They want to be European, but don’t want the stink of colonialism, whilst also feeling like rebels, so Ireland it is!
Funny story, my lineage is Irish and Lithuanian. So take that, I guess.
Admitting you have problems is the first step.
It’s the same nonsense as invoking “the luck of the Irish”. Said by people who have absolutely no idea about Irish history.
Darn those extra lucky Irish.
In Fact it’s well known that they fought overwhelming on the north side of the US civil war because they knew which side was gonna win from their luck, and it had nothing to do with recognizing slavery as another form of the serfdom they just escaped from.
Idk lol some of our ancestors are just from a place and sometimes that place is Ireland. Want my white-ass to lie to you instead?
I’m Hatian now.
It’s just a very foreign thing for us eurooeans. If we’re born in Italy, but some grandparent was born in Germany, we don’t consider ourself to be german in any way. We’d consider ourself italian and nothing else. It just seems so incredibly odd to even consider oneself to be german if you didn’t spend time growing up in Germany.
I guess that makes sense. We have our “heritage” pushed on us from a very young age, or at least we did when I was a child. In the 4th grade we did an entire reenactment of immigrating through Ellis Island, NY in which we had to research our countries of origin, then draw from a hat to see if we died on the journey, got small pox, or any other number of things all before being “accepted into the wonderful cultural melting-pot that is the United States”.
Then we grew up and learned that all immigrants are evil and must all be deported. /s?
Regardless, my family immigrated from Ireland after having lived in County Cork for a very long time. This whole post just seems like shitting on people just to shit on people.
Sad thing to be, nonsensical thing to want to be
Well, thanks for calling me sad for a thing I’m mostly indifferent about and have no choice in, OP.
What if you knew your family came over before Ellis island was open.
Didn’t matter. Unless you were indigenous, for the lessons sake, you came through ellis island lol
I think the reason it’s so prevalent here in the US is because the vast majority of the population ended up here at least in part due to immigration. So identifying as ethnically originating from elsewhere is a part of that self identity.
The disparity however, is knowing that while traveling through Europe, this style of self identification falls flat because simply being ethnically from a place doesn’t mean you can claim to be born and raised from there. And that meaning is what’s different between the US and Europe.
I wonder if some of it doesn’t come from the people who came to America through forced immigration (I.e. the slave trade).
I think it makes sense for people brought unwillingly to America to hold on to that ethnic heritage and culture work hard to instill it in their children, even if they were born in America.
Very unlikely, the people who claim to have some european origin are generally not the descendants of slaves. Descendants of slaves generally have very little knowledge about the origin of their ancestors. Slaves in America came mostly from Africa, most likely even displaced within Africa. Very little records were kept of individual slaves origins, because why would anyone do that, they’re slaves. These people identify as “just” African Americans.
I think you misunderstood. I wasn’t talking about the people who claim to have some European origin but the practice in general in the US of acknowledging ancestral ethnic heritage as part of where you’re from.
Descendants of slaves generally have very little knowledge about the origin of their ancestors.
This might be true now, but 200 years ago people were brought here from other countries unwillingly and had children here. If we’re were forcefully taken to another country and then had children at some point I would talk to them about the people left behind and where I came from.
If we’re were forcefully taken to another country and then had children at some point I would talk to them about the people left behind and where I came from.
That’s not how that works, especially when their cultures were specifically purged by the slavers. Your comment reads like the equivalent of saying “I would have just roundhouse kicked the gun away and saved the day” as if it’s the slaves’ fault for not giving their kids rich lessons on their history. It’s amazing that even some of it survived at all.
Americans keep their ethnic identity distinct from their national identity. If an American national tells you they’re Irish, they’re invariably referring to the former.
Sure, but are they really ethnically irish because their great grandfather was from Ireland? At what point do we consider americans to be their own thing?
It’s not like the irish, italians or the danish are ethnically pure. Some bloke on my fathers side came to Denmark from Germany in the 1800s, and before that, one of his ancestors came from france, and before that from Rome. Same shit on my mothers side.
My point is, it’s not like european countries are monoethnic. So why don’t we view someone from Texas, as ethnically texan, when their ancestry probably dates back to 1700s Texas?
I think you touched on why. Ethnic identity is somewhat arbitrary, and tied up with national / cultural identity. In the US, despite our xenophobic phases most of us culturally identify as a nation of immigrants. So in terms of ethnicity, we’re more concerned with where our lineage existed before arriving in the United States, rather than how long it’s existed in the United States. There’s a bit of a hierarchy of “who’s family has existed in the US the longest”, but all of those claims are still anchored by which nations their ancestors came from.
There’s also the fact that American genetics haven’t been sedentary long enough - And probably never will be - For us to mix evenly enough to develop a unified physical appearance. Ethnicity is of course not just skin deep, but ethnic identity and identification often uses it as shorthand, and there is as far as I know no stereotypical American ethnic appearance.
Because we generally see ethnic groups as stretching back very far, like pre history far. At some in the future will people be talking about the American erhnic group? Maybe but it take a veey long time or a massive change in what we think of as ethnic groups for American ethnogenesis
I’ve got Irish heritage. My dentist asked me about it because I have a red beard (brown hair). She explained that people with red hair are less responsive to Novocain. I always knew I wasn’t bullshitting that the dentist hurt me as a teen. Finally, proof!
I suppose you can’t blame your earlier dentists, though. How were they supposed to know? And if they automatically treated redheads differently, would that be racism?
Isn’t a racism judging someone’s character based on ethnic heritage or physical expression rather than, you know, their character?
Medical predisposition, nah that’s racist!
It’s not racist to treat patients differently when you’re talking about how likely they are to react to drugs. Children/teens tend to become bewildered and/or violent when waking up from anesthesia. It’s not ageist to prepare for a worse case scenario by calling all hands on deck to hold them down to prevent injury.
It is how ever a dick when dad grounds you because you did that in a haze of post anesthesia that you can’t remember at all and had no control over
Young men come up fighting as well. My ex-wife worked in surgery and got punched a few times. Don’t know what I’d be like now, but as a young men, back the hell up from the bed.
You ask, because certain physical characteristics are known to be linked more often with certain things than others
Not only Novocain, but lots of different types of anesthesia. Im a ginger and have woken up in several procedures, even after warning the doctor I probably would.
Sounds like hell.
The band Eels in their song Novocaine for the Soul claims that efficacy of that drug is linked to having a soul and as we all know ginger do not have one.
Guess I’m a day-walker.
Getting drunk on St. Patty’s
St. Paddy’s, sir.
Ah, of course.
It’s fun to make fun of Americans who are proud of their Irish ancestry. I dunno why. But it is.
Source: american cheese American with Irish composing a decent chunk
Guatemala is awesome. The countryside is beautiful and the people are descended from one of humanity’s major civilizations, the Mayans.
I realize OP is only half-serious, but they still come off as really ignorant.
As someone who is doing a massive research project on the Maya peoples right now, that civilization was technologically way ahead of the game! They had toilets with a sewage system, clean aqueducts and water purification measures, and ball sports a thousand years before the colonizers that fucked em up. A THOUSAND YEARS.
Not to mention the 200 000 people cities when in Europe a 50k city was considered big
How did I come across as “ignorant” Take this from someone who has been to Guatemala. Anyone who knows anything about Guatemala would say what I said.
“The countryside is beautiful and the people are descended from one of humanity’s major civilizations, the Mayans.”
You can cherry pick nice places from anywhere. Places like Mexico, Baltimore, South Africa, Brazil, Detroit and Guatemala have have some nice places here and there but let’s be honest like most of South America it’s a poverty filled shithole and most Guatemalans/South Americans would even agree with me on that.
Irish and Italians are interesting because they were historically considered ‘colored’ or at least on the same societal rung as colored people.
I think some people just like to be in touch with their ancestry which isn’t suddenly cringe when you’re white. But I think for some other people it’s genuinely part of their victim complex. Irish people were among the most oppressed white minorities back in the day.
Irish people were among the most oppressed white minorities back in the day.
Most of the Irish Americans I know are just keen on dishing it back out to whatever Other they can target. I’m also related to most of the Irish Americans I know, so take that as you will.
There is a difference between being in touch with your ancestry to claiming you are literally a nationality which you aren’t. Americans always say “I’m Irish, Italian etc. etc.” and proceeds to be the ultimate arbiter of what is real Irish, Italian etc., when in reality they had some great-grandparents in of their family tree branches who may have been of that nationality.
By all means be interested in your ancestry, study the archives, learn about your distant family, but it does not suddenly make you Irish, Italian etc., you are American.
Uh, 'scuse me, I am proud to be Irish ~and Scottish, both from about 400 years back~ I take pride in my heritage by regularly listening to Celtic music.
come out ye black and tans, 24/7/365
Good news, you can start listening to Kneecap now!
We as Americans lack a certain amount of culture, we look to our pasts and see what it is our families have come from. So many Irish came here, for so many reasons, the cultural heritage barely came with it, leaving a big gaping hole in what we tend to identify ourselves with.
I like to use the analogy of the Native American Indian who was displaced and massacred, captured and forced to go to Indoctrination camps as children. Where they applied the “kill the indian, save the child” methodology, abhorrent to think of, its not far off from cultural genocide.
So, we look back and find our parents and grandparents nationalities, where they have come from, we adopt what little we know of what it means to be Irish. All thats left here is Irish bars and St Patricks Day, Boston and Chicago. Americans will happily tell you about their heritage but its not a long story to tell. We are the children of immigrants striving to find a way to make a home and anyone else to connect with for community.
I agree with 99% of you comment but
We as Americans lack a certain amount of culture
Is just plain false.
American TV, film, music, fashion, food, technology food and to a lesser extent sports are so influential on the world stage they aren’t even thought of as American half the time.
Like it or not, half the world’s wearing blue jeans drinking coca cola watching Hollywood movies or posting about it on shitter while rock or rap plays in the background.
I thought that would be the point I would get called out on. I tried to phrase it around what capitalism makes, its such a short sighted cultural influence that bears very little of what we internalize. I see our American influence everywhere, but we still lack something more concrete to anchor our individual identities.
The term you’re looking for is “cultural history” then, and not “culture”
My great grandparents came to the US and claimed to be Irish. We strongly suspect this was a lie and they were German but arrived during a time where Germans were… unpopular.
I’ve been asking this same goddamn question dude. I don’t get it
The Irish was the last white European immigrant community that was treated poorly after immigration so by claiming to be part of that they get to claim to be part of that oppression and use it to pretend to themselves they are an underdog regardless how much their existence would be unlike any actual Irish immigrants.
LOL, but the Italians came with basically the rest of Eastern/southern Europe for work around that time and were just wrapped up in the generic anti-immigration zeitgeist and the Polish, Slavs, Greek, etc didn’t complain as much and didn’t even manage to turn a bedtime story about a creepy Italian dude into a story of how they secretly actually founded America first.
Though apparently up to like half of Italian immigrants were known to return home after they saved up enough money from US factory work. I think they just didn’t like being in the US.
That is gross
like… were a nation of immigrants. it’s part of your identity in the US.
We’re all from Africa
Not according to ICE.
