CRAMULUS

[Suu]

They weren't French,they were Normans! Danish Vikings who'd conquered Normandy, and settled for a few generations. But even they couldn't stand the whiny tone of the Gallic Natives, or the comedy diet, so they decided to move somewhere with a bit more culture, and proper food. 

....I'm sorry, did you say proper food?

[BadBeast]

I say proper food, I meant in the "not snails, or frogs" sense of the word.

ETA: Or Horses. They still eat them.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I dunno man, the denizens of Britannia are not too far off in culinary tastes. I mean, you guys eat fucking kidneys. That's where piss is made!

[BadBeast]

Very nice they are too. Lightly grilled, as part of a full English Breakfast. Not an amphibian or mollusc in sight.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Very nice they are too. Lightly grilled, as part of a full English Breakfast. Not an amphibian or mollusc in sight.

Yeah but your national dish, fish and chips, is just as disgusting as snail eating in my book. Warm-blooded or gtfo

[BadBeast]

Nothing wrong with a bit of fish. Nice fresh Turbot or Megrim,  (In breadcrumbs, not batter) And our chips, are just the same as your "French Fries". But you seem to be misinformed about our National dish. It's Chicken Vindaloo.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Nothing wrong with a bit of fish. Nice fresh Turbot or Megrim,  (In breadcrumbs, not batter) And our chips, are just the same as your "French Fries". But you seem to be misinformed about our National dish. It's Chicken Vindaloo.

Chicken vindaloo I can get down with. If the British Empire was good for anything, it was expanding the items on an English menu.

[BadBeast]

Nothing wrong with a bit of fish. Nice fresh Turbot or Megrim,  (In breadcrumbs, not batter) And our chips, are just the same as your "French Fries". But you seem to be misinformed about our National dish. It's Chicken Vindaloo.

Chicken vindaloo I can get down with. If the British Empire was good for anything, it was expanding the items on an English menu.

Yeah, but don't forget the Gold, and the Diamonds, it was brilliant for Treasure, and Taxes. Good for putting down crazy little Corsican Pirates, who somehow convinced the French they could fight. Great opportunities for our  Merchant classes too. Those "Tea" Clippers were great for the   India ~ China run. Even with their holds full of Silver, nothing could catch themon the home run.
It wasn't all about food you know!

[BabylonHoruv]

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)     

Jews are white now, but it's a recent thing.

They're probably whiter than the Amish in that you can identify an Amish person by looking at him and you can't a Jew.

[BabylonHoruv]

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.

The friends of mine who look white and have just a little bit of black in them do it in a sort of tongue in cheek way, but it's a strong part of their identity.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

One drop rule. Look it up, it might give you a better idea of why that is.

Also, friends who look white might not have families who look white or identify as white. That "tiny bit" is probably more than you think, if they self-identify as black.

[pH]

As far as Americans trying to prove "authenticity", a lot of that gets down to legal aspects. For example, scholarships are offered if you are a certain race, a minority in general, female, or able to prove financial need. On top of that we have affirmative action, which is if I (75% german, 25% hungarian whitey McWhite white, from a well off household) Get the exact same scores as another guy, (identical in every way except he's black) when applying for college, that college is legally required to accept him before me, for no reason other than he is black and I'm not. That goes for all 'minorities' though, pretty much anyone who can prove they've got a bit of non-white in them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

As far as Americans trying to prove "authenticity", a lot of that gets down to legal aspects. For example, scholarships are offered if you are a certain race, a minority in general, female, or able to prove financial need. On top of that we have affirmative action, which is if I (75% german, 25% hungarian whitey McWhite white, from a well off household) Get the exact same scores as another guy, (identical in every way except he's black) when applying for college, that college is legally required to accept him before me, for no reason other than he is black and I'm not. That goes for all 'minorities' though, pretty much anyone who can prove they've got a bit of non-white in them.

You misunderstand affirmative action. It's not that they are required to accept a "minority" before a white guy with the same scores; it's that they are required to attempt to represent the population around them, so if the general population is 10% black, and their current enrollment is only 8% black, they are required to apply affirmative action guidelines by being preferential toward blacks UNTIL their black enrollment reaches 10%. It also works the other way, meaning that if the white population was at 60%, yet they only had 50% white enrollment, they would be required to apply affirmative action guidelines by being preferential toward whites UNTIL they reached 60% white enrollment.

AND ALL THAT IS IF, AND ONLY IF, THEY RECEIVE FEDERAL FUNDING.

What Affirmative action is intended to do is to help offset the automatic privilege white people in the US tend to experience simply by being white, without introducing a new, unfair privilege, simply by mandating that entities that receive Federal funding adjust their hiring practices so that their employees/alumni reflect, by percentage, their surrounding population.

"Authenticity" doesn't provide any benefit to most people at all, other than psychological. The guy who is 1/32nd black isn't "legally black".

If you research scholarships a little better, you will find that there are scholarships for everything imaginable, including being Hungarian or the son of an Irish police officer.

I just wish people would make an effort to understand these things a little better before sounding like Teabaggers, or petulant little boys who think the poor kids get better toys than they do.

[East Coast Hustle]

As far as Americans trying to prove "authenticity", a lot of that gets down to legal aspects. For example, scholarships are offered if you are a certain race, a minority in general, female, or able to prove financial need. On top of that we have affirmative action, which is if I (75% german, 25% hungarian whitey McWhite white, from a well off household) Get the exact same scores as another guy, (identical in every way except he's black) when applying for college, that college is legally required to accept him before me, for no reason other than he is black and I'm not. That goes for all 'minorities' though, pretty much anyone who can prove they've got a bit of non-white in them.

Allow me to be less reasonable than Nigel...


You're a fucking ignorant shitneck. Shut up and go actually learn something for yourself instead of parroting the latest talking points you heard on a talk-radio show.

[BabylonHoruv]

As far as Americans trying to prove "authenticity", a lot of that gets down to legal aspects. For example, scholarships are offered if you are a certain race, a minority in general, female, or able to prove financial need. On top of that we have affirmative action, which is if I (75% german, 25% hungarian whitey McWhite white, from a well off household) Get the exact same scores as another guy, (identical in every way except he's black) when applying for college, that college is legally required to accept him before me, for no reason other than he is black and I'm not. That goes for all 'minorities' though, pretty much anyone who can prove they've got a bit of non-white in them.

About the only ethnicity that get something close to a real free ride are certain native American tribes, and that is because they have a treaty with the federal government that outlines this, as part of the deal for the federal government having taken all their land and stuck them on a reservation.  Membership is also determined by the tribal government, so it's not something that just anyone can claim, even if they are actually descended from members of the tribe.