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I've heard it said much here. The notion that some ethnic groups are traditionally aligned to a certain core US region. I'm not here to discuss that. I'm here to ask whether YOU personally assign your identity with where you LIVE, or with where your ethnic group is mostly a part of. Like say, if you're Italian but you live in the South, do you align more with the North? This is a question I ask of people mostly living in Border States.
I personally am South European and I guess through traditionally my ancestors and family lived and associated with the Northeast (Boston, NYC, and Pittsburgh), I consider myself fully Midwestern. I don't speak with a Northeast dialect, my pace of life isn't as fast, and I don't have much Northeastern in my culture. My family does but I grew up in the Midwest, so it'd be hard to really say I'm Northeastern. I guess it's easy for me, as I live in the core of the Midwest and though I live in a state that borders the South, the South is 5 hours away at least.
But what if I lived in somewhere like Kentucky? As someone of South European descent, would I be more likely to call myself a Midwesterner because my ethnic group tends to not be in the South? Or if I lived in Virginia or something. Maybe if I lived in Hampton Roads I'd probably consider myself more of an East Coaster instead of a Southerner. I don't know, I have no personal experience. I mean it's not like Blacks in NYC or Boston consider themselves Southerners. But what if a Jewish person lived in a Border State? What do you personally believe?
I am of a complete mixed race heritage and I identify with where I was born, raised, still live, and will live here till I die - Los Angeles, the Valley.
I'd guess that my ancestry is most strongly weighted toward Irish, English and German, and my earliest ancestors in North America (the British/English/whatever ones) were colonial immigrants who resided in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The migration of my later ancestors have me pretty far removed from the Northeast, as well as the South and Midwest where others eventually migrated. I now live in an area where German is the most dominant ancestry, just as it is through most of the Midwest and into lower areas of the Northeast, and I don't identify with either region at all (but then again, I don't hold a strong regional identification as it is).
But nonetheless, it would seem kind of strange to me if, for example, a white Utahan, who could likely cite British ancestry, claimed stronger identification with New England than they did with the Interior West. It would actually strike me as creepishly ethnocentric...
I'm Acadian. We're basically just limited to Maine, with a few of us in New Hampshire. I've never lived in either state; my parents moved out out West from New Brunswick before I was born. Though I now live in the Northeast, I feel no connection at all to Northern New England or Maritime Canada.
Then, there are our cousins, the Cajuns, down in the Louisiana. We have the same ancestors, but our cultures have gone their separate ways over the centuries. I'd identify with Canada before I'd identify with the Mississippi Delta, which seems like a foreign country to me.
Last edited by Dawn.Davenport; 11-30-2014 at 05:13 PM..
Not at all. As someone previously stated, African-Americans are thought to mostly live in the South. I was born, raise, and still live in Los Angeles, California.
I'm of mixed ancestry and have lived all over the country as a result of my dad's career in the Navy. I'd say if I must identify with any place in the country, it'd be Hawaii or New Orleans, though SoCal is a close second. I live in Philadelphia, and have lived in Norfolk (VA) and the Washington DC Area, but the East Coast just isn't home to me. And neither is Texas (I lived in San Antonio for a year), though I enjoyed my stay there.
Well I'm Irish-American from Boston, so I guess I never had the sort of identity crisis described in the op.
If anything I experienced the opposite: while growing up my grandparents would have me listen to Irish folk songs and we'd all wear green, white, and orange on saint Patrick's day and everything. I also grew up around a lot of people who also identified as Irish. But when I talked about my background in high school to friends who were first or second generation immigrants from places like Haiti, Vietnam, or Ukraine, they'd say "no, you're not Irish, your American".
And it's true I've never set foot in Ireland, and my family has been in the us for so long (early 20th century) that I don't know of any relatives over there. It's just wierd growing up Irish in a place that is supposedly very Irish only to be told by a third party observer that you aren't actually Irish....
Do you associate your ethnic identity with a REGIONAL identity?
No! It has nothing to do with where I was born and raised.
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