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Something I've wondered for ages and I guess I might as well pop the question now....
Over in the UK we always hear Americans refer to themselves (well on t.v. and stuff) as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc but never ever English-American.
So, is it a touch embarrassing to admit you are of English decent (I know you guys have no problem with it but I mean in the country as a whole)? Is it just not cool to admit to your English ancestry and that is why the census shows people of English extraction as such a low percentage?
I'm strong enough to take the answer however harsh it might be
I wouldn't say that Americans are embarrassed of their English ancestry - nor should they be but English heritage is pretty much the common denominator amongst whites in the US that have been in the country for a few generations. Pretty much everyone has English ancestry somewhere down the line... I know I've got a lot.
You hear the Italian-American, Irish-American, etc. more often because those are typically a lot more recent and more likely to seem a little more distinct whereas English culture is pretty much the norm.
I believe most English settlers came here from the colonial period and maybe shortly after whereas with a lot of European groups in the US have a lot more recent connection - most Italians Croatians, Polish, Greek, Russian, etc I know have grandparents or great-grandparents from those countries. I think Irish heritage is usually slightly more distant than these groups but still a bit closer than English.
Something I've wondered for ages and I guess I might as well pop the question now....
Over in the UK we always hear Americans refer to themselves (well on t.v. and stuff) as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc but never ever English-American.
So, is it a touch embarrassing to admit you are of English decent (I know you guys have no problem with it but I mean in the country as a whole)? Is it just not cool to admit to your English ancestry and that is why the census shows people of English extraction as such a low percentage?
I'm strong enough to take the answer however harsh it might be
The English are what American normally "is" so to speak, the dominant culture that sets the tone that most others aspire to, it's the benchmark you might say. So many Americans of English descent don't even think about their Englishness as an ethnicity.
Add to that that so many Americans of English descent have been here so long they've lost their sense of Englishness, it's been several hundred years now for many such people whereas the huge waves of Irish and central and eastern European started relatively recently in the 1840s and continues to this day, there are MANY Irish and Polish immigrants in Chicago today for instance.
And there are snobby Americans very aware of their English ancestry, we call them WASPs---White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Something I've wondered for ages and I guess I might as well pop the question now....
Over in the UK we always hear Americans refer to themselves (well on t.v. and stuff) as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc but never ever English-American.
So, is it a touch embarrassing to admit you are of English decent (I know you guys have no problem with it but I mean in the country as a whole)? Is it just not cool to admit to your English ancestry and that is why the census shows people of English extraction as such a low percentage?
I'm strong enough to take the answer however harsh it might be
We do not wish to be associated with a bunch of wankers!
Just kidding. English-Americans are called many things- Bluebloods, WASPs, Anglo-Saxons. None of these are necessarilly negative, but at the same time, they are not quite the same as other hyphentated Americans. Some classic WASPs (think of Bush 41) are stereotyped as snooty and stiff.
This might be because the USA started as 13 British colonies. It later absorbed Russian, French, Polynesian and Spanish areas (not to mention Native American), but the core was British and that is where laws and culture originated. So the unspoken implication is that English-Americans are not so much an immigrant group as the descendants of the original and are thus "All-American."
Americans of English descent do not, for the most part, have that "Ellis Island-Tenement experience" in their background. Of course there must have been more than a few that did come over that way, but most English-Americans (it does actually feel funny to write that) were long established when the first big wave of immigration took place.
So maybe its because they are the one group that is not considered a classic immigrant group. Most ethnic groups here have a story that inevitably touches on some kind of sorrow- Irish (famines), Germans (famines, wars), African-Americans (slavery), Italians (poverty). The English do not really have that.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts and I could be wrong. I do have some English roots, but I tend to default to the Irish and German- they're more trendy and interesting.
There were areas of the country where the German language was very prevalent (parts of the Midwest and PA come to mind). In some towns it was commonly spoken, taught in schools and there were a lot of German newspapers. Most of that stopped as of WWI.
My German ancestors had all arrived here by the 1840's. The first one came over sometime in the mid 1700's so the window of migration times was pretty big.
There were areas of the country where the German language was very prevalent (parts of the Midwest and PA come to mind). In some towns it was commonly spoken, taught in schools and there were a lot of German newspapers. Most of that stopped as of WWI.
My German ancestors had all arrived here by the 1840's. The first one came over sometime in the mid 1700's so the window of migration times was pretty big.
Yea mine too.
I remember hanging out in Yorkville which was the German section of New York City. In the early 90s, there were still a few elderly German speakers there. They were part of the last big influx in the 1950s. Germany was war-torn and there was some doubt as to recovery. Of course it did and so went the main incentive to come here.
During the Revolution the English had in their ranks a considerable number of Hessians.Not mercenaries,they were conscripts hired out by their German overlords.Of the roughly 30,000 that came to America,about 5000 stayed after the war.
Something I've wondered for ages and I guess I might as well pop the question now....
Over in the UK we always hear Americans refer to themselves (well on t.v. and stuff) as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc but never ever English-American.
So, is it a touch embarrassing to admit you are of English decent (I know you guys have no problem with it but I mean in the country as a whole)? Is it just not cool to admit to your English ancestry and that is why the census shows people of English extraction as such a low percentage?
I'm strong enough to take the answer however harsh it might be
Yorkie, English is not classed as an ethnicity in the States.
During the 19th century thousands of folk from Yorkshire and lancashire went to work in the textile mills in New England.
Immigrants with the skills developed in the English textile industry tended to settle in mill towns in Massachusetts such as Fall River, New Bedford and Lawrence. Established by a group of capitalists in Boston in 1845, Lawrence was especially popular with the English. One visitor noted that so many of the manager, loom-fixers, wool-sorters, shopkeepers and saloon owners spoke with a Yorkshire accent that he felt he was still in England. By 1860 one-third of Lawrence's 18,000 inhabitants were employed in the textile industry and the town had become known as the "Bradford of America".
Much of Pennsylvania had been settled by Germans by the time of the Revolution. Amish, Mennonites and a lot of people who named their towns, like Hanover PA. after their homes.
One of the few times the British commander did the right thing was putting Hessians at Carlisle Barracks. The Germans around Hanover welcomed them and were upset when the Continental Army demanded taxes.
Yorkie, English is not classed as an ethnicity in the States.
During the 19th century thousands of folk from Yorkshire and lancashire went to work in the textile mills in New England.
Immigrants with the skills developed in the English textile industry tended to settle in mill towns in Massachusetts such as Fall River, New Bedford and Lawrence. Established by a group of capitalists in Boston in 1845, Lawrence was especially popular with the English. One visitor noted that so many of the manager, loom-fixers, wool-sorters, shopkeepers and saloon owners spoke with a Yorkshire accent that he felt he was still in England. By 1860 one-third of Lawrence's 18,000 inhabitants were employed in the textile industry and the town had become known as the "Bradford of America".
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Hessians.
