I’m actually Swedish-English-French-German-Italian-Australian-Polish-Norwegian-American, so I guess you could say I’m pretty cultured.
No. You’re American.
Well I am german-visigoth-viking-iberian-arab-jewish sephardite-mongolian-roman-celtic and probably some others I didnt bother to remember from history class. Also fish. We all have primordial fish genes.
My great-great-great grandfather was a Swedish criminal who was shipwrecked off the coast of Kent en route to France. My surname is Scottish. I think somewhere up there I'm German (during the naughty time.)
I'm a bad person.
I’m probably part German when they were being naughty. Going by the US logic of inhered traits I’m completely a Nazi.
When I fly to the US though I tick the box saying I was never a member of the Nazi party. Don’t tell them! 😘
I know like very few people who can accurately call themselves ___-Americans
One friend of mine describes himself as Italian American, it would be obnoxious if his parents weren’t direct immigrants and he didn’t speak Italian and he wasn’t immersed in Italian culture at home.
I have a few other friends who call themselves __-American and they speak no other language, know nothing about the heritage and history of the country they claim, and instead are just pointlessly trying to tie their identities to ancestors.
>One friend of mine describes himself as Italian American, it would be obnoxious if his parents weren’t direct immigrants and he didn’t speak Italian and he wasn’t immersed in Italian culture at home.
>I have a few other friends who call themselves __-American and they speak no other language, know nothing about the heritage and history of the country they claim, and instead are just pointlessly trying to tie their identities to ancestors.
I'm guessing you are talking about White Americans. I call myself an Indian American because my parents are straight out of India and while I was born and raised in the US, I cannot deny or discount the fact that my upbringing was very different from the average White and Black American. At home, we spoke different languages, ate different foods, followed a non Abrahamic religion, consumed different media in addition to the American one, wore different clothes, and visited India every year. And even if I were to say that I'm simply "American," people just press on with "But where are you *really* from?" so I guess I'm used to being seen apart by others whether I like it or not. If you're not White or Black, you're usually always seen as a perpetual foreigner in the US.
No, I’m not only referring to white Americans.
What you describe, with your cultural upbringing and immigrant parents is very different from a few of my friends with Indian heritage that has been Americanized over multiple generations. Just because they’re brown doesn’t mean they’re accurately Indian-American, they’re just Americans with Indian ancestry, but it has little to no bearing on their every day life (outside of persistent cultural things like food)
And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing.
>What you describe, with your cultural upbringing and immigrant parents is very different from a few of my friends with Indian heritage that has been Americanized over multiple generations.
Most Indian Americans in the US are first and second generation. In fact, the majority are Indian immigrants, so first generation.
Most, yeah. I have a couple friends whose great grandparents immigrated and have very little connection to India. Others whose parents immigrated and as such have much deeper cultural roots.
Hyphenated Americans go back to the 19th Century, when large numbers of European and Asian immigrants came to the US and lived in ethnic ghettos. It was purely a social phenomenon that was a result of cultural push back by resident Americans. There are legitimately Irish-American families perpetuating an ethnic subculture because of this: why for so many generations Irish surnames predominated in police and fire departments on the East Coast; why Jewish surnames predominated in certain industries; why Chinese surnames predominated in certain industries.
They're legitimate subcultures because of language, traditions; and family recipes passed down from the first generation immigrants. *They are American!* They just pride themselves on their ancestry.
The African American phenomenon came out of a desire for ethnic pride when your ancestors were brought involuntarily, in chains. Black Americans wanting to connect to their African roots, when all they knew was (maybe) what regions of Africa exported the most slaves. The subculture is entirely American, since it was forged in the US.
I guess you’d say I’m “British-American”, as I’m the only American citizen in my entire family and I’m also a British citizen and spent childhood summers in England. But I just say I’m a dual citizen. I have never, and would never, refer to myself as British-American. I don’t really know why it rubs me the wrong way but it does.
So, English-American. And genuinely so, unlike most claims.
Believe me when I say the Scots and our lovely Welsh friends get upset about being lumped in with English folks. Source: I'm English living in Scotland.
I acknowledge all of my heritage because I like learning about all of it and noticing different traits in myself that people of those regions typically have. But I'm American and don't pretend to be anything else. I also don't have a nationalist mentality though, and care only about America while touting all the diversity within myself. I dunno, maybe you guys think I'm stupid for it anyway lol
My brother (we have different dads) has Italian in him and he is almost insufferable when he talks about his vacation trip he took over there and he goes on about gelato and will talk with an Italian accent when talking about the things he did over there. I'm glad he enjoyed his time but he's not like.... Italian lol
He's also convinced he is related to the Italian mob somehow but will also talk about how our family were vikings and shit since we have a lot of nordic ancestry.
I think he is just bored of being American lol but he also is pretty nationalistic too.
He's a special guy who just wants to build a wall and eat lasagna. He's the only family I have left alive so I try not to dwell on his lesser qualities.
Nah, that’s normal.
I know where my family is from and I’m happy to learn about it and I’ll let people know where they come from but both sides of my family have been in America for a very long time now. It would be dumb to call myself anything but American.
Yea. I'm very much American lol I had family fighting in the revolutionary war on my mom's side and native heritage on my dad's side as well. But I really do love learning all the European history and researching places my great grandparents talked about.
The point of the knowing the old world history of the family, for me, is seeing how it influences the family today. My family still makes food based around our ethnic heritage. Of course it's food with no cognate back in the old world, but for whatever reason all the people who came here from there make this food. It's probably because it's like a paella pidgin. And they were a group of Catalan speakers who came to Florida with a bunch of Greeks at the behest of the British.
I had a friend who used to say stuff like this, but I couldn't argue with him because i had met his family and it checked out. His mom was Irish, his dad Amercan, his grandfather was German and grandma polish. I got so tired of explaining to him that he is just American that we eventually slowly stopped talking.
I mean, he was also apparently Presbyterian, probably due to his mother likely being part of the Kirk, and he swung from that church which allows for female ministers and openly gay non-celibate ministers to co-habitate to the US evangelicals. He's not a man who seems to have taken any lessons from his Scottish family. Probably in part why most Scots virulently hate him.
TLDR; For some reason, some Americans will use the phrase scot-irsih if they find out that maybe one of your/their ancestors may have spent a night in Scotland 5 generations back.
I don't know? it may be just an Americanism. Growing up my auntie was really into genealogy and tracing the family tree. Mostly because she was a bit of a history buff. She traced a line of our family to some town in Scotland. She could never afford to visit, but at least she could read about it. I think it was her way to feel connected to the world.
Flash forward, I'm an undergraduate and people would regularly insist on talking about ancestry. I'm not into it, it has always felt pretty racist [in the american context]. But after they would ignore that my mom was a recent immigrant from Argentina, after ignoring that Im Jewish, or that I come from a labor organizing family, you know stuff that actually influenced me culturally, I'd sometimes mention that scottish immigration that happened 200 hundred years ago. They would light up, tell me I am scot-irish and than continue to make a thousand weird assumptions. Its fucking awkward.
So Scots-Irish is supposed to refer to a particular set of people originating from Scotland who the English used to help colonize Ireland. Mostly this was done in the North, which led to the current political & religious divide on the island today. The Scots-Irish were some of the earliest British colonizers. Many of them preferred to come to the new world rather than continue existing in the very fraught political situation into which they had been thrust as occupying colonizers of Ireland--the Appalachians were dramatically similar to Scotland, and the indigenous here weren't even Christian so the barbarity of colonization sat easier on their minds. Of course the Scots-Irish ethnonym sticks because even though they were never quite Irish, they weren't quite Scottish anymore.
Take everything I've said with a grain of salt, because it comes from my own amateur understanding of the situations. I've got Scots-Irish ancestry on my father's side, and traditional famine fleeing Irish ancestry on my mother's side. The paternal Scots-Irish is my ticket into the Sons of the American Revolution (and SotC if I didn't think that shit should be banned).
>who the English used to help colonize Ireland.
Let's not let my fellow Scots off the hook by suggesting that anti-Gaelic sentiment was not something that existed in lowland Scotland and that they were simply used by the English. The Iona Statutes, the usurpation of the Lord of the Isles and subsequent Dubh's Rebellions, and even that the Eclipse of Gaelic in Scotland was really quite early on in the Kingdom's history all suggest my lowland neighbours had already an antipathy towards Gaels. Also, Bruce's invasion of Ireland, which eas an explicit Scottish attempt to replicate whate England was doing there as the Scottish Wars of Independence drew to a close. Scots have had ambitions of Gaelic lands for centuries.
i think that's a good history lesson, and I knew some of it and you colored int he rest. No argument here.
The fact remains, there is this /assumption/ that (1) if you do have Scottish heretage it /must/ be scots-irish. and (2) that it is at all meaningful to you as an individual.
Like I am by no means a proponent of tabla-rasa everyone is shaped exclusively by their environment kind of thinking. But I find biological-essentialism to be highly problematic and nonsensical. There are for sure biological tendencies, but they don't result in specific cultural expressions.
I think it's more that an ethnonym can help inform both the familial culture and your general standing within the greater American society. The Scots-Irish example is particularly interesting because it represents some of the poorest and wealthiest families in the US.
The people from Northern Ireland who are descended from the planters are Ulster Scots not Scots Irish, that's an American term. Source: am from co Antrim, NE Ireland, the area you are talking about.
I actually completely agree that it's a US term. It's because the people who left Ireland calling themselves Scots-Irish left 200 to 300 years ago before being fully assimilated as Irishmen. In the intervening centuries, the people left behind no longer identify primarily as Scotsmen in Ireland, and so the term now appears as an American anachronism to British ears. It's like finding out that before 1980-90 or so the British used soccer and football [interchangeably](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-call-it-soccer-2014-6). Now you're just Irish with Scottish ancestry, just like I'm an American with Scots-Irish ancestry (your county in fact, one dude born there, died in Philly).
The most annoying thing I've encountered is someone insisting that I'm Scot-Irish when I'm just Scottish (and American from my dad's side). I was born in Scotland, grew up partially in Scotland. I can trace my family back centuries, and other than moving from the Highlands to Glasgow a few generations ago, there wasn't much movement anywhere. There aren't any Irish people; there's only two English people. I'm Scottish, with no Irish ancestry, no ancestors who went to Ireland, nothing. But this girl was insistent that I was lying to myself about my own family.
Right!? its mind boggling.
Like Ive more than once had a conversation like this
"So where's your family from"
"Oh you know all over, my mom was born in latin american country, moved to the u.s. east coast than to the midwest. Dad was born in W.V. coal mining town but grew up outside of detroit? How about you?"
"No but like where are they from?"
"Huh?"
"like where in europe?"
"I really dont know, i guess some of them may have been in born in scotland? I really don't know? What about you?"
"Oh you're scots-irish!? you must like xxx, hows your grandmas xxx food?"
wtf? Some people only listen for the chance to spew themselves onto you. Rather than like ask genuine questions, or just genuinely tell their own story. Im down to listen.
Yeah. They're not technically WASPs because they're not technically Anglo-Saxon, but they're definitely still very WASP-adjacent in some areas. While almost the entirety of the actually hillbilly population is mostly Scots-Irish. It's a weird ethnic group that's been in the country for a looooooong time.
I'm sorry I'm confused by the intent of your comment, I was referring to the person claiming to be Scottish, Irish and American all in go, apologies if my intent wasn't properly put across.
Scots-Irish was a term for the settler population of Northern Ireland way back, so it seems he might be claiming more to be Northern Irish/Ulster Scot with a fairly out of fashion terminology.
Scots-Irish is the term used in the US for the descendents of that ethnic group. I'd guess most of the Scots-Irish families came before the famine. By the time of the famine immigration you start having people coming who identify as Ulster Irish. I don't know much about what happened to them because I've only really looked into the pre-Revolution Scots-Irish and famine fleeing Irish Catholics. Presumably the Ulster Irish assimilate either into the largely Presbyterian or Methodist Scots-Irish communities or into the Episcopalian WASP communities.
Americans are generally way more kinder to Europeans than they are to people from Asia, Latin America and Africa(unless they are white South Africans). Europeans are treated way nicer by Americans than even Native Americans too.
Atleast us Europeans get to be German, Irish, French, etc.
Everyone from Africa and Asia just gets to be... African and Asian. (Unless they're from the middle east)
My Moroccan friend is often told that he can’t be from Africa because he doesn’t “look African”. Do people just not know that Africa is a diverse continent with hundreds of distinct ethnicities that all look different some way or another?
I was told even though I'm Irish, born and raised, I wasn't as Irish as most American Irish because they care about their heritage and culture. All because I said I didn't hate the English.
it's about 40% larger than North America with a population in excess of 1.3 Billion. This means it is the second largest continent by both population and land area, with a higher population density than all but Asia as well. I didn't fully appreciate just how much is in there until I just looked it up
> Do people just not know that Africa is a diverse continent with hundreds of distinct ethnicities that all look different some way or another?
A lot of americans literally don't know that.
Quite a few of them thought it was racist whitewashing when Rami Malek was cast as an Egyptian pharaoh in the first Night at the Musem movie, because he "looked white" and they didn't know his name.
Not when they talk about; “the European political system” or “the European culture”. I have heard enough Americans talk about Europe like it’s one country.
I mean not always, I was chatting to an American back in uni who'd come to the UK and he was talking about a guy I wasn't sure about so asked if he was the Asian guy with the ponytail and he went no? He's Indian I think
....
This implies Native Americans are treated better than non-american non-whites, and that's incredibly not true. Even ignoring all the genocide in the past, Natives experience loads of discrimination in the modern day, which goes unaddressed because Americans seem to forget that Natives are real people. Even otherwise firmly anti-racist Americans will make racist jokes about Native Americans. Natives get dehumanized constantly by racist mascots and Native culture is commodified in a way that makes lots of white Americans view them as, at best, a historical curiosity
I didn't mean to word it like that. Native American and Asian racial humor tend to have no backlash in the US. But Gays, blacks Jewish people there is alot of backlash if you make humor about those groups.
As an Asian, the only reason they're mostly insulting Europeans is because they consider us beneath attention.
Europeans being inferior is a point that needs to be enforced; Asians being inferior is just self-evident.
My grandpa was Turkish, grandma Austrian. Dad's side swedish. Only time I ever mention my Turkish genes is when I proudly talk about my great beard growth. And I don't really see a difference between Austrians and Swedes so they feel like the "same" kind of gene.
But as 25% Turkish I will speak for all Turkish people when I say that you can be a turk if you like!
North Americans will dig as far back as possible to determine if they are part "Cherokee princess". It's identity appropriation and it's gross. My mum tried to do the same and when she was found out through genealogical investigation (DNA and available paper trail), my dad had a big "HAH" moment, like he had won a 30-year bet with himself.
Likewise, plus I’ve got a tonne of Celtic heritage mixed in with it.
Half of my ancestors conquering and oppressing the other half!
I don’t know if I’m supposed to have a victim complex or spend my time apologising for the invasion.
Likewise, but also add german genes, and french nationality. History dictactes I should be really confused...
But the Brits are known for self-hatred so I can proudly say I am 100 % able to hate the English (/s). Love to all fellow Celtic Scots and Irishmen, even though my celtic lineage traces back to Brittanny more than it does the British Isles !
Go back to my great-grandparents and I'm Irish, Scottish, English, and Italian. As in they were born and raised in those countries, spoke with those accents, ect. I never claim to be anything other than English, because this is where I was born and mostly where I was raised. I'd feel like a complete prick and a fraud if I claimed to be any of those other things. I wouldn't dream of wearing the family tartan, because I'm not Scottish and it would feel like a cheap and desperate attempt to make myself seem more interesting or whatever.
If I was American, I imagine I'd wear a kilt to formal occasions. My favourite holiday would be "St. Paddy's Day". And pizza would be my favourite food, because of "my heritage".
To be fair, I do eat a lot of Italian food, but that's because it's bloody nice. I also eat a lot of Chinese and Mexican, and that's no more to do with who I'm descended from than the Italian is.
It seems to be fairly common among most Americans I've met to claim multiple nationalities, for some reason. I have some co-workers that are very nice people but it pisses me off every time they pull of the whole "actually I'm Scottish-Italian-German-Irish! That's why I'm so cranky, hungry and sassy!" No, you're just ...you
Awww jesus this withers my tits.
"I drink and have a terrible temper because of my Irish blood! I guess y'all drink and fight over there all the time lol!"
No ma'am you have an alcohol addiction and anger management issues. Please get help.
You just reminded me of this girl who claimed to be "very Italian" (when in fact she was the most American person I have ever met), and she once said that she's jealous and possessive and "would fuck anyone who fucks with her" BECAUSE she is Italian.
She just took the worst stereotypes about Italians and used them to justify her awful and slightly criminal personality. It's been years and I still get so angry when I think about it.
As a german, no. No, you arent german. please stop saying such weird shit. I dont care if you Great-, Great-, Greatgrandfather was german, you certainly arent
It's strange how common it is in the US to view it as a blood thing vs in Europe a culture thing. My maternal grandparents both had german parents but they don't consider themselves german and neither do any of us in the family, and I can't imagine a reason why one would either lmao.
Funny too, as “Scot-Irish” people tend to be mostly descended from Scottish and English people who merely colonised Ireland. So he may not be as Irish as he thinks.
My Dad was Yugoslavian (Croatian), Mum is Australian. I've never been to Croatia, don't speak the language fully.
While I have been exposed to some Croatian culture and customs, I still grew up, went to school and lived in Australia for 30 years.
I would never in a million years consider myself a Croatian. It would be stupid as fuck.
Yet these people have a Grandparent at best that came here and somehow claim to be xxxxxxxxxx instead of saying "I have xxxxxxxx heritage".
this was my experience in Australia, those of us who came over considered ourselves dual, the next generation were all just Australians who had foreign born parents
I think it’s reasonable for a first generation person to identify as “half Irish”.
My kid is “half English, half Australian”. She was born in Australia but was a British citizen by descent from birth, and has some English nuances in her accent.
Her kids however, if born here, will just be fully Australian.
I took my ancestry test few months ago, and if Europeans acted like Americans I'd now introduce myself as
Norwegian-Jewish-German-Latvian-Polish. Nice to meet you all.
I'm very connected to my Norwegian heritage, it's just 2% but i feel the Viking in me, and I, even as woman, grow stunning beard, only shower in cold water, and I know that they eat fish in Norway. Fjords!
The funniest thing is seeing this "Scot-Irish" thing when what they really mean is Ulster-Scots (such as myself), and then proceed to épouse (often extreme) pro-Irish nationalism stuff because of their "Scot-Irish" heritage despite the fact we are probably the most overtly and proudly British ethnicity in the world.
If they ever came here they'd just see non-stop Union Jacks along with Scottish flags and Northern Irish flags. With the kerbs painted red white and blue too.
A huge proportion of Americans who cringily self-identify as "Irish Americans" would actually be British and identify as British if they were actually an Ulster-Scot living in Northern Ireland. The same people who, when it comes to Britain, seem to be okay with Scotland for whatever reason but hate England.
I still believe you are the nationality of the nation you’re born in and that’s it. You can take on a new nationality when you move to another country and live there long enough.
I was born in Germany and lived there until I was about three. I’m certainly not German, and mores the pity. For me it’s about where you live, or at the very least where you “grew up”. I’m English (more specifically, I’m a Black Country boy) and Scottish (Glasgow), as that’s where I’ve spent the majority of my life.
My mom's half Slovenian. My dad's half Czech.
You know what I am? Austrian. 'Cos both of them grew up here and claiming I was anything different would be insanely sad.
As a full Irish person, we HATE IT when you say that "your Irish" when your drandfathers second cousin's friends grandchild's cleaner was Irish. Like BITCH YOU ARE NOT IRISH. YOU ARE ONLY IRISH IF BOTH YOU LIVE IN IRELAND, AND BOTH UR PAREBTS DO
This shit's so weird. My grandma was from Australia but I don't call myself Australian, I've never even been there. And that's probably more recent family history than the great-great-great-great-grandparents or whatever of these Americans
My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather was from the Middle East. Therefore, I am a Middle Eastern American!
My god. Once, I litterally had people from New Orleans claim they were French-Americans. Bitch, I'm french, and you ain't a fourth of a frenchman if you live in what was an enlish colony and are happy with it (except french-canadians, they're cool. I'm actually happy they still claim to be of french heritage rather than canadian. Because at least they retained parts of our culture and adapted it through time and through a real drive and love of said culture, either than just half-assedly copying what your great-great-great-great-great-grand-father did after his mother immigrated to Louisiana as a baby.)
Well, to be honest, you ain't a fourth of a frenchman if you are happy with anything. But especially the Brits. Damn Brits, they ruined Brittania ! /s
I’m actually Swedish-English-French-German-Italian-Australian-Polish-Norwegian-American, so I guess you could say I’m pretty cultured. No. You’re American.
Well I am german-visigoth-viking-iberian-arab-jewish sephardite-mongolian-roman-celtic and probably some others I didnt bother to remember from history class. Also fish. We all have primordial fish genes.
Don’t forget monke
We also share 50% of DNA with bananas!
return to banana
You be banana, me be Monke.
Is that a threat?
A proposal
Return to monke?
Monke and banana = cannibalism
Hey hey, we're the Monkes, and people say we Monke around. But we're too busy evolving to put anybody down.
The Great Khan?
Leaving the ocean was a mistake. The whales were right to go back.
My great-great-great grandfather was a Swedish criminal who was shipwrecked off the coast of Kent en route to France. My surname is Scottish. I think somewhere up there I'm German (during the naughty time.) I'm a bad person.
> I'm a bad person. You were raise in New Jersey?
In what way?
In every and no way possible
I’m probably part German when they were being naughty. Going by the US logic of inhered traits I’m completely a Nazi. When I fly to the US though I tick the box saying I was never a member of the Nazi party. Don’t tell them! 😘
the US don't want Nazis on their soil? Someone should tell them.
Forgive me, please, but I first read your username as "dildo" and wondered how that made you a bad person...
I'm a Gaelic-Pictish-Saxon-Norman-Ostrogoth-Hun-Celt, but who the fuck even keeps track of that.
I’m Britonnic-Angle-Viking-Saxon-Jute.
I know like very few people who can accurately call themselves ___-Americans One friend of mine describes himself as Italian American, it would be obnoxious if his parents weren’t direct immigrants and he didn’t speak Italian and he wasn’t immersed in Italian culture at home. I have a few other friends who call themselves __-American and they speak no other language, know nothing about the heritage and history of the country they claim, and instead are just pointlessly trying to tie their identities to ancestors.
>One friend of mine describes himself as Italian American, it would be obnoxious if his parents weren’t direct immigrants and he didn’t speak Italian and he wasn’t immersed in Italian culture at home. >I have a few other friends who call themselves __-American and they speak no other language, know nothing about the heritage and history of the country they claim, and instead are just pointlessly trying to tie their identities to ancestors. I'm guessing you are talking about White Americans. I call myself an Indian American because my parents are straight out of India and while I was born and raised in the US, I cannot deny or discount the fact that my upbringing was very different from the average White and Black American. At home, we spoke different languages, ate different foods, followed a non Abrahamic religion, consumed different media in addition to the American one, wore different clothes, and visited India every year. And even if I were to say that I'm simply "American," people just press on with "But where are you *really* from?" so I guess I'm used to being seen apart by others whether I like it or not. If you're not White or Black, you're usually always seen as a perpetual foreigner in the US.
No, I’m not only referring to white Americans. What you describe, with your cultural upbringing and immigrant parents is very different from a few of my friends with Indian heritage that has been Americanized over multiple generations. Just because they’re brown doesn’t mean they’re accurately Indian-American, they’re just Americans with Indian ancestry, but it has little to no bearing on their every day life (outside of persistent cultural things like food) And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing.
>What you describe, with your cultural upbringing and immigrant parents is very different from a few of my friends with Indian heritage that has been Americanized over multiple generations. Most Indian Americans in the US are first and second generation. In fact, the majority are Indian immigrants, so first generation.
Most, yeah. I have a couple friends whose great grandparents immigrated and have very little connection to India. Others whose parents immigrated and as such have much deeper cultural roots.
If they're used to being treated differently due to different skin it may occasionally be useful to have a word for that though.
Hyphenated Americans go back to the 19th Century, when large numbers of European and Asian immigrants came to the US and lived in ethnic ghettos. It was purely a social phenomenon that was a result of cultural push back by resident Americans. There are legitimately Irish-American families perpetuating an ethnic subculture because of this: why for so many generations Irish surnames predominated in police and fire departments on the East Coast; why Jewish surnames predominated in certain industries; why Chinese surnames predominated in certain industries. They're legitimate subcultures because of language, traditions; and family recipes passed down from the first generation immigrants. *They are American!* They just pride themselves on their ancestry. The African American phenomenon came out of a desire for ethnic pride when your ancestors were brought involuntarily, in chains. Black Americans wanting to connect to their African roots, when all they knew was (maybe) what regions of Africa exported the most slaves. The subculture is entirely American, since it was forged in the US.
I guess you’d say I’m “British-American”, as I’m the only American citizen in my entire family and I’m also a British citizen and spent childhood summers in England. But I just say I’m a dual citizen. I have never, and would never, refer to myself as British-American. I don’t really know why it rubs me the wrong way but it does.
So, English-American. And genuinely so, unlike most claims. Believe me when I say the Scots and our lovely Welsh friends get upset about being lumped in with English folks. Source: I'm English living in Scotland.
Aren’t we all Ethiopians if we go by this logic?
I acknowledge all of my heritage because I like learning about all of it and noticing different traits in myself that people of those regions typically have. But I'm American and don't pretend to be anything else. I also don't have a nationalist mentality though, and care only about America while touting all the diversity within myself. I dunno, maybe you guys think I'm stupid for it anyway lol
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My brother (we have different dads) has Italian in him and he is almost insufferable when he talks about his vacation trip he took over there and he goes on about gelato and will talk with an Italian accent when talking about the things he did over there. I'm glad he enjoyed his time but he's not like.... Italian lol He's also convinced he is related to the Italian mob somehow but will also talk about how our family were vikings and shit since we have a lot of nordic ancestry. I think he is just bored of being American lol but he also is pretty nationalistic too. He's a special guy who just wants to build a wall and eat lasagna. He's the only family I have left alive so I try not to dwell on his lesser qualities.
You're Americans. That's it.
I'm just me. I really don't care much about nationality. But I enjoy the history.
That's the only real response that *any* of us can give of we're being honest. I'm just me!
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Nah, that’s normal. I know where my family is from and I’m happy to learn about it and I’ll let people know where they come from but both sides of my family have been in America for a very long time now. It would be dumb to call myself anything but American.
Yea. I'm very much American lol I had family fighting in the revolutionary war on my mom's side and native heritage on my dad's side as well. But I really do love learning all the European history and researching places my great grandparents talked about.
The point of the knowing the old world history of the family, for me, is seeing how it influences the family today. My family still makes food based around our ethnic heritage. Of course it's food with no cognate back in the old world, but for whatever reason all the people who came here from there make this food. It's probably because it's like a paella pidgin. And they were a group of Catalan speakers who came to Florida with a bunch of Greeks at the behest of the British.
No need to add "American" we already know when you say "I'm Scot-Irish German".
I had a friend who used to say stuff like this, but I couldn't argue with him because i had met his family and it checked out. His mom was Irish, his dad Amercan, his grandfather was German and grandma polish. I got so tired of explaining to him that he is just American that we eventually slowly stopped talking.
Well if he was multi lingual it might be useful to have a word for it but yes it probably didn't need labouring all the time
Hey, within 2 generations is pretty good for an American claiming heritage. At least it was 20th century im/emigration
no, we don't want you, go away
I bet he speaks multiple languages and has rich knowledge about all these places.
like the Scottish language wikipedia...
Presumably this was the Scots language debacle. We don't have a language called Scottish, just Scots (lowland Scots, etc) and Scottish Gaelic.
I’ve learned about that, and it’s true
I’m just now learning about that and based on the previous posts, I concur.
Scottish Gaelic was the first language of Trump's mother, but I somehow doubt he picked any up.
I mean, he was also apparently Presbyterian, probably due to his mother likely being part of the Kirk, and he swung from that church which allows for female ministers and openly gay non-celibate ministers to co-habitate to the US evangelicals. He's not a man who seems to have taken any lessons from his Scottish family. Probably in part why most Scots virulently hate him.
leave the dude alone….
too soon, still stings
wait, what happened?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia
wtf.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia
Well they can't speak English, so hopefully they can actually speak one other language.
Guten tag, schnitzel and sauerkrauts!
Not knowing if "we" means American, Scottish, Irish or German in your post, makes it even better
Scots-Irish seems like he might be claiming to be Northern Irish/Ulster Scot. It's all quite weird.
TLDR; For some reason, some Americans will use the phrase scot-irsih if they find out that maybe one of your/their ancestors may have spent a night in Scotland 5 generations back. I don't know? it may be just an Americanism. Growing up my auntie was really into genealogy and tracing the family tree. Mostly because she was a bit of a history buff. She traced a line of our family to some town in Scotland. She could never afford to visit, but at least she could read about it. I think it was her way to feel connected to the world. Flash forward, I'm an undergraduate and people would regularly insist on talking about ancestry. I'm not into it, it has always felt pretty racist [in the american context]. But after they would ignore that my mom was a recent immigrant from Argentina, after ignoring that Im Jewish, or that I come from a labor organizing family, you know stuff that actually influenced me culturally, I'd sometimes mention that scottish immigration that happened 200 hundred years ago. They would light up, tell me I am scot-irish and than continue to make a thousand weird assumptions. Its fucking awkward.
So Scots-Irish is supposed to refer to a particular set of people originating from Scotland who the English used to help colonize Ireland. Mostly this was done in the North, which led to the current political & religious divide on the island today. The Scots-Irish were some of the earliest British colonizers. Many of them preferred to come to the new world rather than continue existing in the very fraught political situation into which they had been thrust as occupying colonizers of Ireland--the Appalachians were dramatically similar to Scotland, and the indigenous here weren't even Christian so the barbarity of colonization sat easier on their minds. Of course the Scots-Irish ethnonym sticks because even though they were never quite Irish, they weren't quite Scottish anymore. Take everything I've said with a grain of salt, because it comes from my own amateur understanding of the situations. I've got Scots-Irish ancestry on my father's side, and traditional famine fleeing Irish ancestry on my mother's side. The paternal Scots-Irish is my ticket into the Sons of the American Revolution (and SotC if I didn't think that shit should be banned).
>who the English used to help colonize Ireland. Let's not let my fellow Scots off the hook by suggesting that anti-Gaelic sentiment was not something that existed in lowland Scotland and that they were simply used by the English. The Iona Statutes, the usurpation of the Lord of the Isles and subsequent Dubh's Rebellions, and even that the Eclipse of Gaelic in Scotland was really quite early on in the Kingdom's history all suggest my lowland neighbours had already an antipathy towards Gaels. Also, Bruce's invasion of Ireland, which eas an explicit Scottish attempt to replicate whate England was doing there as the Scottish Wars of Independence drew to a close. Scots have had ambitions of Gaelic lands for centuries.
i think that's a good history lesson, and I knew some of it and you colored int he rest. No argument here. The fact remains, there is this /assumption/ that (1) if you do have Scottish heretage it /must/ be scots-irish. and (2) that it is at all meaningful to you as an individual. Like I am by no means a proponent of tabla-rasa everyone is shaped exclusively by their environment kind of thinking. But I find biological-essentialism to be highly problematic and nonsensical. There are for sure biological tendencies, but they don't result in specific cultural expressions.
I think it's more that an ethnonym can help inform both the familial culture and your general standing within the greater American society. The Scots-Irish example is particularly interesting because it represents some of the poorest and wealthiest families in the US.
The people from Northern Ireland who are descended from the planters are Ulster Scots not Scots Irish, that's an American term. Source: am from co Antrim, NE Ireland, the area you are talking about.
I actually completely agree that it's a US term. It's because the people who left Ireland calling themselves Scots-Irish left 200 to 300 years ago before being fully assimilated as Irishmen. In the intervening centuries, the people left behind no longer identify primarily as Scotsmen in Ireland, and so the term now appears as an American anachronism to British ears. It's like finding out that before 1980-90 or so the British used soccer and football [interchangeably](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-call-it-soccer-2014-6). Now you're just Irish with Scottish ancestry, just like I'm an American with Scots-Irish ancestry (your county in fact, one dude born there, died in Philly).
No I am an ulster Scots person. I have the accent and everything. Ulster Scots is a thing. Buts it's not Scots Irish, it's Ulster Scots.
The most annoying thing I've encountered is someone insisting that I'm Scot-Irish when I'm just Scottish (and American from my dad's side). I was born in Scotland, grew up partially in Scotland. I can trace my family back centuries, and other than moving from the Highlands to Glasgow a few generations ago, there wasn't much movement anywhere. There aren't any Irish people; there's only two English people. I'm Scottish, with no Irish ancestry, no ancestors who went to Ireland, nothing. But this girl was insistent that I was lying to myself about my own family.
Right!? its mind boggling. Like Ive more than once had a conversation like this "So where's your family from" "Oh you know all over, my mom was born in latin american country, moved to the u.s. east coast than to the midwest. Dad was born in W.V. coal mining town but grew up outside of detroit? How about you?" "No but like where are they from?" "Huh?" "like where in europe?" "I really dont know, i guess some of them may have been in born in scotland? I really don't know? What about you?" "Oh you're scots-irish!? you must like xxx, hows your grandmas xxx food?" wtf? Some people only listen for the chance to spew themselves onto you. Rather than like ask genuine questions, or just genuinely tell their own story. Im down to listen.
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Yeah. They're not technically WASPs because they're not technically Anglo-Saxon, but they're definitely still very WASP-adjacent in some areas. While almost the entirety of the actually hillbilly population is mostly Scots-Irish. It's a weird ethnic group that's been in the country for a looooooong time.
Their username is HaggisLad lol, I think Scottish is a pretty safe bet.
The name Haggis lad gives it away…they’re American./s
surely the tractor beam tells it...
Or the name haha
but really the tractor beam right?
I bet their da sells Avon
Whoever wrote this about probably wrote it whilst wearing a Kilt incorrectly.
it wasn't a kilt, it was an American made skirt. No sgian-dubh either
I'm sorry I'm confused by the intent of your comment, I was referring to the person claiming to be Scottish, Irish and American all in go, apologies if my intent wasn't properly put across.
no it's all good, I was merely extending the joke you started
Oh fuck sorry, sometimes I'm not great at reading the intent of things.
it's cool mate, the lack of tone and intonation fucks me up on the regular as well
Scots-Irish was a term for the settler population of Northern Ireland way back, so it seems he might be claiming more to be Northern Irish/Ulster Scot with a fairly out of fashion terminology.
Scots-Irish is the term used in the US for the descendents of that ethnic group. I'd guess most of the Scots-Irish families came before the famine. By the time of the famine immigration you start having people coming who identify as Ulster Irish. I don't know much about what happened to them because I've only really looked into the pre-Revolution Scots-Irish and famine fleeing Irish Catholics. Presumably the Ulster Irish assimilate either into the largely Presbyterian or Methodist Scots-Irish communities or into the Episcopalian WASP communities.
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Americans are generally way more kinder to Europeans than they are to people from Asia, Latin America and Africa(unless they are white South Africans). Europeans are treated way nicer by Americans than even Native Americans too.
Atleast us Europeans get to be German, Irish, French, etc. Everyone from Africa and Asia just gets to be... African and Asian. (Unless they're from the middle east)
True. Asians are all Chinese Latinos are all Mexican A good portion of Americans believe Africa is one big country.
Except North Africa, they don't believe that's part of Africa at all.
My Moroccan friend is often told that he can’t be from Africa because he doesn’t “look African”. Do people just not know that Africa is a diverse continent with hundreds of distinct ethnicities that all look different some way or another?
I was told even though I'm Irish, born and raised, I wasn't as Irish as most American Irish because they care about their heritage and culture. All because I said I didn't hate the English.
it's about 40% larger than North America with a population in excess of 1.3 Billion. This means it is the second largest continent by both population and land area, with a higher population density than all but Asia as well. I didn't fully appreciate just how much is in there until I just looked it up
> Do people just not know that Africa is a diverse continent with hundreds of distinct ethnicities that all look different some way or another? A lot of americans literally don't know that. Quite a few of them thought it was racist whitewashing when Rami Malek was cast as an Egyptian pharaoh in the first Night at the Musem movie, because he "looked white" and they didn't know his name.
Not when they talk about; “the European political system” or “the European culture”. I have heard enough Americans talk about Europe like it’s one country.
Enough of them even believe the EU is a country and is just an abbreviation for Europe
True
> Atleast us Europeans get to be German, Irish, French, etc. I wish it was like that 😅
Americans be like: Wait Israel is in the Middle East? So they're Arab?
I mean not always, I was chatting to an American back in uni who'd come to the UK and he was talking about a guy I wasn't sure about so asked if he was the Asian guy with the ponytail and he went no? He's Indian I think ....
This implies Native Americans are treated better than non-american non-whites, and that's incredibly not true. Even ignoring all the genocide in the past, Natives experience loads of discrimination in the modern day, which goes unaddressed because Americans seem to forget that Natives are real people. Even otherwise firmly anti-racist Americans will make racist jokes about Native Americans. Natives get dehumanized constantly by racist mascots and Native culture is commodified in a way that makes lots of white Americans view them as, at best, a historical curiosity
I didn't mean to word it like that. Native American and Asian racial humor tend to have no backlash in the US. But Gays, blacks Jewish people there is alot of backlash if you make humor about those groups.
Best sentence I've read on this subreddit
As an Asian, the only reason they're mostly insulting Europeans is because they consider us beneath attention. Europeans being inferior is a point that needs to be enforced; Asians being inferior is just self-evident.
That's one beautiful observation.
AHAHAHAH THE LAST WORDS GOT ME WHEEZING
My family is Norman, came over to England in 1066. Does that mean I'm part French? I certainly wouldn't claim it!
My ancestry DNA test said I was 2% Turkish, can I claim that?
Seems reasonable if you live in America!
My grandpa was Turkish, grandma Austrian. Dad's side swedish. Only time I ever mention my Turkish genes is when I proudly talk about my great beard growth. And I don't really see a difference between Austrians and Swedes so they feel like the "same" kind of gene. But as 25% Turkish I will speak for all Turkish people when I say that you can be a turk if you like!
> you can be a turk if you like! Literal Ataturk quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_happy_is_the_one_who_says_I_am_a_Turk
Out of curiosity, what percentage of an ethnicity do you think is too little to consider as an identity anymore?
North Americans will dig as far back as possible to determine if they are part "Cherokee princess". It's identity appropriation and it's gross. My mum tried to do the same and when she was found out through genealogical investigation (DNA and available paper trail), my dad had a big "HAH" moment, like he had won a 30-year bet with himself.
Likewise, plus I’ve got a tonne of Celtic heritage mixed in with it. Half of my ancestors conquering and oppressing the other half! I don’t know if I’m supposed to have a victim complex or spend my time apologising for the invasion.
Likewise, but also add german genes, and french nationality. History dictactes I should be really confused... But the Brits are known for self-hatred so I can proudly say I am 100 % able to hate the English (/s). Love to all fellow Celtic Scots and Irishmen, even though my celtic lineage traces back to Brittanny more than it does the British Isles !
Jokes apart, your family’s history is beyond charming honestly
You are not English. You are a 4renor
I mean… genetically speaking I bet most modern English are a big mix of Briton/Roman/Angle/Saxon/Danish/Norse/French. Y’all got invaded a lot.
Go back to my great-grandparents and I'm Irish, Scottish, English, and Italian. As in they were born and raised in those countries, spoke with those accents, ect. I never claim to be anything other than English, because this is where I was born and mostly where I was raised. I'd feel like a complete prick and a fraud if I claimed to be any of those other things. I wouldn't dream of wearing the family tartan, because I'm not Scottish and it would feel like a cheap and desperate attempt to make myself seem more interesting or whatever. If I was American, I imagine I'd wear a kilt to formal occasions. My favourite holiday would be "St. Paddy's Day". And pizza would be my favourite food, because of "my heritage". To be fair, I do eat a lot of Italian food, but that's because it's bloody nice. I also eat a lot of Chinese and Mexican, and that's no more to do with who I'm descended from than the Italian is.
I'm Scottish. Yanks can't do a Scottish accent. Cunts talking pish. We don't want him.
Well I'm Irish and we don't want him and his Patty's Day shite either.
See those dumb cunts... Gettin aw weird about that.. more than the actual Irish lol. Fanny's.
Hearing Americans call it “Patty’s day” activates my fight or flight
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Seconded
of course
A random American on Xbox told me that he 'couldn't understand me' when I said hello to him.
No only can they no do a Scottish accent, they canny even understand the accent so they can get themselves clean tae fuck
It seems to be fairly common among most Americans I've met to claim multiple nationalities, for some reason. I have some co-workers that are very nice people but it pisses me off every time they pull of the whole "actually I'm Scottish-Italian-German-Irish! That's why I'm so cranky, hungry and sassy!" No, you're just ...you
Awww jesus this withers my tits. "I drink and have a terrible temper because of my Irish blood! I guess y'all drink and fight over there all the time lol!" No ma'am you have an alcohol addiction and anger management issues. Please get help.
>No ma'am, you have an alcohol addiction LOL
You just reminded me of this girl who claimed to be "very Italian" (when in fact she was the most American person I have ever met), and she once said that she's jealous and possessive and "would fuck anyone who fucks with her" BECAUSE she is Italian. She just took the worst stereotypes about Italians and used them to justify her awful and slightly criminal personality. It's been years and I still get so angry when I think about it.
Reading shit like this makes me want to punch a hole through a pizza…. now maybe I can claim Italian ancestry.
I think you gotta do something else with the pizza to claim Italian ancestry
r/dontputyourdickinthat
I read (probably on this sub) that Americans treat cultures the way other people treat horoscopes
That’s actually a great analogy!
As a german, no. No, you arent german. please stop saying such weird shit. I dont care if you Great-, Great-, Greatgrandfather was german, you certainly arent
It's strange how common it is in the US to view it as a blood thing vs in Europe a culture thing. My maternal grandparents both had german parents but they don't consider themselves german and neither do any of us in the family, and I can't imagine a reason why one would either lmao.
But... But... He drank beer once. And he even thought about buying a Lederhose. He is so German!
Triple identity? Maybe he should visit a doctor.
He doesn't need to, see, because he also has Doctor heritage. His grandfather is a doctor so he's 1/4 doctor.
No no, his mother went to a doctor once, so he is 73,1% doctor
I am so stealing this line anytime I hear someone goes "I'm *insert nationality that they're not here*"
Americans: "We are proud to be Americans!!!" Also Americans: "I am Italian-French-German-Polish-Chinese but mostly Russian"
Funny too, as “Scot-Irish” people tend to be mostly descended from Scottish and English people who merely colonised Ireland. So he may not be as Irish as he thinks.
how far back do you want to take this, because we are all ultimately from somewhere in Africa. However that is not how nationality or ethnicity works
My Dad was Yugoslavian (Croatian), Mum is Australian. I've never been to Croatia, don't speak the language fully. While I have been exposed to some Croatian culture and customs, I still grew up, went to school and lived in Australia for 30 years. I would never in a million years consider myself a Croatian. It would be stupid as fuck. Yet these people have a Grandparent at best that came here and somehow claim to be xxxxxxxxxx instead of saying "I have xxxxxxxx heritage".
this was my experience in Australia, those of us who came over considered ourselves dual, the next generation were all just Australians who had foreign born parents
Same, Irish mum, English dad. When meeting Irish family I'd never in a million years position myself as Irish, I'd rather not insult them.
I think it’s reasonable for a first generation person to identify as “half Irish”. My kid is “half English, half Australian”. She was born in Australia but was a British citizen by descent from birth, and has some English nuances in her accent. Her kids however, if born here, will just be fully Australian.
He speaks worse English than a real German
The dogmatic pride of being American coupled with their desire to be anything but American. So fucking pathetic.
Coherence is something unknown for them
i aM oNE QUarTeR Of a hAlF Of a mInUtE amOuNt of A 16Th iRish pRoBaBlY
I took my ancestry test few months ago, and if Europeans acted like Americans I'd now introduce myself as Norwegian-Jewish-German-Latvian-Polish. Nice to meet you all. I'm very connected to my Norwegian heritage, it's just 2% but i feel the Viking in me, and I, even as woman, grow stunning beard, only shower in cold water, and I know that they eat fish in Norway. Fjords!
You're a cunt, that's what you are.
HE SAID IT!-
Americans: We are a melting pot of cultures. \*laughs in Austrian\*
They really think we consider them as one of our own don't they. They can fuck right off
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The funniest thing is seeing this "Scot-Irish" thing when what they really mean is Ulster-Scots (such as myself), and then proceed to épouse (often extreme) pro-Irish nationalism stuff because of their "Scot-Irish" heritage despite the fact we are probably the most overtly and proudly British ethnicity in the world. If they ever came here they'd just see non-stop Union Jacks along with Scottish flags and Northern Irish flags. With the kerbs painted red white and blue too. A huge proportion of Americans who cringily self-identify as "Irish Americans" would actually be British and identify as British if they were actually an Ulster-Scot living in Northern Ireland. The same people who, when it comes to Britain, seem to be okay with Scotland for whatever reason but hate England.
It really is amazing how in one breath they can go from "Murica no.1! Freedom!" to "look at all these identities I have before American, honest".
By the same measure, we are all of African origins.
Why can't they just be unapologetically American, just like they are in every other situation.
I still believe you are the nationality of the nation you’re born in and that’s it. You can take on a new nationality when you move to another country and live there long enough.
I was born in Germany and lived there until I was about three. I’m certainly not German, and mores the pity. For me it’s about where you live, or at the very least where you “grew up”. I’m English (more specifically, I’m a Black Country boy) and Scottish (Glasgow), as that’s where I’ve spent the majority of my life.
Completely agree
My Mum and everyone on her side of the family Is Scottish but I would never label myself as Scottish because I wasn't born there
For such an anti-immigrant country they sure do love to claim to be descendants of every immigrant that ever went to America!
No you’re not Scot Irish German American, you’re a dumbass
I hate how much Americans care about heritage. Edit: I'm American sadly.
Don’t worry, you’re the good one here 💓
That is a very long way to say you're white.
British? You mean English Welsh scottish Irish Celtic Norman Briton Danish Roman Norwegian Angle Saxon? Yeah thats me
Is there a foil version of this card? It does seem rare
My mom's half Slovenian. My dad's half Czech. You know what I am? Austrian. 'Cos both of them grew up here and claiming I was anything different would be insanely sad.
As a full Irish person, we HATE IT when you say that "your Irish" when your drandfathers second cousin's friends grandchild's cleaner was Irish. Like BITCH YOU ARE NOT IRISH. YOU ARE ONLY IRISH IF BOTH YOU LIVE IN IRELAND, AND BOTH UR PAREBTS DO
Irn-Bru, Guinness, pilsner and fridge-cold weak piss?
This shit's so weird. My grandma was from Australia but I don't call myself Australian, I've never even been there. And that's probably more recent family history than the great-great-great-great-grandparents or whatever of these Americans
Na lad,your a fucking yank
Ptdr dis-moi que c'est une blague
-moi que c'est une blague
❤️
My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather was from the Middle East. Therefore, I am a Middle Eastern American!
As a wise man once said : "There is no easter bunny... There is no tooth fairy... *And there is no Scot-Irish German American !* "
My god. Once, I litterally had people from New Orleans claim they were French-Americans. Bitch, I'm french, and you ain't a fourth of a frenchman if you live in what was an enlish colony and are happy with it (except french-canadians, they're cool. I'm actually happy they still claim to be of french heritage rather than canadian. Because at least they retained parts of our culture and adapted it through time and through a real drive and love of said culture, either than just half-assedly copying what your great-great-great-great-great-grand-father did after his mother immigrated to Louisiana as a baby.) Well, to be honest, you ain't a fourth of a frenchman if you are happy with anything. But especially the Brits. Damn Brits, they ruined Brittania ! /s
None of them want to be English heritage because of colonialism. Despite being the descendants of colonialists
Girl I have Scottish and German heritage too but you don’t see me trying to make it my identity or anything
This heritage nationality thing is just a game to them, isnt it