NRR: Why do Americans claim to be from other countries?

People care because the U.S. is built on immigration, and in many big cities like NYC, Chicago, LA, Philly, etc., the different ethnic groups lived close together for support and in some cases still do. So ethnicity became a big driver of employment, politics, religion, friendschip, civic participation, probably to a degree that doesn't exit in Europe, where most people have a common cultural and ethnic heritage. (Though this is obviously changing with immigration from former colonies, and those who had come to seek work, like the Turks in Germany.)

But IMO, the question of "what are you?" is still lot more likely to be asked in a very deverse place like NYC than out in the hinterlands somewhere, where the biggest differentiator between people may be whether they're MEthodist or Baptist.

And to be precise, that questioner should know that these people are talking in a shorthand. When they say that "I'm Irish, I'm Jamaican, I'm Korean," or some such, they're often referring to their ancestry, not the fact that they were born there.

I always tell people I'm an American, but just out of curiosity, what if I told people I'm English? Most of my ancestors came from England, we still practice English religion and value English political ideals, many of our favorite writers and artists are from England, and we speak English in the home.

dtrtrt wrote:

essentially its just bland people trying to convince themselves that their different.

truth facts wrote:

This.

Yep!

i was at the dry cleaners yesterday and the asian-looking woman working there was talking to the customer ahead of me and told her she was peruvian.

the customer seemed confused and said something along the lines of "oh well i guess you could pass for several different races. you could be asian," and the woman replied "well my father was japanese and my mother was chinese, but they moved to peru."

and i thought it was really cool that she thought of herself as peruvian whereas here we get so caught up in defining ourselves as where our ancestors lived 200-400 years ago

Europeans don't understand because their countries are so homogeneous. Now that they're just beginning to experience an influx of immigration and cultural diversity, they may start to understand.

Then you'd be lying.You are not European, deal with it.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

I always tell people I'm an American, but just out of curiosity, what if I told people I'm English? Most of my ancestors came from England, we still practice English religion and value English political ideals, many of our favorite writers and artists are from England, and we speak English in the home.

offensive and false wrote:

Then you'd be lying.

You are not European, deal with it.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

I always tell people I'm an American, but just out of curiosity, what if I told people I'm English? Most of my ancestors came from England, we still practice English religion and value English political ideals, many of our favorite writers and artists are from England, and we speak English in the home.

Jeez, did you read the first part of my post?

I am on the right wing, and I call myself irish. Guess that blows your stereotype out of the water, huh?

Stan Croft wrote:

Maybe it is because as Americans we understand that we are a country of immigrants and most of us are proud of that fact. Certainly many of our right wing friends think that immigrants don't belong but as someone pointed out there have always been nativists. A large number of Americans relish the fact that a bunch of immigrants have been able, over the course of a few hundred years, to create a system of government that is a model for much of the world and manage to gain some dominance in economics and politics.

So, while I am proud to have been born in the great state of Missouri and to have lived in several other states, I still am proud to have descended, largely, from men and women of German stock who immigrated to the states.

dtrtrt wrote:

the reason is because many white americans really have no culture. even if their grandparents immigrated to the states, they have become so assimilated into american culture that they've lost the culture from where they originally came from.

essentially its just bland people trying to convince themselves that their different.

Yes. There is a lot of truth to this. White people who are bored with their lives and want to differentiate themselves make these claims. Hell, I was one of these people in my college days. I would tell folks my "people" were from Ireland, even though I've never been to Ireland and I don't really know how much truth there is to my claim that I have Irish ancestry.

But you have to understand, I was longing for some kind of cultural identity because I really didn't know where my family came from. It wasn't something my family talked about, even if I asked them directly about our ancestry. Almost like they were ashamed or didn't care. I would see proud people and friends who had strong ties to their cultural heritage, and here I was - swallowed up by strip malls and suburbia thinking, "Is this really who I am?". So I go poking around online a little and find some information that leads me to believe my father's side of the family might have been Irish a few generations back, so I latched on to that. Sounds ridiculous, but I was simply searching for identity.

This country is such a melting pot of different races and cultures, I think many white kids in suburbia are having an identity crisis. Of course, we have the history of our own nation to look to and draw from, but it only goes so far back. And it's so mired in crap like civil war, slavery, and oppression of Natives that it's hard to have pride. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T be proud of our nations history, by the way. There are definitely things to be proud of, but we lose sight of all that.

So now, I don't tell people I'm Irish anymore. That's silly. I'm not Irish. I'm American. But I am still searching for cultural identity. I know my Father's side of the family has lived in the Appalachian region of the Southern US (mostly in North Carolina) for several generations, so there's that. I love learning about that culture.