CRAMULUS

[Don Coyote]

Americans are such a blended people that for most of us it doesn't make sense to identify as German or Irish or Zulu or Dahomet or what have you.

But americans seem to me to continuously go on about their partial German, Irish, Greek, Native, Black or whatever heritages?

Of course, that's also simply caused by the fact that in most other places in the world, 95% of the time heritage is not very interesting to talk about. Mostly prompted by discussions here, I decided to ask around in my family. Conclusion: 100% Dutch. Part Frysian, part Groningen--those places are about 200km apart, both in the North. Not even some roots from other parts within NL In other words: booooooring.
While on the other hand, take the average American. There were like tens of different origins coming over from all over the place and naturally* over 200 years they mixed up a lot, so you're going to have an interesting mixed bag of genes

*actually I can't quite explain why this is natural (since it doesn't happen--so much--in Europe), but it happened anyway. Probably because everybody was just as detached and far away from their roots as the other guy, or something.

I've noticed that if you have a group of White Americans discussing ethnic background we tend to identify with whichever part is least white.  So if there's a black great grandparent, that's what we identify as, no blacks, well then we'll identify with that 32nd part Cherokee, without that we're Jewish or Gypsy, None of that then Italian or Irish  (Yeah, Irish are pasty, but they were also treated as second class citizens relatively recently so they count as less white than German or French or whatever) 

But I identify with the whitest part of my heritage, British-ish.

[BadBeast]

I think the reason Americans tend to identify with "The Old Country" (wherever it is) is because the USA as a Nation is so young. There seem to be different classes of  "White" America, not necessarily defined by wealth, but on things like whether your Ancestors came with the Pilgrim Fathers, or later, with some other dynamic that brought Europeans flooding to the New World, like The Gold Rush, or any of the diasporas from numerous Civil Wars, or Religious pogroms. I suppose the various classes, when looked at like this, start with the WASPs with "Old Money" the ones who invested in Lincoln, and won.  Also near the top are the Old Southern Families, who lost. But Old Money, definitely has gravitas. Then there's the people who made it big, in the Gold Rush, Californians, new money, still influential, but considered vulgar, and upstart by the Old Money lot. Then there's the people who came as Religious Refugees, the Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, Amish, etc. They are still considered proper Americans, but different because of their Cultural rejection of most people's idea of  "The American Dream". The fact that they have built their own, distinct version of the Dream probably has a lot to do with this. Then there's the Scandinavian Americans, good Protestant folks mostly, and they gravitated towards the need for Arable Farmers, and the Mid-West still has more of this blood around than I thought, before I checked some stuff out. At the other end of the "White America" spectrum seem to be those whose ancestors were Catholic immigrants. Especially the Irish. This might have to do with the fact that most of them turned up in the middle of a Civil War, uneducated, pugnacious, penniless and starving, in numbers that could potentially swing the War either way. But their Papist faith certainly didn't add to their popularity, for some reason. Then there's the American Jews. I don't know to what extent Jews are considered as white in the US, but the Jews have always been good at fitting in, culturally, while still retaining a strong identity, distinct and different to whichever Country they settled. The main two factors here, I think, are simply that Jews haven't had a common "Old Country" for a lot longer than any other immigrants, and are well experienced at being a diaspora, and having to fit around other cultures, and of course, the cultural advantage that they have a History of being extremely successful in the World's Financial, and Legal Institutions.

This is just an outsiders hastily put together viewpoint of how America seems to us, so I apologize if I've just insulted, or snubbed generations of anyones families, it wasn't intentional. (Notice how I carefully avoided those of Italian, and particularly Sicilian ancestry? I might be culturally ignorant in some respects, but I'm not stupid)     

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think Trip and BadBeast have a pretty good handle on why white Americans identify as [European Nation]-Americans.

Side notes:
Jewish people are considered white. They usually get lumped in as just Jewish, but every so often it's Ukrainian Jewish or Polish Jewish. I knew of at least one person from a Jewish family that referred to himself as German-American on the grounds that he was an atheist.

Also- as far as white people identifying with the least white part of their ancestry, I've noticed that white people like talking about being descended from Natives and such too. I identify with my Irish heritage though because most of my ancestry is Irish and my father was an Irish immigrant. My Scottish and German ancestry at this point is so distant and dilute as to be not even really worth mentioning.

[Luna]

Don't look at me.  I'm a plain ol' American mongrel.  Got some German and Dutch blood, we're pretty sure of, but...  Meh.  Interesting in an academic sense, but never really made much difference.

[Suu]

This thread offends my Italo-Irish-Greco-Turkic-Polish-Japanese-Native-Americanness.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Americans are such a blended people that for most of us it doesn't make sense to identify as German or Irish or Zulu or Dahomet or what have you.

But americans seem to me to continuously go on about their partial German, Irish, Greek, Native, Black or whatever heritages?

Of course, that's also simply caused by the fact that in most other places in the world, 95% of the time heritage is not very interesting to talk about. Mostly prompted by discussions here, I decided to ask around in my family. Conclusion: 100% Dutch. Part Frysian, part Groningen--those places are about 200km apart, both in the North. Not even some roots from other parts within NL In other words: booooooring.
While on the other hand, take the average American. There were like tens of different origins coming over from all over the place and naturally* over 200 years they mixed up a lot, so you're going to have an interesting mixed bag of genes

*actually I can't quite explain why this is natural (since it doesn't happen--so much--in Europe), but it happened anyway. Probably because everybody was just as detached and far away from their roots as the other guy, or something.

I've noticed that if you have a group of White Americans discussing ethnic background we tend to identify with whichever part is least white.  So if there's a black great grandparent, that's what we identify as, no blacks, well then we'll identify with that 32nd part Cherokee, without that we're Jewish or Gypsy, None of that then Italian or Irish  (Yeah, Irish are pasty, but they were also treated as second class citizens relatively recently so they count as less white than German or French or whatever) 

This is another take on the "one drop rule", which holds that if any of your ancestors wasn't white, then you can't be white because you're "colored" by your non-white ancestry. In discussions about racism, it is sometimes referred to as "marked", as opposed to the "un-marked" status of whiteness.

However, think you might notice that very few people who are not visibly "marked" actually claim to be black.

[Triple Zero]

Hey! Now wait a fucking minute ...

I'M TOTALLY DESCENDED FROM NATIVES

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hey! Now wait a fucking minute ...

I'M TOTALLY DESCENDED FROM NATIVES

You are... and actually that touches a lot on the "authenticity" discussion, which is what's behind both most Americans dwelling on their paltry and sometimes imaginary American indian heritage, and also most discussions about hipsterdom.

In the Netherlands, I get the impression that you have less tension about "authenticity", so both those discussions probably seem more abstract and kind of useless to you than they do to most Americans.

[Suu]

What the HELL do they call Native Europeans? If you're French, you don't go back and say, "Oh I'm Gallo-Roman, Celtic and Baltic." Do you?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

What the HELL do they call Native Europeans? If you're French, you don't go back and say, "Oh I'm Gallo-Roman, Celtic and Baltic." Do you?

You call them "funny sounding crackers"

[Suu]

That works too. Fuck the French.

[Triple Zero]

In the Netherlands, I get the impression that you have less tension about "authenticity", so both those discussions probably seem more abstract and kind of useless to you than they do to most Americans.

Yeah, I think that's right. In fact, the youth here that does care a lot about their "authenticity" seems to have gotten the idea that it's important entirely from American cultural influence (which we have a lot of, of course. your films and TV series and music are immensely popular here, often outshadowing the local culture art, often pushing it into "meh, pretentious intellectual films" segments (a few exceptions here and there))

The irony is, they often take American cultural icons, styles and culture (or what they perceive to be such), in order to attain this authenticity ...

Hiphop music / lifestyle is especially big in this. ALTHOUGH, I must point out that Dutch hiphop music is pretty big as well, lots of Dutch hiphop artists really trying to put actual Dutch roots in the genre. But even then still a lot of them measure their authenticity from being "street" or "urban", something which is a direct copy from the way certain types of US hiphop do that.

Writing this, there's loads more examples coming to mind, but I don't want to turn this into a Dutch culture 101. Well one thing, they actually use those words, in English, "street", "urban", "cool", "dig", "hot" and many more. Straight from MTV and American media of course. Then a funny thing happens, if you literally translate the words, they sound real silly in Dutch. So people start using them ironically, but before you know it they catch on and people use both the Dutch and English words.

This is very different from the French, who don't want any foreign loan-words and translate anything immediately. German is kind of in between, but the Dutch, really soak up American culture. So much, they want to have YOUR authenticity

What the HELL do they call Native Europeans? If you're French, you don't go back and say, "Oh I'm Gallo-Roman, Celtic and Baltic." Do you?

Only thing I can come up with is "pulled straight from the mud/clay". Which means something like "born and raised" except more generations back. Hard to explain, like the mud was there already ever since the land was there (or as soon as we liberated it from the sea), and that's where your roots are from.

Sounds totally what an American Native would say, don't you think? Except our clay isn't red. (and it's not used in any sort of mystical/spiritual sense, just a figure of speech)

[Suu]

That's a neat phrase.

[BadBeast]

What the HELL do they call Native Europeans? If you're French, you don't go back and say, "Oh I'm Gallo-Roman, Celtic and Baltic." Do you?

We just refer to them as  "fucking French"

[Suu]

What the HELL do they call Native Europeans? If you're French, you don't go back and say, "Oh I'm Gallo-Roman, Celtic and Baltic." Do you?

We just refer to them as  "fucking French"

Considering that most of the English ARE French...