Comment by troosevelt
2 days ago
Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage? US culture is a culture that assimilates, people remember where they come from. It's almost mean-spirited that yall fault them for this. Better than forgetting. I remember where my ancestors came from because they came here from somewhere they were not wanted.
What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care? Is it some hindance to my culture that I want to learn about it and try to "cosplay"? What would you prefer that we act as though we're here sui generis? Is somebody's culture lesser because they're not in that country at that time?
People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget everything about their past, in many cultures that transition is even more recent; I remember my immigrant grandmother. Comes off as gatekeeping people who would otherwise be your relatives.
It's massively irritating because it's the usual US blend of total ignorance and massive arrogance.
I used to do re-enactment in the UK, and after almost every show I'd have some idiot wander up and say "I'm a Saxon!" and blather shite at me about what that meant about their identity and culture.
If I asked if that meant they weren't American, then obviously they'd react in horror at the suggestion.
The idea that my culture, my history, can just be co-opted as part of someone else's cosplay identity, is tiresome at best. But then they walk up to me and expect me to recognise them as a fellow Saxon? No. Fuck off you annoying fucking wanker.
And I notice that none of them claim to be English or even British. Oh no, too much Braveheart and The Patriot for that.
The weirdest part is that they stop tracing back the second they hit someone interesting, as if nothing interesting happened before that person. If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish, and that that has conferred "cultural traits" through some weird-ass blood magic or something.
But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.
I'm Swedish. But my last name is 100% German, easily recognisable as a German name, super common. Because my paternal ancestor immigrated from Germany in the 1600's and brought the name with him. My mother's maiden name was Czech, also very easily recognisable as such, and my uncle and my cousins have that name as well.
But I would never in a million years call myself German. I am not German. I am not Czech. My cousins aren't Czech. All of our parents were born in Sweden. All of our grandparents were born in Sweden. The vast majority of our great-grandparents were born in Sweden. We are all 100% Swedish.
The idea that I would call myself German because of my last name is completely ridiculous, but that is exactly what these cosplaying Americans are doing, even though they don't speak German, and I do. My dad speaks fluent German. My maternal grandfather spoke fluent German. I have so much more claim to "German-ness", whatever that is, than these cosplayers, and I wouldn't dream of doing it.
And then they bleat about how their great-great-whtaever was German, and because of that they "feel so connected to the Alps".
What's funny about those Europeans gatekeeping European ethnic identity from Americans, is that their tune will change immediately if we ask them if an African who has been there for 5 years is English or German.
See the response from marcus_holmes about "Irishness" in this thread. It's essentially the position of ethnic nationalist parties like Restore Britain. But in a different context he'd be ranting about civic nationalist parties like Reform UK or One Nation...
Basically, if an American is claiming to be whatever, you can use a purity standard close to the Nuremberg laws to exclude them. But an Indian or African who arrived 5 years ago is a true blood Aussie mate, because saying anything else would be doing a racism.
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haha, great point about the language. An Irish friend of mine would speak Gaelic to any American he met who claimed to be Irish. Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question.
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That is your right to not claim your German ancestry, as generally it is a viable solution to just not stand out and blend in with crowd, but frankly that is also your right to claim your ancestry and seek refuge in German speaking countries, if things go south in Sweden and Caliphate is established there or some Finns invade and makes your life impossible, so generally - this is not your gate to keep, as these can be considered as an open choices. And I would think that current age of open borders that we have now might end and claiming different identity might be the only viable option to migrate somewhere else.
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> But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.
Speak for yourself, because
> If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish
That is, indeed, the correct assumption to make. I would recommend having a look at the work done on population genetics at Oxford University’s People of the British Isles project[1]. Even their homepage should relieve you of some misconceptions:
> The People of the British Isles (PoBI) project was initiated by Sir Walter Bodmer in 2004, in an effort to create the first ever detailed genetic map of a country. The United Kingdom’s history bristles with immigrations, wars and invasions, so the PoBI researchers faced a tremendous task in investigating how past events impacted the genetic makeup of modern British people.
> Results included a map (image below) showing a remarkable concordance between genetic and geographical clustering of our samples across the United Kingdom.
[1] https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/
Ethnicity and nationality are not the same, though they have until very recently overlapped to an enormous extent. Someone might well be of anglo-saxon ethnicity and be American.
Being British myself, I find it fun to tease the yanks about all manner of things, but actual animus of the kind you’re displaying just looks like a massive chip on the shoulder.
Sorry when your ancestor's ran mine out we survived and chose to keep a bit of identity, some concept of self. You're right, we should have surrendered every right to it, every notion of those that came before us. Ungrateful us not to have submitted in a second way (the first was not submitting and, you know, surviving).
You became American.
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It irks me because it usually manifests as embracing cartoonish stereotypes of the most superficial aspects of the culture: "I'm 1/64th Italian, so I like pizza. I'm 1/16th German, so I like beer. etc."
It doesn't keep me up at night, but I think it's tacky and vulgar.
It might usually manfiest as that or you're picking out the most superficial parts of people's identity to criticize. It's just not how I and others view it when we think about where the people who made us come from.
Or, to put it another way: your criticism is tacky and vulgar. Perhaps what you're describing is "cosplaying" but that's not how immigrant communities see themselves. I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup but pizza and beer aren't how I celebrate that. Nobles know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they are 1/4th Italian? I don't think attacking somebody's identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is everything to them.
I think that a lot of people are irked by the sheer inconsistency of the American culture: celebrate your immigrant heritage at the same time you protect “your” American land and keep those pesky immigrants out. Not personal.
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Like many Americans, I am from a European immigrant background. For what it's worth, I have spent a lot of time in x-land, and I speak x-ish. But I am an American. My ethnicity is mixed. I grew up in America. You would never know my heritage unless I told you, which I probably never would. Because I hate hearing the "Me too! I'm x-ish too!" spiel from another American who can't even pronounce their own surname correctly.
> that's not how immigrant communities see themselves.
Whoa, who's talking about immigrant families? Immigrant families came from somewhere else. That's their identity, because it's where they came from. But if your family has been here for a few generations, then I have news for you: you're not immigrants!
> I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup. Nobles know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they are 1/4th Italian?
The game of percentages is absurd to begin with. It's one thing to know you have some ancestors from Japan. It's another to say "I am 12.5% Japanese!" What the hell does that even mean? When noble families recognize their ancestry, first off, they don't make ridiculous claims of percentage. No nobleman says "I am 1/16 Catalonian". They'd laugh at you. "You mean to tell me your culture is 1/6 Catalonian?" Second, they don't identify with the culture of an ancestor if it has no presence and reality for them. The British royal family has German roots (and like all European royal families, a complicated web of ancestry spanning virtually all of Europe in some way or another), yet they don't claim to be German or Hessian. It would be absurd. They're the British royal family, and much of them have been the British royal family for some time!
(I do recognize cultural identity as complex, of course, more complex than how many people see it, but it's complex when the cultural dimensions are actually real, not fabricated by the imagination.)
> I don't think attacking somebody's identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is everything to them.
But it's not their identity. It's a pretense. If some distant ancestor's cultural origin is everything to someone, then you're proving the absurdity of of the whole thing.
Like I say, it's a socially-accepted form of cosplaying.
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> Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage?
I'm making an observation. It's not a unique observation. People in countries of ancestry find it ridiculous when Americans far removed from their culture visit and claim to be "one of them", or worse, like a member of "the family". I'm sure you don't enjoy people who make fraudulent claims about themselves either, especially when it is an attempt to establish a false camaraderie with you.
I think the mid-century pressure to assimilate into corporate American culture, along with all the tactics used by the state to disrupt ethnic neighborhoods and communities like scattering them across newly-created suburbs to hasten assimilation, left people disoriented, traumatized, and feeling culturally homeless. There's a nostalgia for the ethnic neighborhood that was lost (in the case of Italian neighborhoods, you can see it reflected in movies like "The Godfather"). Assimilation - and synthesis - would have happened on its own, eventually, but this was an engineered process of rupture.
I also question your characterization of the phenomenon as "caring about one's heritage". It's one thing to take an interest in one's ancestry. That's perfectly fine and perfectly normal, but that's not what is at issue. I can look at my family tree and note whatever ancestors of other ethnic backgrounds there might be. It's another to claim as heritage and as identity some culture that your family shed generations ago. Culture is lived in a society, not a gene you inherit.
(Incidentally, this is why some Black Americans dislike the term "African American". Black Americans have been in the US longer than most Americans of European ancestry. They aren't "African". They're a cultural group that emerged in the America South. The case is similar with Jamaicans, Barbadian, St. Lucians, etc.)
> What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care?
How about: why are you so bothered by this observation? It seems quite personal to you, which should perhaps be something bracketed if you wish to be objective.
> People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget everything about their past
The most you can claim on the basis of these residual bits of knowledge and culture is Italian influence. Just because the Boston Brahmins know their English ancestry, or have English ancestry, doesn't mean they're English.
An "Italian American" generations removed from Italy is not the same as an "Italian", and so on. That's not a denial of influence or origin. It's just factually incorrect to say they are the same. Culturally, they are not.
> Comes off as gatekeeping people who would otherwise be your relatives.
It's interesting you call this gatekeeping. I am not the cause of such facts, and so I am not the one drawing up the boundaries of reality. I am merely recognizing them.