged to France and to Spain!
This is a colonial map of the US
Hence places with French names like New Orleans, Detroit, Des Moines, Eau Claire, Baton Rouge, Saint Louis. Hence places with Spanish names like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Texas, Florida, Nevada, Colorado.
But this is something that seems to escape most of the Europeans for some reason.
Alaska belonged to Russia by the way!
I met so many Europeans and Brits who often go to America and are shocked to see you can go to many cities and regions where you will hardly find a white-anglo person!
And this diversity does not come exclusively from immigration. Even before the US was a nation, it already had millions of African slaves, Indigenous Americans roaming free all over the land, the central part of the US was pretty much Francophone (Called New France at the time), and the pacific coast was part of Spain mostly populated by Spanish colonials and its colonees (mestizos).
Then came heavy immigration millions of Germans, Polish, Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, eventually millions of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans etc. Making the US even MORE diverse than what it already was and even less Anglo than Europeans seem to think it is!
Americans of course are aware of their own country's mega diversity.... Americans know that in New Mexico they have a lot of Spanish heritage, and in Louisiana many people speak French and that in Montana you have tons of Native americans, and Atlanta has a lot of black people! But Europeans who often claim to know a lot about the world and the US are actually rather in the dark and expect the US to be a really Anglo nation with tons of similarities to Britain sort of like New Zealand is!
Why is it though?
It would be interesting to find out why!
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