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The other group is the "Non Hyphenated Americans" group. I don't care HOW early your ancestors arrived, they ARRIVED. They didn't suddenly appear. They left one country for another.
If you don't identify with any country in Europe that is fine. If you answer a question about your ancestry as "American", frankly you sound ignorant.
Where do you draw the line? X number of years? Columbus? The Revolutionary War? X number of generations? X number of hyphens? The Bering land bridge?
Frankly, some people are ignorant of the details of their ancestry. Even if they do know the details, some ancestries are more popular to claim than others.
You could argue that "American" is more accurate than the Italian, English, Scotch-Irish person who only claims Italian because of their last name or the tradition of making great-grandma's recipes.
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If you came here 300 years ago, you are no better then the people who are attempting to migrate here now.
Honest question -- did I miss something in this thread? I don't see any one arguing against immigration.
If there were it would obviously be Native American.
The question asked by the OP steered this thread exactly where I thought it was destined, drawing in this who want us to be Anglo-Saxon, Nordic or Germanic. Obsessed that we are a White Christian Nation. We are not. We never were.
The other group is the "Non Hyphenated Americans" group. I don't care HOW early your ancestors arrived, they ARRIVED. They didn't suddenly appear. They left one country for another.
If you don't identify with any country in Europe that is fine. If you answer a question about your ancestry as "American", frankly you sound ignorant.
You don't have to be an armature genealogist to know where your ancestors came from, and approximately when.
If you came here 300 years ago, you are no better then the people who are attempting to migrate here now.
We are a nation of immigrants. No way around it.
Your assertions are racist slurs.
My ancestors came here largely from Great Britain, pre-1776. They simply moved from one part of the British Empire to another, in full compliance with the law. (As did my ancestors that came here in the 1910s). Of course they had no more inherent human worth than anyone else, but the ones that came pre-1776 were NOT immigrants (as they were moving around the same country), and they followed the law.
You could argue that "American" is more accurate than the Italian, English, Scotch-Irish person who only claims Italian because of their last name or the tradition of making great-grandma's recipes.
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I agree at this point, the various European-American ethnicities have largely melted away. Ethnic neighborhoods, institutions are fading. It's uncommon to find Polish or Irish Americans who socialize/marry within their ethnicity. It's become more of a symbolic family heritage than a true ethnicity.
But I'm not sure that "American" isn't better described as "white American."? Ethnicity is a squishy concept. But a key idea is that members of a group must accept others as a member of the group. I don't know if that is currently possible for a person of Asian or African ancestry to be fully accepted in an American ethnicity? Not in a patriotic we're all Americans sort of way. But in an actual social sense whereby the differences between a person of African ancestry are no greater than the difference a person of Hungarian or Scottish ancestry. It tend to think society will tend to view the former as black and the later two as white.
But I'm not sure that "American" isn't better described as "white American."? Ethnicity is a squishy concept. But a key idea is that members of a group must accept others as a member of the group. I don't know if that is currently possible for a person of Asian or African ancestry to be fully accepted in an American ethnicity? Not in a patriotic we're all Americans sort of way. But in an actual social sense whereby the differences between a person of African ancestry are no greater than the difference a person of Hungarian or Scottish ancestry. It tend to think society will tend to view the former as black and the later two as white.
So who exactly gets to decide this? Less than 10% of the total U.S. population even identifies as a person of American ancestry, which apparently means not even most whites seem to consider themselves "real" Americans.
The Census Bureau certainly makes it possible and acceptable for me, a person of African descent to identify as an ethnic American. Of course everyone has that right, but obviously prefer to call themselves something else.
As another person pointed out, the US is not a real melting pot. It's a salad bowl: lots of different qualities that mostly keep to themselves. Those of us that are mixed and have roots going back to the colonial days are a minority. We're vastly outnumbered by families that came here over the past few generations.
We share the English language with England, so that could not be the defining American trait.
What difference does it make since we are probably all mixed? Most Americans are mutts. But for the most part we share a common language. Even if some of your ancestors arrived at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown there have probably been a few mongrels since. I know that is a fact in my lineage.
So who exactly gets to decide this? Less than 10% of the total U.S. population even identifies as a person of American ancestry, which apparently means not even most whites seem to consider themselves "real" Americans.
The Census Bureau certainly makes it possible and acceptable for me, a person of African descent to identify as an ethnic American. Of course everyone has that right, but obviously prefer to call themselves something else.
This is tricky to answer. Anyone can consider themselves to be an ethnic American. But, I think the tougher question is will other members view them as being ethnic coequals? I would like to say yes. But, I suspect race is still such a large social force that it makes it hard to have a genuine multiracial "American" ethnicity. Over time with higher levels of intermarriage/multiracial childbearing it maybe possible for a genuine "American" ethnicity to emerge.
I suspect a true "ethnicity" is generally shaped via:
1) organically across generations as a people feel a common bond and are fully integrated. The US is probably too new for that.
2) as a minority which shared commonalities against a dominate culture:. For example, Polish and German Jews in the US consider themselves to be Jewish vs the Christian majority or Puerto Ricans and Mexican considering themselves to be Latino in US contexts.
American people mostly share the same culture, language, mentality and values. This makes "American" an ethnicity in my opinion. So, what kind of ethnicity American is? Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Mediterranean, etc?
That's an interesting question. My gut reaction is that the United States has a unique ethnicity that is a blend of all of those your mentioned above along with others, for example, African. If someone were to ask my ethnicity, I would simply answer American without pause.
What difference does it make since we are probably all mixed? Most Americans are mutts. But for the most part we share a common language. Even if some of your ancestors arrived at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown there have probably been a few mongrels since. I know that is a fact in my lineage.
Most Americans are not visibly mixed or even consider themselves as such. I'm guessing that the average white American is almost exclusively European. Meanwhile it is far less likely to find a slave descendant that is overwhelmingly African, and they certainly couldn't tell you what country their family lived in before coming here.
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Originally Posted by jpdivola
This is tricky to answer. Anyone can consider themselves to be an ethnic American. But, I think the tougher question is will other members view them as being ethnic coequals? I would like to say yes. But, I suspect race is still such a large social force that it makes it hard to have a genuine multiracial "American" ethnicity. Over time with higher levels of intermarriage/multiracial childbearing it maybe possible for a genuine "American" ethnicity to emerge.
I suspect a true "ethnicity" is generally shaped via:
1) organically across generations as a people feel a common bond and are fully integrated. The US is probably too new for that.
2) as a minority which shared commonalities against a dominate culture:. For example, Polish and German Jews in the US consider themselves to be Jewish vs the Christian majority or Puerto Ricans and Mexican considering themselves to be Latino in US contexts.
Doesn't matter, since any such objections would be rooted in racist ideals, thus illogical and not worth considering.
The US is not too new but rather too large and segregated to ever be a fully integrated society. The closest you'll get is people like myself that are walking melting pots of American genes and/or cultures.
My ancestors came here largely from Great Britain, pre-1776. They simply moved from one part of the British Empire to another, in full compliance with the law. (As did my ancestors that came here in the 1910s). Of course they had no more inherent human worth than anyone else, but the ones that came pre-1776 were NOT immigrants (as they were moving around the same country), and they followed the law.
And where is Sheena's post racist? No British emigrants in India or elsewhere because the Crown claimed it?
And where is Sheena's post racist? No British emigrants in India or elsewhere because the Crown claimed it?
It contains false statements that are dismissive of many groups of people.
I am not an immigrant. Nor were my pre-1776 ancestors. Thus claiming that the US is a “nation of immigrants” excludes and dismisses my ancestors, British people generally in the US and me.
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