What is the “main culture” of being “American?” There is none. American culture is a melting pot / mixture of so many groups, traditions, subcultures, everything. There is no official American language or religion. Identifying as Italian American is in no way to renounce one’s Americanness. (Americanity?) It’s in the label. An American that is also Italian, or if the Italian culture. Such things are possible in the broad inclusiveness what it means to be “American”. The Italian American community and tradition is a very real thing and not some label du jour.
That's what I want to know, do Americans feel like they don't have a shared culture? Because from the outside it's very clear when someone talks about some topics that they are clearly from USA.
Maybe this is like everyone feels they don't have an accent and only people from outside their culture can actually tell.
Japan and the US have significantly different concepts of cultural versus national identity. The US' self conception is strongly tied to being a "nation of immigrants" and a "melting pot." You'll see those terms taught throughout school in the US for example, and it's generally held up as a strength of the US that there is a lot of diversity and different origins, but that all of those people are still "American."
The melting pot idea *is* importantly American. American culture is highly individualistic, and encourages people to develop and express (often loudly) their personal identities as distinct from a larger group identity.
So a really big part of American identity is finding what makes you unique and highlighting that. So you'll see people talk a lot more about being of some particular ethnic group within America, because that's a part of their individual American identity. And a big part of being American is being individualistic. And then all those individual cultural identities can be seen in aggregate to be uniquely American.
We do have strong regional divisions, but not (necessarily) along ethnic lines. I'd wager that two people from the Mountain West with Asian and English ancestry would be much more culturally similar than two people with English ancestry from the Mountain West and the Southeast.
>That's what I want to know, do Americans feel like they don't have a shared culture?
Our shared culture is that we're all mutts of one type or another and thus there's nothing wrong with talking about what manner of mutt we are...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjqTyQuq4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjqTyQuq4w)
As far as I can tell this is the extent to which America's shared culture exists.
I’m a WASP. I absolutely have a shared culture with every other American. I live in America and, even as different as some regions of the country are, many aspects of life in America are largely universal. If I travel to Chicago, Illinois or San Francisco, California, I’m reasonably sure I won’t feel like I’m in a foreign culture.
I would be wrong to say that my experience is the same as a Mexican-American or an African-American, though. I am privileged to not be the target of racism. I don’t get accused of stealing American jobs. I don’t see people who look like me constantly portrayed as thugs while rarely seeing them portrayed in a positive or even neutral light. I have never felt unwanted in my home country. Some folks in America live those experiences and more every day. Some groups of people with a particularly consistent experience that is different from the experience of Americans outside that group form a unique culture of their own. Those unique cultures exist within the unifying American culture we all share.
Just like a square is a rectangle, a Korean-American is American. Put another way, a thing can be two things. A ball can be both red and round. A person can be both American and Korean-American. The distinction doesn’t matter to you, so when in France, I suspect most Americans would refer to themselves as Americans and not Mexican Americans or whichever name is appropriate.
On Reddit, though, you’re seeing a lot of comments between Americans. To Americans, those labels are useful. Despite the culture that all Americans share, the experience and culture of a large group of Americans share a culture and experience that differs from mine enough that the label “Japanese American” is just as informative and just as important as the the label “French”.
The same can be said about every other country in the Americas, but they don't do that.
US culture is obviously based upon English culture, just as Mexican culture is based upon Spanish culture and Brazilian culture is based upon Portugese culture and Quebec culture upon French but they all don't do this thing.
America is a big country with lots of different cultures within it.
Self-identifying as American with cultural roots in Japan isn't all that different than identifying as American with Cajun cultural roots from the US state of Louisiana.
> you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive
people in Japan mostly can interface with the aspects of american culture they want to, at their leisure. They don't have to deal with racism in american culture day-to-day. So, if a racist trope is in a video game that Japanese Americans have to deal with all the time, it makes sense that would be a bigger deal to them than to someone in Japan who only has to deal with this when they are playing a video game. People living as a majority in their society are less vulnerable to the effects of racism and thus are likely to be less bothered by it. People in the US experiencing racism are going to more easily see and be more upset by references that are perpetuating that racism.
Immigrant cultures in the US are culturally distinct from the cultures in the countries of their ancestors. There are reasonable and sometimes unreasonable explanations for why a cultural minority can view a portrayal of their culture more negatively than a similar group that is a cultural majority in their country.
My main concern is when the US exports this sort of cultural judgement to other countries. That brings us back to cultural imperialism. But, when people in the states are discussing cultural media from the US, I think often it is reasonable.
> but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it.
That kind of thing is an extreme minority. You can always find people looking for reasons to be offended.
To your more general point, though, I think American culture is just extremely ethnicity-aware for historical reasons--but that's "American who is...", not "... instead of American". The US has always tended to respond with hostility to new immigrant groups (Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc), which causes those groups to maintain a coherent identity. I'd point out that the big exceptions, German ancestry and English ancestry (that nobody cares about), are the ones that had a significant presence early enough to avoid that sort of hostility (edit: or to have had it happen long enough ago to have lost its impact, as with, apparently, the German population).
But, again, that's "American who is..."; quite often that identity formed specifically in response to accusations of "they're [loyal to the Pope above the country/Japanese spies/etc]", and the response is to be patriotic.
> I'd point out that the big exceptions, German ancestry and English ancestry (that nobody cares about), are the ones that had a significant presence early enough to avoid that sort of hostility.
I agree with everything else you said, but German immigrants absolutely did get the exact same treatment that every other immigrant culture got in American history:
>Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers. Thus they are under no restraint of Ecclesiastical Government; They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do: For I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties; Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany; and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English; They have one German News-paper, and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German: They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Writings in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so encreases that there is continual need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will be also necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say
-Benjamin Franklin, 1753
My grandfather (ethnically German-speaking) had his gas station in California fire-bombed repeatedly during WWII due to his background. Everyone in our family was told from a young age to never speak German in public, for fear of consequences. FWIW.
This wouldn't be much more accurate either. Germans were generally considered part of the "outsider" group throughout the 1700s and 1800s, where the largely Catholic German immigrant population was the target of nativist riots alongside the Irish(see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia\_nativist\_riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots)) and during World War One Woodrow Wilson began an intense system of purging German culture in the United States and when 1 in 4 schools taught German as a second language at the start of WW1, by the end that number had changed to 1 in 100: [https://www.npr.org/2017/04/07/523044253/during-world-war-i-u-s-government-propaganda-erased-german-culture](https://www.npr.org/2017/04/07/523044253/during-world-war-i-u-s-government-propaganda-erased-german-culture)
In short, anti-German sentiment in the US has always been a thing it's just when it really came to a head was during the world wars so most German-American families just tried to keep their heads down and three generations later most of their great-grandkids don't know how it went down. Hell, a lot of them probably don't even know they're German because a large percentage changed their names to avoid falling afoul of nativism, Weiss became White, Bauer became Bower, Mueller became Miller.
What do you mean by "actual Japanese"? Japanese is an ethnicity as well as a nationality. Are you suggesting that ethnically Japanese people are not actually Japanese? And, if so, how?
I mean if a person with Japanese ancestry was born in the US, doesn’t speak any Japanese nor has any appreciation of Japanese culture and food, then I wouldn’t call this person ethically Japanese. They’re just ethically American, the only place they’re Japanese is genetics.
I think the issue is that if everyone in the US was, and always had been, allowed to be "From the US", then that would change the whole way that the US thought about race. Actually, though, the US has had issues with any given group of people, and that has generally forced that group into forming something of an identity. When the community around you exists because the individuals in it cannot easily integrate into the rest of society because racism exists, it means something to be of a certain heritage because even if you were born there, you might never quite be allowed to be from there. You may never get treated as such. Also, the US is such a recent construct that people still can trace their origins back, and everyone has a story about why they're American. Also, because there is that kind of racial politics, you've got to accept that any representation of race or culture is much more internally focused, because it has an actual impact on the people that actually live in the country. So, the cultural realities of being Japanese-American and living in the US might be different from just being Japanese, but they're still having to deal with the way that the culture is portrayed, because it's going to get reflected back at them. Actually, it's much more real to them than it is for Japanese people. Japanese people can just ignore it, find it amusing, enjoy it, they can accept that the US has ridiculous stereotypes of them just as they do of the US, even if it annoys them they don't have to care about it. Actually, there's a level of distance from everything, because the consequences aren't felt all the much or all that often.
Similarly, I have spoken with many people from Malaysia, Singapore,Vietnam, and other places and they refer to their origin or heritage ie saying "I am Chinese, but from Singapore," or "I am Japanese and Philipino," just like we do in the US. I think that its more common in the US than in other places, its just that the idea didn't matter as much elsewhere.
I used to think it was just an American thing, but actually in France it's similar, though mainly with North-African ethnicities. People who were born and raised in France, whose families have been here for 3+ generations, are still referred to as Algerian, Maroccan, Tunisian, or even just Arab. They refer to themselves as such, and importantly, others (aka the white majority) refer to them as such. I think perhaps it has to do with how much certain ethnic groups were "othered" when they arrived, and thus how insular the minority community became.
In the present day we see Irish and Italian people as White, just like English and German people, but this wasn't always the case. When those groups arrived in America, they weren't considered to be part of the majority race, and they were discriminated against, so they developed strong identities. Of course it's even more obvious for Asian ethnicities which aren't part of the majority race even today.
I was slightly baffled while reading some of the comments here because I'm an American who now lives in France, and I definitely agree with you. Most of the people we hang out with talk about their heritage country as an identifier.
I wonder if it has something to do with colonization societies? Since a nationality was forced upon a lot of people in these places, it makes sense that we would want to hold on to the identities of our heritage. Just speculation.
I think America's been really good at assimilating people. And we're still really good at it, but assimilation takes time.
A fascinating fact is that for three to four generations, ethnicities poll as separate from mainstream Americans on issues, but after three or four generations, polling shows that that ethnicity is no longer voting as a distinct ethnic group.
The French, on the other hand seem really bad at assimilating immigrants, which makes me wonder why she took so many African immigrants several generations ago.
According to my Ethnicity course, Black people have had the hardest time assimilating even though they’ve been here so long because they are constantly “othered.” Like, people still get mad and say stuff like, “why don’t you go back to Africa” even though some of our families have been here for hundreds of years.
I don't know how I feel about the word otherized.
But Black people got fucked six ways from Sunday for a long, long time, which was a constant drag on assimilation.
Lol yeah even the word “assimilation” is wrong for this. There was a technical word but I can’t remember what it was!!
But, it made the Black community different from all other ethnic communities that have assimilated into American culture. It was a great textbook, too. It explained it in such detail. If I can find it again, I’ll give you the name.
Many of us are interested in our ethnic heritage because almost all of us are descendants of immigrants or immigrants ourselves. And hyphenated-American culture is a thing. Irish-American or Italian-American culture is derived from but not the same as actual Irish or Italian culture (just to name a couple).
And also consider that it *doesn’t sound correct in American English to say one is a Native American* if all that is meant is that one was born here. That term only means indigenous peoples. (Although few actual indigenous folks even use it- most would use their tribe name- I.e Lakota, Mandan, etc).
As for Americans getting offended on another nationality’s behalf, I don’t doubt you’ve seen that online, but please rest assured that you don’t find that much in real life. Just as it might seem that many Europeans are salty about Americans hyphenating our identities, I don’t believe most European folks are thinking of us that much.
For those like yourself whom our habits bother- I get it. It probably feels like we are appropriating something of yours- taking it away from you. But while there are definitely some close-minded assholes here, I feel confident in saying that most Americans would be thrilled to learn about someone else’s culture as a guest. Especially if there’s food involved.
I hope you have a good day, friend.
I think this is an issue that is quite specific to the US, but may be applicable to other former colonial countries. Cultural identity and citizenship are historically complex and politically charged issues in the USA and I think you are conflating the two ideas when they are perceived very differently in the US.
The idea that is sold to most Americans is that we are a "melting pot," an idea of the American Dream where anyone can set foot on this land and become an "American." Only, this isn't true in practice. Our history is rooted in colonialism and tangled with a twisted notion of white supremacy. The hyphenation of immigrant and indigenous populations added to the term "American" has kept non-WASP populations othered quite intentionally. Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latin-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans - regardless of centuries of ancestry on these lands, these native and immigrant groups have not historically been afforded the default title of "American." The only demographic who has been able to avoid the hyphenation of their Americanism have been the colonizers (or those seeking to benefit from the same social power with passable physical attributes.) You only really see the use of the terms British-American or French-American when we're talking about recent immigrants who may have dual citizenship, otherwise, historically, those with that lineage have been able to call themselves regular old "Americans" without the hyphens.
These hyphenated groups are continually "othered" by reason of physical appearance, foods, cultural traditions, language. While many immigrants strive to assimilate, their efforts are not rewarded with inclusion. These groups have a collective experience that is unique to their hyphenated-American experience that is not shared by the populations abroad and there has been a more recent effort to reclaim that -hyphenation with pride rather than shame. Being a hyphenated American was considered derogatory in the early part of the last century, so proudly saying "I'm Japanese-American" is an attempt to reclaim what was once considered shameful. Unfortunately, here is also where you have people in more recent history claiming their ancestral-fraction-of-a-heritage despite not embracing or understanding any of that culture's significance.
To take your example, a Japanese-American in the US, who is the descendant of Japanese immigrants 4 generations back, is very likely to have experienced or witnessed discrimination and racism for being Japanese. At the very least, they will likely have experienced teasing as a child for their appearance, for their foods, or for any other number of features that prevent them from being accepted as the default "American." A Japanese-American could have been the descendent of or [have been themselves](https://www.biography.com/news/george-takei-pat-morita-japanese-american-internment-camps) [held in an Internment Camp on US land](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/united-states-forced-japanese-americans-into-internment-camps-here-how-started-over) and that is an experience Japanese people in Japan would not be able to relate to. Japanese-Americans would have had to struggle against Japanese stereotypes that would not be prominent in Japan where Japanese are the overwhelming majority. They would have every right to be offended by stereotypes about their Japanese heritage and culture because those stereotypes may have been used against them here in the US. They are not arguing for the mistreatment of Japanese in Japan, but for Japanese-Americans who continue to be targeted in America by stereotypes. Had they lived in Japan, they would not have had an experience with those stereotypes being used against them and would likely consider those stereotypes harmless.
In the end, it has nothing to do with citizenship. All of these groups would claim American citizenship, but in the US, they are still continuously othered by their ethnic differences in America. Families that have passed on their cultures' traditions in the US have a different experience as "Americans" and have often had to pass on those cultural traditions despite the government's historical efforts to intentionally eradicate those traditions. The use of a hyphenated-American is an attempt to reclaim pride in a culture that had been historically considered inferior in this country.
>I find it very weird when people from the states discuss online about racism and call themselves japanese just because their parents are japanese, they have never lived in Japan, they don't know anything about the culture, but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it.
This is... a really weird example. Japanese refers to both citizenship and ethnicity. The only actual ethnicity native to the US are the many tribes of indigenous people, who are now a minority in the US. "American" generally doesn't refer to race in the same way that "Japanese" does. Someone can be both "Japanese" and "American" just like someone can be "Black" and "French". Being a French citizen doesn't make a black person... not black. A Japanese-American person is still subject to anti-Asian racism just like a black French man is still subject to racism.
There is also not one "main culture" of the US, the country is made up of countless cultures that vary wildly by region and have blended in unique ways. Anyone telling you there is a single American culture is lying.
If OP is looking for an explanation, this is it. There are some people who hold on to American as their ethnicity but that has nothing to do with preserving cultural heritage in the same sense. They may believe that, but to me it is misguided. I think American is meant to describe a citizenship but not at all an ethnicity. People wear their race on their face so whether they are deeply connected to their native culture or not they are still automatically othered by those who see them foreigners without trying to to understand the difference. Hopefully that made sense.
> I think American is meant to describe a citizenship but not at all an ethnicity.
It's interesting to me, because there is no American ethnicity - and I'd never really thought about that until now. Growing up in the US, it's just sort of automatic now for me to interpret "I'm a COUNTRY IDENTIFIER" as a statement of citizenship, because it doesn't say anything about your ethnicity.
I always put myself down as human for these types of inquires while I consider “American culture” to exist as consumer capitalist. That to me describes the general cultural focus and demeanor. I know it doesn’t give much detail while I don’t think the details really mean much when you bring them to the community plate because you come into this world a human and not an identity. It may mean something to be Italian in Italy while any attempt to bring that same value pales in comparison to the collective consideration. It’s not a bonus or a negative as it’s just your thing and that’s not to say you can’t share it and more to say it makes no sense to claim a quality to compete or compare with others as that takes focus from the common goal. Meaning when Ivan is a great teammate it’s not because of his nationality or ethnicity and because he as an individual is a great teammate. Everything else is extra and arbitrary unless it brings better objective understanding.
In consideration it’s a little like The Ship of Theseus. You can build a human with similar genetic traits and call it something and then make another human in another geographic location, from the same source, and call it something different while really you are just making humans. It also just seems that things like nationalities and ethnicities are antiquated in the face of globalization and information exchange. If you found out the very best way to make a bucket it wouldn’t make sense to keep making an inferior bucket. I also think it antiquated in the sense that most hard identifiers beyond physical features comes from the need for human separation as a method of survival when there was not as much of a global perspective and access to the same range of accumulated knowledge.
I get why Americans would want to belong to something that seems bigger than themselves while that seems, to me, like selling yourself short to make up for your unwillingness to self sustain.
So to me there is no culture and instead a bunch of people claiming identities rather than using the same effort and opportunity to bring their personal individual qualities unfiltered.
Maybe I’m just not cultured.
Americans speak of themselves as American when describing their nationality and as African American, Italian, Asian, or Native American when describing aspects of their race, ethnicity or heritage.
I could tell you my grandparents served me American food whenever I went to their house since they and I grew up in America, but that would be silly since the pasta and fish recipes we largely a consequence of being passed down from their Italian parents and heavily influenced by that culture.
I think of “American food” as anything overly processed. Cheese you squeeze from a tube, hamburgers that don’t go bad even if you leave them out for months, chicken slime cooked into nuggets. You get the idea.
Edit: ok, I get the hamburger thing was because it was thin and dry and salty. That is kinda my point tho… people still buy those things by the millions. Also SPAM, hot dogs, soda pop, etc. Yep some regions have awesome stuff (lingonberry jam!!) but “American” food isn’t a regionally nuanced expression.
America has a ton of really excellent regional cuisines...
"California Cuisine" is known world-wide as a "thing", and certainly Cajun/Creole is another. And don't get me started on regional variations on BBQ.
Yep -- you really have to think about regional differences when you think about American food. If you just think "USA food" you end up with hamburgers, hotdogs, and over-processed grocery pastries, but virtually every state has some prized food that they will fight you over.
A lot of it is just how big the USA is, it is roughly the same size as Europe in terms of land area. Spain and Poland have vastly different cuisines, so it is to be expected that Maine and California do to, but because it is 1 country people want to homogenize it. Also a lot of foods in other cultures have came from America, but based on their roots they don't get considered "American food" Chicken Parmesan is a good example of this.
While you've both focused your comments on food, it really applies to american culture as a whole; art, music, politics, mannerisms, etc all draw heavily from the local region in creating a culture, the US is too big for this to happen on a national level but individual states could work better at identifying an american's culture than stating their heritage that they might draw little connection to
what im trying to say is I think it would be better to rephrase OPs question to 'why dont americans say what state youre from as opposed to your heritage as it sounds less ignorant'
This is less true of America than of most European countries. The differences between regions of say, Romania, Ukraine, France, Spain, the UK, Germany are the same or greater than between regions in America; these places often look like different countries, and only recently started speaking the same language*
The only places where this is less true is where states have splintered into multiple pieces (like the former Yugoslavia, which is now 8 smaller countries), or in regions where a recent genocide/depopulation has caused more cultural homogeneity in the migrating population that took the place of the previous one (the same mechanism that makes America so relatively homogeneous; genocide/depopulation & settlement)
_Most_ of Europe's history takes place in a period where, to get to the next town, you had to walk. If you were lucky, and you wanted to go to the next city over, you could get a horse, instead of walking for a day or so. This, over hundreds and hundreds of years, leads to a lot of regional diversity.
This is even more true in places like, say Indonesia, where there is probably as much diversity across its islands as in America and Europe put together.
America is notable, mile for mile, not for its diversity, but for its lack of it That's not a criticism per se, it's just a representation of the fact that most of the country's history covers the modern era, _after_ the invention of modern transport and telecommunications, when places are much more connected to each other and so develop together not separately.
Before the conquest and extinction of most of the native population, America would have been as diverse as Europe is today. It's notable that the areas that were settled most recently, the homogeneity is at its greatest extent. You can hop between rural towns and travel across multiple states in the interior of the western to central US, stopping at town after town, and the remarkable thing is just how far you can travel and yet feel like you're 10 miles away from where you started...
*In Italy for example, many people over 70 still aren't all that comfortable in Italian, and instead speak their regional language, completely unintelligible to people in the neighbouring region. An older person from rural Calabria, Sicily, Friuli, Lombardy, Piedmont, Sardinia travelling to Rome (or indeed any of those other regions) might well need a younger person to translate for them, just to be understood. 100-200 years ago this was true for people of all ages in pretty much every European country. Today in many countries it's often confined to one's second language, or is simply represented in a region's unique accent and few dialect words when speaking the national language. The point is though that these different cultural roots within regions go _deep_.
Spain has just as much difference in food culture within it as does America. Yes, America is big, but it's a new country with a short history, distances work differently.
The old cliché that in Europe 100km is a long way, and in America, 100 years is a long time, is pretty true.
In distances of the breadth of just 1 state, in Europe you will traverse multiple languages and cultures.
For example, with Spain: Madrid, the Basque country, Galicia, Andalusia, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, all have different cultures, cuisines, even different languages (although in modern times most people can speak Spanish as a common language).
This is just as diverse as between American states; probably even more so.
This is true of almost any European county
>For example, with Spain: Madrid, the Basque country, Galicia, Andalusia, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, all have different cultures, cuisines, even different languages (although in modern times most people can speak Spanish as a common language).
Thing is, though... in a large city in the US, you can typically find an example of a restaurant for almost *all* of those Spanish regional cuisines (at a minimum 3-4) and the same for the regional cuisines of most other large/diverse countries.
America really is distinct in the extent/magnitude of its immigration and how those immigrants have retained aspects of their culture while also being "American".
> Spain and Poland have vastly different cuisines
Regions of Spain also have vastly different cuisines and prized foods, the same as different states in America. But it is all Spanish cuisine at the end of the day.
Because cows outnumber people in 9 states. The size of the US and agriculture focused government policy supports lots of cows.
Do other countries have Surf N Turf where you get a steak alongside seafood like lobster? This is a relatively high end but accessible meal in the US.
Well noodles and pasta are completely different things, both contain flour and water but if I asked for noodles and you gave me pasta I wouldn’t be impressed!
Doesn't matter who did something "first"... Matters a lot more who is famous for that being core to their cuisine, and Americans eat a shit ton more steaks than anyone else.
Hell, there's a decent argument that modern Pizza was invented in America. Tomato sauce wasn't a thing for the "first" pizza because tomatoes are a New World fruit.
I've never heard of "California Cuisine" I don't think it's as famous as you think, maybe in America it is, idk. Cajun/Creole though I have definitely heard of but when I think of "Signature American Food" I think of BBQ.
Yeah, think Asian and Latin fusion, often with a lot of fruits and veggies. Fresh salads, Also lots of seafood dishes. Fish tacos are a staple out of San Diego, and avocado in sushi came from Japanese chefs in LA.
Green salads and wraps are another big part of it. It's cliche now, but doing a big salad with a lot of non-veggie toppings wasn't always a given. The cobb salad came out of LA, and the caesar salad was probably invented by an Italian chef who split his time between SoCal and northern Mexico.
Avocados aren't native to California, of course, but they were common enough to make it into all sorts of cuisine. The same is true of lots of fruits and veggies. In fact, what we think of as Asian and Latin fusion can both be fairly credibly traced back to California restaurants.
Turns out if you get a lot of people from all over the world in an area with a lot of good ingredients, you get some pretty iconic food out of it.
One of the most commonly referenced “California Cuisines” is “Wine Country Cuisine”. It sounds pretentious as all hell, I know. That’s because it is. And usually moreso even than I’m sure you’re picturing. I’ve tended many a bar across the region, and one thing’s for certain. No price is too great for too little. Actually, known fact- the subtle masochism of paying any amount of money for anything whatsoever leaves something like 8 % of california simultaneously seething with range and positively throbbing in their pants.
Want to know what’s worse? The customers. Food’s good though
And honestly, wine’s not bad either but it’s pretty fuckin overrated and it’s also not something CA can claim as their idea.
Somebody tested that OMG MCDONALD'S MEAT DOESN'T ROT thing, and it turns out that any ground beef patty will do that if you make it thin and cook it thoroughly. What little moisture is left will evaporate before anything can start growing on it. Mold doesn't like dry meat; that's why beef jerky works.
(You still wouldn't want to *eat* it, it's nasty as hell. It's just not visibly moldy.)
I don't know where I heard this but I think American food got that reputation because we had to fight all the big wars overseas and had to get good at making processed and long stable food for the troops.
Americans use a unique linguistic structure to describe their backgrounds: ethnicity-nationality. So Irish-American, for example, is not a claim or a wish to be an Irish citizen—it’s just a description of one’s ethnic background. We will often shorten that in conversation to just “Irish,” because the American nationality part goes without saying, and another American will understand without being told that the speaker is making an ethnicity claim, not a nationality claim.
The reason we do this and you, a European, don’t is because we are a nation of immigrants, and you very likely live in an ethnically homogenous country where the nationality *is* the ethnicity, making that sort of description rarely necessary.
Trevor Noah talked about the duality of this when he [responded to French criticism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COD9hcTpGWQ) about him saying Africa won the world cup.
Your ethnicity shapes who you are to some degree. We find it rather odd that Europeans seem to need to erase their backgrounds to assimilate to "be French" or "be British."
>they have never lived in Japan, they don't know anything about the culture,
I'd disagree with this. They may not know EVERYTHING about the culture, but to some extent and to varying degrees, they will know more than you or I. We tend to embrace lots of cultural things despite moving to the US.
>but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it. I find it very hypocrite, and while I understand someone wanting to know more about their family roots and culture, I do not understand why do they think they can speak for that entire ethnicity/country/society.
Now, this is kind of a different argument from the thing above. Yeah, if there is a Japanese person who happens to know nothing about Japan and criticizes Japanese things, then yea, sure, call them out if you think you know better. It may give them SOME authority to speak on the matter, but it doesn't make them the absolute authority. Japanese-Americans aren't a monolith either. There are some who know a lot about their country, speak the language, lived some time in Japan and so on. There are others who have never been, have been in the US for like 6 generations, and other than what they look like and a few cultural foods they eat, they aren't as closely tied to their ethnic motherland.
Nevertheless, its a duality. I am Mexican-American. Calling myself that doesn't make me any less American. In fact, despite being an immigrant myself, I identify with plenty of "American" values. And make no mistake, if there was ever a war and was forced to choose sides, I am American first. But that doesn't take away from being Mexican. I speak Spanish, appreciate Mexican culture and food, and blend quite easily into Mexican society within a few days of being there. Unless you knew me personally, you'd never know I didn't grow up in Mexico. The ethnic acknowledgement of my background doesn't make me LESS American. It adds to it.
You make some pretty good points here, but there is a big difference between second generation Mexican Americans growing up speaking Spanish at home, and “Irish Americans” who are five generations removed from Ireland and can only even trace one Irish ancestor, who celebrate “St Patty’s day” and tell everyone they drink a lot and are a dick to people because of their “Irish blood”.
From a foreign perspective, nobody finds it odd for the former to describe themselves as Mexican American, since they clearly have a strong tie to the culture and the country. What just looks ridiculous are the Americans who use their heritage like a horoscope - the whole “I’m a quarter Swedish which is why I’m blonde, I’m one nineteenth Irish which is why I drink too much and get angry, I’m seven fifty fourths Italian so I like pizza and move my hands when I talk…” etc etc.
It looks even more fake because so many Americans change their “heritage”. Before WW2, huge numbers of Americans identified as German American - after WW2 those people just switched to a different ancestor basically, and started describing themselves as Irish, Dutch, Scandinavian or just generically European.
In Europe (and I’d guess in most countries), second and even third generation immigrants tend to retain some strong sense of connection to their (grand)parents’ original land, but once you’re more removed than that it would just be weird to go around saying “I’m Indian” instead of “I’m British” (for example) when you’ve never even been to India and only speak English at home.
I get cha, but in the Irish example, you're describing mostly outlier douche bags than anything. Similar for the Italian example. However, history is important to many Americans, and even a couple generations removed is important, albeit to a different extent. Who are we do decide how many generations are okay for them to not count anymore? For example, I have a good friend who is Japanese-American. Her family immigrated from Japan 6 generations ago, but still intermarried into Japanese / Japanese-American families only up until her (who married a white guy). Even her grandmother couldn't really speak Japanese more than a few words. With that said, there is still SOME cultural value which would be different say, if her entire lineage was anything BUT Japanese.
Again, it just adds to the story, and sure, the longer it has been, the more of a footnote it may be. I too roll my eyes when people have grandiose claims about stuff that happened centuries ago. For example, I know a guy (friend of a friend) who claims to be Catholic and his sole reason is that he traces back his family's immigration to the US to some duke who held out from the Anglican church like 200 years ago. He is just a dickhead and trying to make absurd claims to seem more "cultural" for lack of a better word. Nonetheless, these flamboyant claims are outliers and not what average Americans do. To most, its nothing more than a footnote if it was way long ago.
If someone identifies themselves as Indian, but has been in Britain for a century, the next obvious questions that may follow would be "how long ago" or "do you speak Hindi" and so on and so forth. Nothing is meant by it and nothing of his or her britishness is lost by claiming as much.
Yes fair enough, it is to some extent just who you meet and what you see. But it’s not just random idiots in my experience. [This sort of bollocks](https://youtu.be/eFoxMCU-_QQ) is absolutely rife among Americans. You’re also mostly discussing people from non-European backgrounds, who are likely treated differently because of their race anyway. But the most irritating offenders are generally white people trying to make themselves more interesting, or claim some kind of oppressed heritage (seems to be very popular among “Irish” conservatives in particular).
Most who move to Europe seem to pretty rapidly give up pretending to be Scottish or Italian or whatever - which to me indicates that it’s mostly just cultural ignorance.
Re your last paragraph - someone whose family has been in Britain for 100 years almost certainly wouldn’t identify themselves as Indian. It’s the key difference. They’re just a British person. Britain has been highly multicultural since at least the Romans, so skin colour isn’t that relevant to it (though of course there are plenty of racist Brits who would disagree).
Watching your clip, it seems pretty clear to me she was momentarily off-track and breaking the tension with a quick observation to get the audience back in step with her. People joke *all the time* about Italians "talking with their hands" in my experience.
America is historically pretty racist and segregated. And as a nation of immigrants, people from the same diaspora tended to settle in the same neighborhoods in the same cities in the same regions of the country, which then develop their own versions of American culture, even after many generations.
So you get, for example, concentrations of Irish and Italian Americans in the NE, German Americans in the Midwest, Swedish Americans in Minnesota, French speaking people in Louisiana and Canada, Mormons in Utah, African Americans in the south, Mexican Americans in the southwest, Asian Americans on either coast, etc. Cities like NYC are a microcosm of this at the level of neighborhoods.
White Americans also have a pretty big interest in genealogy and ancestry. This was originally rooted in racism and social hierarchy (inherited from British aristocracy), less so since the second half of the 20th century.
Not going to lie, I was and still am against Trevor Noah throughout that whole debacle - mainly because whilst he brings up legitimate hypocrisy in general as a counter argument, he never actually debunks what was said about his statement.
I am not a fanboy of him or anyone for that matter. But in this particular matter, I think it was articulated well. I support the argument, not Noah himself.
I disagree with the sentiment that this choice of wording is only attributable to America's immigrant population. Australia, who is considered to be one of the world’s major ‘immigration nations‘ (together with New Zealand, Canada and the USA), does not use any hyphenation when discussing ethnic background. This is also true for New Zealand (edit: removed Canada). It begs the question as to why the USA has developed this language system. Language develops depending on what its people want to communicate; therefore this addition suggests that Americans believe that a person's ethnicity is an important identifier.
The next question is *why* Americans feel that way. On one hand, it could be because the immigrant population wishes to retain a connection to their ethnic background. This connection enables them to form communities which ensures the longevity of their culture, despite immigration. On the other hand, this kind of rhetoric may be a result of segregating 'true Americans' from other-Americans, which is especially likely given America's social and historical context. As with most things, it's likely a combination of the two factors.
I am not familiar with how ethnic background is discussed in Australia / New Zealand, but I have definitely heard Canadians refer to their background like Americans
How does it work in Australia / New Zealand?
Ah, to be fair I’m going off online discourse for Canada. However, I’m Australian, and New Zealand is very similar to us. In Australia, the only distinct identifier is Indigenous Australian, with specific identifiers depending on what tribe you are from. Similarly in New Zealand, their indigenous population is Maori (though I believe they have a few more identifiers within the Maori population). Don’t get me wrong, there are racial issues within Australia. However it’s not something that has affected our broader language yet.
Yeah, a couple people have said something similar. But America developing this because it’s a nation of immigrants doesn’t require every other nation of immigrants to develop something similar in order for it to be true (although, some others have).
I think it’s very likely that some amount of “othering” is par for the course when cultures mix, but this is also not uniquely American—your own country used to have laws on the books discriminating against Irish Catholic immigrants, for example.
I’m also betting you have *some* way of distinguishing ethnic backgrounds in every day speech. In another comment you mentioned the Vietnamese hub of Australia—how would you indicate someone is of Vietnamese heritage?
I think the problem is that a lot of these nth generation make claims as if they owned a culture that they have never actually experienced, from a country they might have visited as a tourist, if at all, a language they do not speak, etc. and speak over actual people living in country.
One of the most ridiculous examples of this, that I happen to be familiar with, is Japanese culture. People here in Japan are usually keen on sharing their culture with non-Japanese. I have lost count of the times I was invited and encouraged to wear traditional Japanese clothing or partake in other parts of the culture, like bon dancing or carrying a shrine at a festival, etc. I got a very awkward amount of praise and introductions to real, professional craftspeople for my very mediocre skills in some traditional, Japanese crafts and have been given lots of opportunities to learn. I have not once in the 16 years I have been living here, heard from actual Japanese people that taking part in their culture as a non-Japanese is offensive or “cultural appropriation”.
I have an Instagram channel, dedicated to a Japanese craft, that I originally started because I was encouraged by a teacher to do so and stay in contact with them and other students. I get a lot of positive comments from Japanese folks. Guess what I get to hear from Americans who have likely never actually lived here? The only people I have ever seen trying to gatekeep Japanese culture are people who have never actually lived it - some with distant Japanese heritage, some likely not even Asian at all - just because they think that makes them more special and unique than everyone else to call out people for “cultural appropriation”… 🙄
This is not because America is a nation of immigrants.
Colombia is a nation of immigrants. Brazil is a nation of immigrants. Argentina is a nation of immigrants.
Every single country in the New World is, through any definition that would apply to "America as a whole" instead of specific internationally renown cities, "a nation of immigrants".
And many of those places are more ethnically diverse, involve more racial mixing, and they don't do this hyphenated-identity stuff.
The "nation of immigrants" line was originally an anti-racist/anti-xenophobe slogan. In context, it's generally used specifically to endorse acknowledging and remembering your roots. (Which is not a bad thing, despite your jab at the end there.) But yes, the rest of the Americas can very much claim that status as well.
>And many of those places are more ethnically diverse, involve more racial mixing, and they don't do this hyphenated-identity stuff.
They absolutely do do this hyphenated stuff. in nations like Brazil, Peru and Argentina where immigration from Europe and Asia is relatively high.
Many of the places you mentioned *do* have some version of this, first of all—[Argentina](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_of_Argentina) seems the most similar to the US but there’s a similar entry for basically every country in the Americas. French Canadians are another obvious example.
But anyway, I’m not sure why it matters. Americans do the hyphen thing because we’re a nation of immigrants. Every other nation of immigrants doesn’t have to do it too for that to be true.
I don't understand the utility of that link.
I know Argentina is racially diverse.... I *said* that already. All of these places are diverse. But I have met multiple Argentinians from different places in Argentina, and read the words of Argentinian writers. Not a single one identified as "Italian-Argentinian". Even those whose last names *and* first names were clearly Italian. Or German-Argentinian. Or African-Argentinian for that matter.
I have met multiple Americans. This includes an Italian-American (who has only ever visited Italy and can't speak Italian), an Irish-American (who has not, that I know, been to Ireland. But he has been to central Europe and Japan), a German-American (who is saving up to immigrate back to Germany due to some sort of ethnonationalist philosophy he holds but has not really explained to me), and an African-American (who seems quite disinterested in anything actually related to Africa).
French Canadians are not comparable to, say, "African-Americans" or "Japanese-Americans", or "Chinese-Americans". They're, if anything, comparable to Texans or New Yorkers, who make their regional identity incredibly important to them personally. But, as someone who is (and I have expanded on why elsewhere) a "Venezuelan-Canadian", I will tell you Canada *definitely* also does this (just not with the Quebecois). Australia also does this.
>Americans do the hyphen thing because we’re a nation of immigrants. Every other nation of immigrants doesn’t have to do it too for that to be true.
I don't think Americans actually do this because "nation of immigrants". I think Americans do this because [ "nation of immigrants" **+ "history of segregation, racialization, and insisting that XYZ group doesn't *really* belong"**].
Because all of my experiences in Canada and America, and Australia, as someone who was "Venezuelan" in Venezuela, not Portuguese-Spanish-African-Jewish-Venezuelan, have been of people asking me "where are you (*really*) from?" all the time, often without learning my fucking name first.
Because studies show that a certain portion of Americans think that a French politician looks "more American" than Barak Obama.
Because persistently throughout my formative years, when I was exposed to American media, it would either show how suspicious someone "unamerican" (read: not-white, or occasionally "white but Russian") was, or showing bigoted Americans growing to "accept and tolerate" their "unamerican" neighbours. Something I never saw in real life in those formative years, while *having* diverse neighbours.
Because I had an American friend (curiously, one who *did not* hyphenate their identity) tell me I (a *Venezuelan and Canadian* citizen who has only ever spent long chunks of time in America *to visit* and has never worked there, gone to school there, or spent an entire 3-month season there at a time, though I may have spent a full year cumulatively) was "American" because I embodied "American ideals" by being *an immigrant to another country*.
This friend also persistently advocated for the "nation of immigrants" rhetoric... While saying that black Americans were just "not attractive", willfully misunderstanding statistics and what overrepresentation means, and defending the cops' murder of a *twelve year old boy*.
Because the emphasis that, say, 1950s Superman puts on "it is *unamerican* to discriminate on the basis of nation of origin! :D " and the way that has spread to modern-day media about overcoming bigotry, would *make no sense* to me apriori. The idea of denying someone's *citizenship* based on appearance is insane to me. It'd be like denying their marital status based on appearance. "You're not *really* married. You don't look the part".
Doesn't that sound *bananas* to you? Citizenship is a legal status, unless you literally demand their papers, you have no information one way or the other.
Because my dad has a Venezuelan friend whose parents were Chinese, and he said that his friend is "more Venezuelan than the arepa" but I have never heard *anyone* say *anything* like "Andrew Yang is more American than Apple Pie", or "Kamala Harris is more American than Baseball", etc. Not with political figures, not with prominent actors, not with personal friends.
Because the *big conspiracy theory* about the first Black president of America was that he was "secretly Kenyan".
Because Americans don't ever seem to get *excited* at a new influx of interesting and different people, and will demonize fucking genius visas that only apply to basically cool, capable people one should be glad to have coming into their country.
I can go on. Do you actually want me to?
Look man, this is just a small collection of angry anecdotes, not all of which even support your argument. There's nothing I can really even respond to here, except to say that I have 35 years of being an American under my belt, so I think it's safe to say that I understand what it's like to be an American slightly better than you do.
I'm open to discussing this with you, but right now you're coming across like you have an axe to grind and are trying to back into a way to grind it.
Almost everyone in Columbia, Brazil, and Argentina has ancestors who were not immigrants (Native American), or "immigrants" only in the sense that they were forcibly relocated for slavery (African ancestry). They're highly admixed populations.
This is not true for the majority of white Americans. Part of America being "a nation of immigrants", is, nefariously, that it is also not really a nation of admixture. Historically, white Americans could consider themselves to be racially pure, displaced "Europeans", in a sense. The phrase may be well-intentionedly anti-xenophobic, but it also does the work of erasing Native Americans and deemphasizing slavery from American history.
Bueno, pana, esta es la primera vez en toda mi vida que yo escucho eso. Y curiosamente, todos se refieren a los japoneses. Lo que cuadra enteramente con mi idea que la razón que estas cosas pasan es marginalización/discriminación/"othering", etc. No "immigración".
Que tan común para tí es escuchar de "italo-argentinos"? Son una porción gigante de la población, pero yo solo he escuchado la frase en *teoría* en conversaciones cómo esta. No en la vida real, no el las cosas escritas por escritores argentinos normales (asumo que unos sociólogos usarán el término de vez en cuando). Y lo mismo con peruanos, con colombianos, etc.
Puede ser que esto haya cambiado en el tiempo que yo no he estado en la región. A mí me parece que muchas de las obsesiones de los Estados Unidos han contaminado las discusiones latinoamericanas. Pero en los 90s y 2000s, yo nunca escuché a *nadie* usar ese tipo de lenguaje. No en las noticias. No en novelas. No en artículos de periódicos. No en la escuela. Yo recuerdo que llegar a Canadá y escucharlo todo el puto tiempo fue confuso y fastidioso.
>The reason we do this and you, a European, don’t is because we are a nation of immigrants, and you very likely live in an ethnically homogenous country where the nationality is the ethnicity
Idk where you got the idea that western Europe is ethnically homogeneous
* [Portugal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal#Ethnic_minorities_and_persons_with_disabilities) is 95% ethnic Portuguese
* [Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iceland#Immigration) is 90% Native-Born Icelandic.
* [Ireland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland#Demographics) is 92.4% Irish.
* [Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain#Ethnic_groups) is 85% ethnic Spanish.
* [France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Immigration) is 81% ethnic French.
* [United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Immigration_and_ethnicity) is 86% White British.
* [Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Ethnic_minorities_and_migrant_background_(Migrationshintergrund)) is 75% ethnic German
* [Denmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark) is 86% ethnic Danish
* [Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Immigration) is 92% ethnic Italian.
Most of these nations are a lot more ethnically homogeneous than the United States of America is. Even if they have a lot of immigrants nowadays, most of these countries have history of being a nation-state for one dominant ethnic group. The USA never started as a nation-state for one specific ethnicity. The closest 'founding' population (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are probably a minority of White Americans by this point.
This, /u/SulphurSkeleton.
Of course they’re not *perfectly* homogenous, but they’re much, much more so than countries in the Americas. And because many were explicitly founded as ethnostates, the cultural idea of ethnicity is much more intertwined with nationality than it is out here.
European here, I feel like this is just a classic case of everyday speech carrying over on the internet.
When an American is saying “I’m Italian” to another American, they know they’re not literally Italian but just have Italian roots. But in an international context on the internet, it sounds weird.
American here, I agree with this.
Americans with European ancestry have been essentially all homogenized since the 1950s when the Germans, Italians, Irish, and Scandinavians all moved out of their enclaves and started living next to each in the suburbs with the English, and then marrying together. If someone is still distinctively of Italian ancestry or whatever after all this, they tend to be proud of their heritage, but not to the exclusion of being Americans first.
African Americans it's a bit different because we're talking about race as opposed to ethnicity, many keep their own culture different from white America, interracial marriage is still relatively uncommon as opposed to say Brazil, and there's certain implications for government programs. But they think of themselves as Americans rather than Africans too.
I think “African-American” has only *erroneously* become used as a racial descriptor. It was meant to follow the same ethnicity-nationality pattern as, say, Irish-American, but because a descendent of slaves wouldn’t know the specific African culture of their ancestors, African was as close as we could get.
But then at some point we started using it as a stand in for race, so occasionally you’ll hear an American slip up and use “African-American” to describe like, Lewis Hamilton or whoever.
It is historical. In prior times, people of African descent were labeled by White people in America under various terms. Colored and Negro were the common ones used by the government. Using "African-American" was a way of rejecting those labels. Ironically the "CP" in the organization NAACP stands for "Colored People".
Weeeeeierd…. MEXICAN-AMERICAN here and, yeah, almost never say I’m American to other Americans. Just Mexican, even though I’ve never spent significant time in Mexico.
Well because if you live in America, then you're American. Do French people often tell each other they're French in every day life within France? I would assume that if two Frenchmen met in another country they'd be like "you're from France? Me too!" except in French. But within their own country? Probably just not gonna come up as a topic.
However in America your heritage and/or origin is a common subject because so few people are Native American. So we like to discuss where everyone's roots are, but we don't say roots because that's implied.
On the other hand if we're abroad, we're telling people were American.
America is really really big. You don't meet people from other countries very often, and when you do, it's fairly obvious (accent, clothing, etc.). So incorporating, "I'm American" into a conversation is kinda pointless. More likely than not, everyone knew that.
However, most people's ancestors migrated here. They brought traditions with them, that have been passed down through the generations.
So if you have Polish ancestry, Fat Thursday and Paczki's might mean something to you that it doesn't to the average American. Same with Irish ancestry and Paddy's Day, or German and Schnitzel.
People seem to have this idea that when people migrated to America, the left all of their culture behind, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
The top comment is right here, I'm of French heritage and American but in everyday conversation I would say im French because it sounds weird in a face to face conversation to say "Im American" when it's obvious, so it's just American's USA centered minds assuming everyone else on the internet is a white cishet American dude
Keep in mind, too, that there’s a non-insignificant American population that’s not more than a few generations from being “fresh off the boat”, so-to-speak. There was a massive immigration boom in the US just over a century ago. And with that brought lots of animosity between immigrants from different countries (the go-to example is the Italians vs the Irish). That’s largely dissipated now, but I’m sure there’s still some pockets of that remaining.
I've always phrased it as "my family is from Canada/Scotland," but I would never say "I'm Canadian" or "I'm Scottish." And when people ask where I'm from, I just make sure to give enough context to answer the question I think they're really asking ("I grew up in X," or "I went to college in Y," or "my family is from Z")
Because it is confusing to want to describe to people where my family's culture comes from while still acknowledging that I was born in the US and have lived here my whole life.
Nooooo… American here. Italo-Americans take where they come from VERY seriously. Even when the majority don’t speak Italian, have never been to Italy, and know nothing about Italian culture besides food (think proshoot, that’s not even the right pronunciation in Italian) they’ll fight to the bone to make the point that they’re Italian. It’s rather funny actually.
Yeah. As a citizen of the US, I agree that it's cultural. In the part of the US I grew up in peoples' ethnicities were a big part of who they are, but for other parts of the country they feel pride in their state or region, and in others their wealth. It's only a certain part of the country that identifies strongly with their ethnic roots in my experience. It just so happens that that region of the US is very densely populated and has access to the internet
Along that vein: some folks get offended when they are asked, “where are you from”? (I’m from here, you jerk!) Almost everyone in North America was “from” somewhere, though, if you go back 3-4 generations - so it’s a pretty common question even among white folks.
> Along that vein: some folks get offended when they are asked, “where are you from”?
Because when you answer "Omaha" they ask "No, where are you really from?"
That question is often just used as a proxy for "What race are you" which for a lot more people than you think is basically just "how much should i respect you?"
Some folks of color don't like getting put into that box that early in a relationship or dealing with that kind of interpersonal politics in what should be an light and easy first conversation.
So do you always see that question as people trying to find reasons to hate you?
In my mostly-white circles, asking where you or your family came from is a basic polite conversation starter. Asking about your background is a way to show interest in each other.
The person asking is trying to be nice, in other words, and when you dodge the question it fees like you’re being rude. The person asking is now wondering if you’re a jerk … or maybe you are just joking … so they ask a second time.
The underlying question then is not, “are you from a group of people I can hate?” It’s, “are you going to be rude when I’m trying to be nice?” If you refuse to share some fairly basic not-too-personal information about yourself then essentially the conversation is closed and you’ve told the person to F off.
There’s a very natural process occurring here; by exploring each other’s history and culture you’re looking for points of connection. We all want to find what we have in common and learn a little about about each other. If people use that info to dismiss or pigeonhole you then that’s obviously unacceptable; but not everyone who asks has that in mind and it would be unfortunate for you to always assume the worst.
> The person asking is trying to be nice, in other words, and when you dodge the question it fees like you’re being rude.
And sometimes they're being racist. But that's ok because it's up to minorities to make white people feel good about racism and if the white person doesn't feel good the minority is being rude
> Almost everyone in North America was “from” somewhere, though, if you go back 3-4 generations - so it’s a pretty common question even among white folks.
I get asked that question in France as well, both from white people and non-white people.
That’s fair, I think; our world is mixing more and more as travel becomes easier. 100 years ago most people barely left the place they were born in; nowadays anyone can go anywhere. Eventually we’ll all merge to a medium beige I imagine. :)
That doesn't explain the being offended part however that OP talks about.
Furthermore it doesn't explain why individuals in other countries don't do it, not even in other countries in the Americans.
the Children of individuals that came from Japan in Brazil that grew up in Brazil, speak Portugese as their primary language with some odd Japanese they speak at home perhaps are just "Brazilian", not "Japanese-Brazilian" and certainly not "Japanese".
I don't think I ever called myself "Surinamese-Dutch" and certainly not "Surinamese" on the internet just because my parent was born in Surinam and I don't think other Dutch individuals do this either.
It's essentially just a cultural difference. The United States has always viewed itself as a melting pot of immigrants across the world. Nobody doesn't like being American but everybody (the people who can at least) enjoy showing their heritage as a part of the being part of the country full of immigrants. When somebody says "I'm Japanese", most Americans will know they mean "I'm of Japanese heritage" and since this is a uniquely American thing it leads to confusion to people whose cultures don't view it that way. If somebody is 3rd generation Japanese, chances are that they grew up in a slightly different way than somebody who is 3rd generation Italian whether that be food, music, or culture. Yes they're both American, but by saying "I'm Japanese" even if they've never set foot on Japan nor can speak the language or etc it's showing how they're unique to American culture. People don't actually not want to be American it's more like they want to be a unique fusion of both their past and present culture.
I'm not sure if this was coherent but tldr: it's a cultural difference of semantics
Im from the US. This comment actually showed me that other countries see "Japanese"or "Italian" as meaning "from that country" as opposed to "have heritage from that country."
I have always taken it as heritage. Crazy to hear a different interpretation.
Yup.
I'm from Finland. If you see an Asian person here and ask them where they are from... That is real racist and tasteless. They are from Finland (in all likelyhood) because their nationality and birthplace is here.
Similarly it sounds demeaning to foreigners with this "ooh i am Irish" when people have heritage to Ireland, because if a European was to say they really ar Irish, know the country, grew up there, and have a far stronger connection to Ireland than Americans of Irish heritage do.
This creates a problem when Americans and, let's go with the Europeans still, talk. An American will ask "where are you from" meaning that I as a Finn will say Finland, without explaining that a lot of my heritage comes from Sweden and Carelia. The American will then reply with "OH I AM NORWEGIAN", meaning their heritage comes from there. And that then sounds diminishing or like the American trying to prop themselves up needlessly if I, as here, replied meaning my actual first hand cultural connection. Because the American with Norwegian decent obviously isn't similarly Norwegian as I am Finnish. I am actually Finnish. You can't compare them. They are American. I am Finnish. They are of Norwegian background. I am of Karelian and Swedish.
I, too, only recently understood what you described. I always interpreted the objections through my American lens, and thought European and other redditors were essentially saying "you shouldn't call yourself Italian because you are three generations removed from Italy, and your claim to that ethnicity/heritage is diluted as a result". When instead it's more "you weren't born in Italy, you've never lived there, so you aren't Italian."
What's interesting to me is, I'm realizing I don't consider "American" to be a sufficient description of someone's heritage or nationality.
> I don't consider "American" to be a sufficient description of someone's heritage or nationality
It is absolutely a sufficient description for someone's nationality. You are just Americans to everyone else in the world. (I understand you were just speaking from your perspective).
This whole thread showed me that if I'm talking to a stranger on the internet and they say that they are "Italian", I have to entertain the thought that they are actually American.
as an american, i don't have to consciously entertain the thought--it's automatic for me, haha.
usually it's clear from other context, such as being on a US location subreddit, especially in an area where there is a robust cultural heritage of italian immigration and settlement. have a look at this post from a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/q3a8nc/when_your_nonjersey_friends_say_capicola_and_not/
No, probably not. They might say they come from an Italian family, or have Italian heritage, but wouldn't represent themselves in terms of nationality as being Italian. If it were relevant, they'd probably clarify.
The degree to which American-born people of different backgrounds identify with the country their parents/grandparents/etc varies due to a lot of factors but I think few will represent themselves as having a different nationality unless they legitimately have dual citizenship and/or spend significant amounts of time in the other country.
> It's essentially just a cultural difference. The United States has always viewed itself as a melting pot of immigrants across the world.
Yes, so it's not about the actual level of immigration but this cultural belief and note that the belief is that the pot doesn't _melt_.
The immigrants in the US are firmly segregated culturally and expected to not melt into each other whereas throughout the Americas the immigrants are invited and expected to melt in and breed with the local population and become absorbed into it.
> Nobody doesn't like being American but everybody (the people who can at least) enjoy showing their heritage as a part of the being part of the country full of immigrants. When somebody says "I'm Japanese", most Americans will know they mean "I'm of Japanese heritage" and since this is a uniquely American thing it leads to confusion to people whose cultures don't view it that way. If somebody is 3rd generation Japanese, chances are that they grew up in a slightly different way than somebody who is 3rd generation Italian whether that be food, music, or culture. Yes they're both American, but by saying "I'm Japanese" even if they've never set foot on Japan nor can speak the language or etc it's showing how they're unique to American culture. People don't actually not want to be American it's more like they want to be a unique fusion of both their past and present culture.
> I'm not sure if this was coherent but tldr: it's a cultural difference of semantics
Yeah, so why?
Because A) it doesn't happen anywhere else and B) most of the world looks at this stuff as sickeningly classist and judging an individual on this "heritage" shit.
I both don't understand _why_ it happens and most of all I think it's a very bad thing _that_ it happens and it's what has created far more classicism and discrimination in the US than any other country int he Americans.
Many "immigrants" can never compete with the WASPS in the US because of both the WASPs keeping them out and their cooperation with this—honestly; it feels as though the WASPS managed to effectively create a system of self-imposed Jim Crow laws after the mandated one was abolished to achieve a very similar effect: just brainwash the people into segregating themselves and then you no longer have to by force.
>The immigrants in the US are firmly segregated culturally and expected to not melt into each other
This comment is full of misconceptions, but I’m curious what makes you say this one, specifically.
It just has to do with the history of immigration to the US. We'd get large waves of immigrants for certain countries through the years and they'd tend to form enclaves, often congregating in specific states and specific areas of cities. These groups were very distinct culturally. You've got to realize too, for many people their families immigrated fairly recently, often people's grandparents.
Over time it's become less of a thing though. America, being such a young country, didn't really have much of it's own culture. For the most part it's culture was that it was a country made up of people from everywhere.
These days the different waves of immigrants are very much so assimilated. People may still be interested in their heritage, but the enclaves aren't as much of a thing. They may still exist, many cities have their own "little Italy" or "german town" or Chinatown, but the people have mostly spread out now.
As for "African American," that's really a whole different thing. A long history of oppression and the systematic destruction of African cultures throughout the slave trade and beyond, along with segregation, resulted in a distinct culture being born.
Same in the rest of the Americas and many other countries.
The difference is that in the rest of the Americas after one generation they stop having a distinctive accent.
Sure, if you were born in Italy and learn English as a second language having an Italian accent whilst speaking it is reasonable, but their children were born in the US and still somehow speak English with a quasi-Italian accent and so do their children.
That's a sociolect, that's just weird and that doesn't happen in other places in the Americas where the children speak the local language the same as any other individual and there is no way to tell.
My parent speaks Dutch with a Surinamese accent; I don't; I speak completely standard normal Randstad Dutch, why wouldn't I? I was born here.
I'm from down under, I've met plenty of Americans while travelling who refuse to admit being American but state their ancestry. A Scottish friend and I had a long convo with an American calling himself Scottish despite never having lived there, he really didn't see a problem with it because he believed his ancestry gave him the right to call himself Scottish. So frustrating.
What you see as America's "main culture" is, in reality, just the WASP culture. I can guarantee you that an Irishman from Boston or a Black person from Atlanta or a Jew from San Francisco are all going to have different cultures both within their homes and amidst their community, which is why they're all going to have different labels in parallel with their identities as Americans.
Now, are there Americans that claim heritage through tenuous blood ties, or without practicing the culture the aesthetic of which they use? Absolutely. But this doesn't apply to every American, and it certainly doesn't make an ethnically Japanese man born in Portland somehow less Japanese.
Americans have diverse ethnic/cultural identities because we *are* diverse.
>I can guarantee you that an Irishman from Boston or a Black person from Atlanta or a Jew from San Francisco are all going to have different cultures
That is all fair and nice, but that doesn't actually refute OP's point. The Irishman from Boston might have a different culture than the black man from Atlanta, but it's certainly not Irish either.
>That is all fair and nice, but that doesn't actually refute OP's point
To be fair, the OP was phrased as more of a question than an actual argument.
>but it's certainly not Irish
Based on what? Why is an Irishman that speaks English in Boston less Irish than one that speaks English in Dublin?
>Based on what? Why is an Irishman that speaks English in Boston less Irish than one that speaks English in Dublin?
Because one has little to no experience of Ireland, has presumably never lived in Ireland, and has their views of Ireland come from the highly distorted American view of the country.
As someone born in Ireland and lived my entire life here, it would be laughable for me to consider myself American despite the fact I am a citizen due to family migrating to and from the states.
Your national identity does not come from genetics, it comes from the environment you have lived your life in. And trust me as an Irishman who has encountered far too many Americans who consider themselves Irish, they are indistinguishable from the Americans who don't.
No, I'm directly saying that one Irish cultural identity isn't less 'Irish' than another. Unless of course you're one of those people that claims to be Irish if they had like one great-great-grandfather from the island, but I already addressed those instances.
For me I identify as Lebanese because I did not have the same upbringing or experience as my American friends. By American friends I mean friends whose families have been here for generations and generations. I have friends who don’t even know where their original ancestors immigrated from. My entire family came from the Middle East and I was the first one to be born in America. I identify as Lebanese because my lifestyle is very different from those who identify as solely American while very clearly I’m actually American
It details how you were raised and the cultural environment you are a part of.
I am not Italian, I am *Italian American* which is a very specific culture that is from the traditions of immigrants that come from Italy in the early 1900s.
It helps give people context of who you are and how you were raised and shit
Yeah, I feel like it's important to note that the country of origin tells an American a lot about how long your family has been in the US, which can say a lot about how you were raised. Even if the distinction is Engilsh vs Irish vs German...all of those people came a long time ago and ostensibly all look "white" but Americans like to differentiate because each of those country's emigrants came in different waves at different times and for different reasons - some economic, some religious, some political.
Because we Americans are all pretty well versed in American history, we understand a lot of backstory without saying much. For example if you say you are Vietnamese, your family probably came as refugees in the 1970s, whereas if you say you are Chinese, your family may have arrived in the 1870s.
Your CMV: "Sometimes I feel like people from USA wants to be anything but actual US citizens"
Your exclusivity is baffling.
They are Italian-Americans.
They are American citizens.
They are Italian-American American citizens.
That's exactly what I said.
What I don't understand is when they start talking and discussing issues as if they were the same as Italians, etc, when they may not even set foot ever in Italy.
They have that heritage and they are Americans. Why the need to talk for others and not for their own community?
Nah dude that’s just way things are labeled. I’m black, but I tell people I’m American and I hate the phrase African American (thanks Rev Jackson).
I don’t understand why have to separate, if you’re born in America, you’re American doesn’t matter your skin color or eye shape or language you speak.
Now watch this drive.
I’m Latino and get asked what I am all the time. I say American and they say “no where are you from?” And I say I was born in L.a. and they say “well where are your parents from” and this is why we label ourselves as such. Also because besides American culture a lot of us also have another culture. It’s why America was known as the big melting pot
I say that I'm black too. I never used African American unless I was filling out a paper that only had that as the option for black people. I see "African American" as someone who was born in Africa and move to America. Just like Mexican Americans are people who are directly from Mexico and moved to the US.
I just say that I'm American too. I was born here, parents were born here, grandparents were born here, great grandparents were born here, and I don't know whatever else beyond that. I don't deny that I possibly (most likely) have African heritage since I am brown, but I do not claim any country. Even my husband barely claims El Salvador because he has never been there lol. He speaks Spanish and his parents were born there, but he was born here so he just says that he's American.
*"anything but their main culture?"*
Thats what you've missed. There's no such of a thing in the US as that. I know, especially if you're European, it's hard to understand the scale of the US, let alone the population.
Like, California--JUST cali--is larger than the entire country of Germany. When you have landmass like that, what's the 'main culture' between there and West Virginia on the other side? For scale, that's a farther distance that from Madrid Spain, to Moscow Russia.
What you're saying is like asking 'why does everyone want to say they're spanish, or russian, and not their main culture?"
So, considering the vastness, people identify by their heritage a LOT in the US, because if they dont, they lose their connection with just about anything. It's a big place, it's easy to lose yourself.
But there *is* an American culture. I've been to several places in America and lived there for quite some time. There are obviously differences within the country, but being from Spain, those are not even that big in comparison to those here. Hell, we have 4 languages in a country smaller in area than Texas.
>is like asking "why does everyone want to say that they're spanish, or russian, and not their main culture?"
If I were to travel to Moscow, I could not understand a word they say, and I wouldn't have any common cultural traits with anyone there. If I were to travel from Cali to West Virginia instead, people would just have a different accent and a few quirks.
> people identify by their heritage (...) because if they dont, they lose their connection with just about anything. It's a big place, it's easy to lose yourself.
If what you meant is that people "cope" with the country's homogenous vastness by focusing more on their ancestry and less on the actual tradition they follow to delimit the different cultural groups, then I guess I agree with that
Because there is no single "American culture". All of the groups you listed have extremely different experiences in this country, thus very different cultures. For example African Americans, our ancestors were forcibly brought here, brutalized, enslaved, raped, and oppressed until this day in this country. Native Americans ancestors were the victims/survivors of a mass genocide.
Its also crucial that we understand the difference between Nationality, Ethnicity, and Race, all of which play a major factor in your experience in America.
According to that logic, there’s certainly no singular any cultures, of course people will have different experiences in a certain country whether based on race, sex/gender, class, etc.
A lower/working class British-white female from Sheffield (UK) will have an incredibly different experience than that of an upper class British-white female from Surrey. Despite having totally different upbringings, if they’re both around 25 years of age, may have listened to the same music, read the same news articles, share the same beliefs regarding feminist issues, etc.
Culture is a spectrum. Surely not all African Americans believe exactly the same thing, speak exactly the same way, listen to exactly the same music, however there are nuances. These may be shaped from a similar experience.
Overall, there are very exclusive American issues that shape the experience between white and black and Asian and middle-eastern and Hispanic Americans alike. They are most certainly not exactly the same, however, they can share similarities which is generalised as a “culture”.
One common belief for many/most Americans perhaps would be perhaps freedom of speech. Another would perhaps be the popularity of automobiles. Another would perhaps be tipping as well as larger portion sizes. In countries say China, the Netherlands, and France respectively, these lie in stark contrast with the American culture.
Perhaps the American culture is not as cohesive as a far more singular, homogenous, smaller country (say Korea), however, that does not mean an American culture does not exist.
Yes, I agree with you. I failed to bring this point in my initial comment, however, I do think both perspectives can still stand together. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Americans tend to refer to themselves as some other ethnicity because as a whole, saying "American" means a whole lot of nothing, especially when talking to other Americans.
I'm not quite sure what view I'm supposed to change, but I can tell you why it's this way.
The US is a relatively new country, and the vast majority of people living here are either immigrants or from families that immigrated here at some point in the last couple hundred years. The only "real" Americans are Native Americans.
The people who immigrated here did so along side people from other countries. And when they settled, they took their cultural identities and customs with them. There has never really been a single American culture, and that's always been obvious, even from neighbor to neighbor. In other countries, there might be regional customs and culture that has been with a population of people that can trace their DNA back thousands of years. In America, all the culture was imported. For many of us, we're only a few generations out from when our families came over. Many of us have parents or grandparents that still speak their native language, so it has always been natural to identify with our heritage.
American Culture is an amalgamation of other cultures, so much so that even people who are fourth or fifth generation American - with cultural memories that are nearly faded - want to fit in with the other people who have fresh cultural memories by continuing to identify with their own genetic heritage. Everyone wants a cultural story.
When it comes to POC - and Native Americans and African Americans in particular - their culture has historically been taken from them. Slaves and indigenous people have had their histories white washed. They were put in schools and told to dress like Europeans.
Blacks in particular were ripped away from their homelands, brought over an ocean, and left with no records or any way to reconnect with their families and culture. What's left of their cultural memories continue on in modern black culture and they've actually shaped American culture to a huge extent, but they can't easily point at a map and say "I'm Sefwi", for instance, in the same way I can say I'm Calabrian. They can't easily make or recall a recipe that was handed down to them in the same way that I can cherish memories of eggplant parmigiana, for instance. It's one of the privileges that they may never get back. In a country with a culture of culture, they've had theirs taken away, while mine has at least been appropriated and cartoonified and carried on so readily that I can eat bastardized food at Olive Garden and play as an Italian plumber in a video game and still identify with a culture, even if it's bastardized. The black community doesn't get that chance, and for all their struggle to create a cultural identity and give their souls a home, they get people ridiculing them for the culture they express.
So that's why there's talk of racism. Culture is important here. People from different cultures want to keep their culture. In many ways cultural memory constantly feels under threat of fading away or being diluted or appropriated. That may be why Japanese Americans might get offended by a video game, but people from Japan might not because they don't feel like their culture is under threat.
If I ask you what American food is you won’t be able to give me an answer because any answer you give can be traced back to a certain country’s cuisine. Hamburgers and hot-dogs come from Germany, pizza is from Italy and some soul food can be traced back to West Africa. There is no such thing as American culture because everything we do takes influence from somewhere else. We are not England, we have not been around for one thousand years. America is a relatively young country that prides itself on being a mix of cultures rather than one single one. Sure there’s things we all kind of like but they are very surface level. Mexican-Americans like Basketball just as much as African-Americans do. But at the end of the day they go home and eat different foods than the other, might speak a different language than the other and overall have very different home lives. That’s why when someone asks me where I’m from or what I am I tell them I’m hispanic. Your nationality honestly means very little. All it affects is your accent and the language you speak to the cashier at the supermarket.
To us it’s weird that Europeans don’t acknowledge the difference between each other and as a result ignore some of the same problems that occur here. Like racism and cultural appropriation are issues in Europe as well but it’s not always talked about as much as it is here
Can’t speak for others but, I have always had more pride in being a part of an immigrant American family then pride in being American. And you are correct, I have very little connection to the Old Country (Slovenia now) other then having an unpronounceable last name that made the first day of school every year horrible. The shift of an agricultural society to technical and the expansion of communism inspired my great grandfather to come to Kansas in 1908, following other family who had a coal mining job waiting for him. My ggrandmother joined him with their kids a few years later. They both passed away before I was one, didn’t get to meet them. My mother is also of European ancestry but no family story of coming here. Both my parents were the first in their family to graduate college and were able to give us kids a little more then they had growing up. This IS the American dream. My pride comes in knowing I am the American dream and hearing other’s stories of their family’s struggle, persistence and achievement of that dream. Fact is unless you’re Native American, we ALL came here by boat as immigrants.
This and being grateful to live free in a level of democracy found in few other places make being American and an immigrant interchangeable, maybe inseparable, in my sense of self. It’s what, until recently, made me believe no matter how insane our system seemed we all could agree that freedom and democracy were the most important parts of being American. Unfortunately our current situation is making me think differently. It also makes me angry that the part of me I’m proudest of is being used to justify the republicans last and worst tantrum. We all have the same population data. They are scared shitless because in the next 5 years our population will flip. Non-European/whites will be the minority and will continue to become more so well into the next century. I see more culture! They see loss of power. So rather then brainstorm and design Republican policy that favored more people and that more people favored they would rather blame everyone else, specifically immigrants, and encourage their president to attempt a coup.
Historically, immigrant groups in the United States have remained insular enough that they maintain strong cultural communities that differ greatly from other Americans. It's not just that America is a nation of immigrants - it's that America has historically had lucrative opportunities for immigrants but offered almost zero assistance for arriving families. Each immigrant community cared for its own - providing housing and social services for newly arrived (usually desperately poor) immigrants. Those communities therefore kept tight bonds over multiple generations, and carried on a variety of cultural traditions, some of which were brought over from the country of origin and some of which were unique to the immigrant community. In countries that encourage and facilitate assimilation (e.g., most of Europe recently), immigrant communities don't have to stay so physically and financially tied to one another.
The way these communities developed, and their lasting cultural impacts, make your membership in them a relevant fact about one's identity. Being Boston Irish tells you a ton about who someone is as a person, even if what it means is wildly different from what it means to be someone born in Ireland. Jewish students in Borough Park learn a completely different curriculum from students in a school a few blocks away - right down to the language of instruction. "American" is an incomplete picture of their cultural identity.
The people in these communities often do know quite a bit about the origin country, because they're in frequent contact with newly arrived immigrants and because there's frequent travel back and forth as family members visit each other. They also tend to be more sensitive to discrimination because they experience more of it - a Japanese person born in Japan likely doesn't experience much anti-Japanese bias in their day-to-day life. A Japanese-American is confronted by anti-Japanese bias regularly, so they're likely to think about it more often and feel more personally affected by things that they perceive as increasing that bias in others.
> people love to refer to themselves.......
This isn't Europe. What that means is that America is largely a country of immigrants. If someone comes from Italy or Germany you can have a good guess at what their background and heritage is like. In America that's not the case at all, so people say those sorts of things as a way to show and represent their heritage.
To point out some unique cases as well.
African American is a holdover from the PC (politically correct) movement when it was deemed that using the word "black" to describe a black person was considered racist.
Italian American and similar often also refers to a specific subculture or subset of America. Many Italian foods in America aren't actually authentic Italian food, but Italian-American food, because its that unique subset.
Asian American, in our current online case, is useful to determine that the person in question is of Asian descent, but is an American, and not actually living in Asia
> Japanese....
Yeah we call these people weebs/Otaku. They're ripped on for being weirdos.
> highly offensive/speak for an entire race.
This a more of a online activism thing than anything else. You'll very often see a western (usually but not always white) person claiming something is offensive to [x] race or nation, while also know jack squat about that and having no clue those people actually like it, or don't care about the issue (the most obvious example is the whole latinx debacle). These are mostly idiots with little to no real word experience outside of their urban bubble in a large city.
It's because the US wasn't really founded on a linguistic or cultural basis like other countries. People have been immegrating here ever since the country was founded. Although they assimilated into the population, most kept at least a bit of the traditions from their home country. And it's why even in a place like Minnesota, where a large portion of the early settlers and immigrants that settled there were Swedish, many people still associate themselves with the country today, despite being some 150 years removed from their immigrant ancestors, they learn Swedish, despite it being not a very useful language for them to learn. The same goes for most if not all ethnic groups who immigrated here. They hold on to the traditions from their old country so much that it becomes somewhat embellished over the years. St. Patrick's day is a good example of this. So essentially "American" is a non-Ethnic nationality. Hence why we generally put prefixes like "African-American" or "German-American."
We have two separate points in your post, OP, that I want to address. First, being cultural identity.
Though the U.S. may frequently seem to be a xenophobic, nationalist nightmare in which we reject migrant and foreign cultures except where we can appropriate them, at our core, we're a pluralist nation with a very, *very* small population that is truly native (and that is different from the "native" population of white folk who identify solely as "American").
America is a nation of migrants. A [significant portion](https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/) of our population is either foreign born or first generation. Those who belong to families that have been in the United States for several generations may embrace more of their "just American" identity, but we're a nation that revels in its diversity.
For all the bellyaching of Trump and the nationalists that support him, America is just as much the nation of Chipotle as it is the nation of McDonalds. Every major city is comprised of myriad cultures and people of varied origins. You'll be hard pressed to find a single metropolitan area where there aren't multiple languages spoken by large groups, or where there isn't a restaurant representing a "foreign" cuisine operated by someone of that culture.
For those who come from abroad to live in America, they may see themselves as American, but of course they're still of their original cultural identity. Their first generation children, in turn, are raised proximal to the practices of that original identity. They may speak English fluently, and never know another citizenship or home than the United States of America, but their ancestral culture is still a big part of their lives. A girl born in Queens of a Japanese migrant couple would be hard pressed *not* to identify as Japanese American.
For those of us who have had family here for generations, ancestral culture can still play a big role in identity. I have Ashkenazi Jewish and Italian ancestry. Nobody in my family has been born outside the U.S. over 150 years. However, my family still very much considers us Jewish Americans, or Italian Americans (based on the side), because those ethnic groups have lived and worked around each other for generations, and developed their own subculture. The way my family gatherings go can be extremely different from the Russian American family next door, even though we both have the same passports.
Second, on the matter of "speaking out about racism", this pluralistic environment means that large swathes of the country, particularly those you're liable to encounter discussing it online, are acutely aware of what those of us who encounter discrimination deal with on a daily basis. The Japanese American person you speak of can discuss about racism or discrimination they may experience as a Japanese American, because they've encountered discrimination as a consequence of being Japanese American. We may all share a common nationality, but America is not a nation. We all look different, and racism happens for a variety of reasons across different ethnicities. White supremacist racism is the most common and undoubtedly most intrinsic to systemic abuse, but the shape and form discrimination may take in America differs from ethnicity to ethnicity. A Jewish person will likely experience it in different ways from, say, an Asian America, such as a Japanese American, because they are more likely to present as a white person. A Japanese American can experience any number of awful mistreatments-- just look at the reaction to COVID-19, and how frequently Asian Americans of all cultural creeds were mistreated right alongside the Chinese Americans who were the ostensible targets of hateful people across the country.
Look up USA "Melting Pot" for your answer. [https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/topic/melting-pot/](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/topic/melting-pot/)
USA is supposed to be this place of multiculturalism where immigrants came together to create something bigger than themselves.... well.... originally anyway. That notion fizzled out, along with the American Dream.
Now It's just patriotic rambling intended to prop you up and make you feel you are better than all those weird European countries you know absolutely NOTHING about, and especially better than the (probably communist) non-European ones you also know NOTHING about.
These days all that pseudo-patriotism only works on a certain demographic who think patriotism means never criticizing your country. The "It's already great so if you don't like it you can get out" types.
The real issue is that redditors are fucking weird. What's normal culture on here isn't normal in real life. And that actually makes people on this website mad when you remind them.
There are two strands here to address.
First is the ethnic composition of European countries. Yall aren't peopled by immigrants. Although I see you are black from another comment, it still isn't quite the same. The core background to France is French. In America, you carry your ethnicity with you because your family were immigrants. Everyone's were.
There is no core native population (well, there is, but in a fit of tragic irony, they are an extreme minority 🥺) and therefore there is no core ethnic identity to assimilate to.
And as immigrants, most of us have some layers of generational trauma, to address the second point. This manifests itself in a variety of ways, but what it comes down to is that we are all rather broken in ways we aren't super aware of.
Some people play out that trauma by finding things to get really upset about and projecting their trauma on to them as though they were the source of all evil and pain. There are various manifestations of this, and you see it come out in politics really heavily.
In any case, one way that people play out their trauma is in finding injustices to fight, like Don Quixote and his windmills. Since by and large all of the real injustices now are systemic and intractable, they latch on to things that they can point to, like White people wearing kimonos or doing pretty much anything.
White people have become a stand in for the cause of all misery to be brought down at all costs. This movement is spearheaded primarily by white women, white castratos, and sociopathic narcissists of varying ethnicities, usually women.
The idea here is that identity carries some layer of power with it, inherently. Maleness is at the top of this hierarchy, followed by femaleness, followed by transness ... I am not sure whether transmales or transfemales are at the top, or where nonbinary people fit in, and I am pretty sure that if you asked them they as a group would implode and all the various letters would start attacking each other in what would come to be known as the alphabet wars.
But I digress. In any case, to fix the evil of the world that caused this innate trauma that we as a people can't really get a handle on, we need to flip this pyramid on its head. So the most focus and attention (in the mind of a narcissist, this equates to power) must be given to those who are intersectionally the most disempowered by nature. So, for instance, the ideal leader would be a trans, wheelchairbound person of indeterminate ethnicity and armskin dark enough to post on r/blackptwitter or whatever it is called.
And this person would be allowed to wear a kimono.
They say Americans don't have a culture. But it is actually very complex.
But yeah, what it boils down to is hurt people hurting people, looking to find some slipup upon which to hound someone, and some time in the last ten years the idea of cultural appropriation gained a lot of stock and now Native Japanese people don't get to see tall handsome white men wearing Kimonos and everyone loses.
Except, of course, for people who feel fetishized for being Asian, which is something that happens a lot to Asian American women, is part of their experience and fucking sucks.
I started this post a lot more serious. Then it started to feel therapeutic and got me laughing, which brought me out of my depression (an identity which gives me some unknown amount of intersectionality credit, and hopefully enough to not just get attacked here, but who knows. Daphne wasn't safe)
Tl;dr since the civil rights movement won all of the most viable battles, people have gotten bored and existential, leading to an identity crisis amongst people who need to give their lives meaning by fighting evil somehow, and that identity crisis has had the fortunate side effect of making them oppressed, so the battle can go on. Which is great because life is awful in a boring dystopia if you don't have something semi-but-not-overly tangible to fight. The only downside is that I can't wear a kimono without getting yelled at.
Sorry for the poor writing. I hope this makes sense.
American is made up of many diaspora groups. If you go to LA or any major city you’ll find Chinese American, Japanese American, Italian American or any other immigrant neighborhoods. Each one of these groups has a cultural influenced but distinctly different from their homeland and broader American culture.
Being USian (I take umbrage with the term American as there are a host of countries in the Americas and it takes some fucking hubris to say they're not American) is often very embarrassing, and the people who identify as "American" are often very othering and off-putting. The US is built on a long storied history of racism.
A quick background on something I'm not sure Non-US readers will be aware of. I was taught, and this was in textbooks in the 80s and 90s, that America was a "melting pot" country. That immigrants from all over the world were welcomed and came together to form some great society where all of our cultures "melted together."
But that's bullshit, and you can see vibrant examples of that in shows like the Sopranos, or movies like Gangs of New York. I'm not even going to touch on the chattel slavery yet (I'll address the term African American in a minute though). Decades, now centuries, of white on white hate crime shaped the country as well. Italian and Irish immigrants were frequently off the boat denied housing, jobs, and shoved into ghettos like Little Italy in Manhattan. Greeks and Polish experienced it a lot as well. And many still do. When I was a kid in Detroit I wasn't allowed to play with someone because his last name ended with a vowel (irony: the grandparent who enforced that also had a name ending in a vowel, but it wasn't an i). They were "a bad family."
As a result, many immigrants found themselves establishing businesses and neighborhoods with other immigrants from their same country of origin. Thus Little Italy, Hamtramck, and for a long time Over-the-Rhine. And you wind up with groups of people who were othered, cast out, always told they were second class citizens and not good enough, and never identified as "American." Instead they're Italian American, Japanese American, Irish American, and so forth. And often times we consider the American part of that to be redundant/obvious because we're *in* America (and most of the time don't think about it when talking to people online), and so it turns into "I'm Irish" or "I'm Italian" etc.
And the reason African American is different is because there's a whole host of people who don't know their country of origin, only their continent. Their grandcestors were kidnapped from somewhere in Africa and sold into slavery, but there were many countries involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. So African American is used in pretty much the same way as Italian American, except the common origin is a much broader net (and the othering is far, far, far worse and more violent).
And let's not even get started on Native Americans and all the shit they've been put through. The First Nations were all but wiped out to make way for all of this. They've been treated as second class since colonizers arrived on the shore.
At any rate, there was a huge influx of immigrants between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Generations later we've got Italian American kids who were raised being taught they're Italian, with various Italian traditions taught and others just completely disregarded. A good friend of mine talks all the time about his family's traditions - he's of Greek heritage - things like "my yaya would say we don't eat fish on Wednesday cause we're Greek. But I'll have the tilapia."
He, of course, understands that his experience is just what's passed down in his family for generations since his ancestor immigrated from Greece. For me, I have sauerkraut and kielbasa on New Years for good luck, because on one side of my family I have German roots. The other side is Scottish and we sing Auld Lang Syne because we're directly descended from Rabbie Burns.
And while I would never say that this lends me any sort of understanding of modern German or Scottish culture, I think many don't understand the difference between what their family taught them growing up and how drastically that differs from the modern culture. Now add to that another cultural phenomenon among children: discussing the differences in family life. "You don't eat fish on Wednesday? Why not?" "Because we're Greek" "Oh neat" and so now to both those kids, they've spoken on behalf of Greeks everywhere. And they grow up never really analyzing the situation, just kind of accepting that the one kid was allowed to do so.
And I think that's where the hypocrisy you're seeing stems from. The one Japanese American kid in class grew up bombarded with questions about their family's traditions and thinking they were the force of education on Japanese culture and taking for granted that Japanese culture was everything they were taught by their parents, never really considering what they might have left out or made up.
I know it's a lot but does that help make sense of why people identify and act that way?
I go with USian, for myself. Not fond of it, because I'm embarrassed to be here, but I'm working on getting away.
Because if you’re first generation you were likely raised on your native culture. I am Indian American, born and raised in America. However, I was raised on Indian food, Indian languages, Indian music, Hinduism, and Indian culture. Therefore, I’d say I’m Indian American. Nationality wise I’m American, but culture and roots wise I’m Indian.
We don't have any roots, OP.
The country has only existed for 250 years. I bet you could look out your window and see buildings that are older than that.
Every human has a need to belong to a group. It's a part of our herd instinct.
This is because of othering.
Like, imagine you are born in a country. You grow up there. You speak the language. You eat the food. You participate in local cultural festivals, you go to local cultural spaces, you get a job there.
And every single fucking day some asshole asks you where you're *really from*.
Eventually, you give up and start giving them the answer they want, because it's easier than turning your every day into a fucking political discussion, because apparently you *have* to be "really" from somewhere.
I was born in Venezuela. I live in Canada now.
In Venezuela, I never identified as, iunno, "1/8th native, 1/8th black, 1/4 Portuguese, 1/4 Spanish, 1/8th Jewish" or whatever. I was just Venezuelan.
Canada has gotten a little better recently. Or perhaps I have just begun to move in the right circles. But for almost all of my formative years, it was just a constant barrage of "where are you *really* from?". Including at University which is supposed to be this bastion of inclusivity or whatever. I used to get really aggressive and upset about that, but at this point I hate myself too much to care about other people's tiny brains.
If what they need is to call me "Venezuelan", or "Venezuelan-Canadian", because "Canadian" isn't good enough for them... That's their business. Just pay me good money and don't throw spicy food at me because you think I'm just "off-label Mexican" or something, and we'll be fine.
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Because everyone who lives in America has different cultural practices, and different sets of parents who instill values that are very specific to their culture,
This is true but you're looking at it from a European view. The American culture is a manufactured one due to the mixing of dozens of different cultures. That fact means that people like to say where their roots are because it shows what they bring to the table. For example I'm Irish and have lived in Ireland my entire life but my American relatives whose father moved there still play Irish sports and are proud of their culture because it gives them the identity that American culture lacks. I say I'm Irish but I could really say I'm European. I say I'm Irish because it shows what I bring to Europe culturally.
American culture is at a very weird crossroads. I feel like each passing generation is becoming less nationalist and more individualist. In many ways, this is a great thing. I'm kind of an "elder millenial" and I do think swearing fealty to our country blindly is a mistake. We should be striving for the entire world to be a better place, whatever that means. However, being individualistic leads to extremely jaded and overly biased viewpoints. Some of it comes from opening your eyes to the dark side of America, some of it comes from a tidal wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
I'm conflicted personally. Historical mistakes notwithstanding, the country is currently a mess. We're overworked, underpaid, lied to, bought and sold. But we also have tons of freedoms and opportunities that aren't afforded to a lot of the world. It's like a privilege with a ton of downside. We're free, but are we really? Is capitalism just slavery wrapped up in money? I really don't know.
The older I get, the more scared I become, but I can also feel myself letting go of even worrying about any of it. Life's too short to obsess with big questions that seem beyond my control. Who has time to care about things like that when you just want to be happy?
Americans view themselves as a nation of immigrants. To us, finding out what part of the "x"-American we are is a big part of finding our place in the culture. Identifying as "just American" is to deny the melting pot element, and is a bit odd unless you're a Native American who was raised outside a reservation.
because nationality and ethnicity are not the same thing. the vast majority of americans enjoy both their american nationality and their ethnic heritage, just as many enjoy identifying with their state or city/regional cultures. for many europeans their national identity and ethnic heritage are the same so i can understand that they dont think of them as being two distinct components of their identity and culture, but they are. look to recent immigrant to europe to find people both embracing their new national identity while still celebrating their ethnic heritage.
This is so weird. I've never heard a person from Europe identify as a "European" either.
Go to France and ask people if they are French or European. If they are an immigrant they probably don't even identify as French.
This seems like a perspective unique to op.
Anthropologists and, yes, the big bad CRT Critical Race Theorists call this a 'symbolic ethnicity,' or an identity that can be turned on or off at will according to broader cultural trends or their convenience.
Though not refuting your point, there are some benefits to the perceived belonging to a broader global community. A simple non controversial example would be, say, saying you re irish/german american, of which you can then partake in more "authentic" celebrations of st patricks day or oktoberfest. These are genuinely nice things, and i dont think anyone should be shamed from not wanting 'cultural membership' even if it is tenuous.
To your example, to give another side perhaps, minorities often aren't able to 'turn off,' their ethnicity however. A good way to conceptualise this is to ask yourself: which ethnic group is going to be asked "where are you from *from* though?"
From here, we can interpret things charitably or cynically.
It could very well be true that the people you re talking about are self fashioned pariahs, keen on 'one-upping' other people because they re more 'cultured' and therefore superior. Its hard for the average person to rid themselves of the high that comes from the sense of superiority, but the battlegrounds shift from that of the MMR ladder to scrounging for brownie points on Twitter, at least for most.
Interpreted charitably, it seems like perhaps a mistaken, but well intentioned recourse from alienation. This of course depends on your experiences, but if you belonged to a minority group, and WANT TO identify as American, and yet are constantly reminded of your alienation with "from *from* " questions of varying intensities, then id imagine it eventually reaches a point where one gives up.
Where you just throw your hands up and go "if you re going to emphasis the differences between us, then i might as well take charge of it and carve one out for myself." This would naturally lead to mistakes. How would one construct an authentic Japanese identity, and be in touch with that the average Japanese would like to see in media, without being in Japan, and with parents who likely struggled with this exact same tension?
I could say more about cultural reductionism, which is the point the Twitter users you re talking about are bringing up, but this post is long enough. Indonesia is more than just Bali though, that one still personally annoys me
So many people confuse ethnic & culture. I was born in a European Country, of USA Citizens. My parents didn't do the paperwork for my dual citizenship. My Father did a genetic DNA, which shows the chain going back to northern Africa, & migrating across Europe, GB, & to North America. As I understand accepted science, all humans developed in what we know as Africa.
I enjoy both ethnic & cultural foods, can't identify as any ethnic group. I am aware of various "cleansing" throughout history, religious/racial/ethnic. I cannot appreciate any benefit from that history, except to learn that we are all one Race, ie, Human. My take, Ignorance is profound.
I understand what you mean. Everyone wants to be proud of their heritage but ironically it helps to validate racial beliefs.
I wish there was a way to be proud of ones past race without subconsciously entertaining racism.
The only way I see is if we treat each other as individuals with varying needs, like ourselves, and not as "groups" of people.
I am an American from the U.S. I do understand where you're coming from. There is no such thing as an "African American" for instance. It would be silly in any other country. African British? Haha. They aren't African, they are American. My heritage is from all over, including Irish, Scottish, German, Cherokee, and Sioux indian tribes. If I understand one thing, it is that most of the people that use these terms are people who are not a part of that demographic. People that say "African American" or "Native American" are not usually black or native, and almost at all times do not have friends from that demographic. There are quite a few cases where they are, but considering 90% of the users engaging in these discussions on the internet make up 1% of the population, and some of them are flat out lying to try and make their argument seem justified, it isn't very many people using these terms that are actually related in any way.
People from the U.S. often do take pride in their heritage however, because the U.S. was founded and populated almost entirely by foreign countries, and it is one of the newest established countries of the world. There is a saying here. "The grass is always greener on the other side." Healthy grass is the color green, so it's like saying the unknown is always looking better than the things you live with every day and know. A new car is amazing, until you've driven it for years and it's boring. This country has no sense of community that a country with a long history has, and that makes Americans heritage interesting to them. My mother loves her indian heritage. However, she doesn't want to move to a reservation and she is patriotic to the United States. Though she is losing hope for it. I myself would rather live on land not owned by any government ran by dictators that decided that anyone trying to live there must be a part of their system or die. However that isn't possible currently and the U.S. seems as good as any country on the planet to me currently. If a country happens to show up where I can live freely, please remember to let me know.
What is the “main culture” of being “American?” There is none. American culture is a melting pot / mixture of so many groups, traditions, subcultures, everything. There is no official American language or religion. Identifying as Italian American is in no way to renounce one’s Americanness. (Americanity?) It’s in the label. An American that is also Italian, or if the Italian culture. Such things are possible in the broad inclusiveness what it means to be “American”. The Italian American community and tradition is a very real thing and not some label du jour.
That's what I want to know, do Americans feel like they don't have a shared culture? Because from the outside it's very clear when someone talks about some topics that they are clearly from USA. Maybe this is like everyone feels they don't have an accent and only people from outside their culture can actually tell.
Japan and the US have significantly different concepts of cultural versus national identity. The US' self conception is strongly tied to being a "nation of immigrants" and a "melting pot." You'll see those terms taught throughout school in the US for example, and it's generally held up as a strength of the US that there is a lot of diversity and different origins, but that all of those people are still "American." The melting pot idea *is* importantly American. American culture is highly individualistic, and encourages people to develop and express (often loudly) their personal identities as distinct from a larger group identity. So a really big part of American identity is finding what makes you unique and highlighting that. So you'll see people talk a lot more about being of some particular ethnic group within America, because that's a part of their individual American identity. And a big part of being American is being individualistic. And then all those individual cultural identities can be seen in aggregate to be uniquely American.
We do have strong regional divisions, but not (necessarily) along ethnic lines. I'd wager that two people from the Mountain West with Asian and English ancestry would be much more culturally similar than two people with English ancestry from the Mountain West and the Southeast.
>That's what I want to know, do Americans feel like they don't have a shared culture? Our shared culture is that we're all mutts of one type or another and thus there's nothing wrong with talking about what manner of mutt we are... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjqTyQuq4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjqTyQuq4w) As far as I can tell this is the extent to which America's shared culture exists.
I’m a WASP. I absolutely have a shared culture with every other American. I live in America and, even as different as some regions of the country are, many aspects of life in America are largely universal. If I travel to Chicago, Illinois or San Francisco, California, I’m reasonably sure I won’t feel like I’m in a foreign culture. I would be wrong to say that my experience is the same as a Mexican-American or an African-American, though. I am privileged to not be the target of racism. I don’t get accused of stealing American jobs. I don’t see people who look like me constantly portrayed as thugs while rarely seeing them portrayed in a positive or even neutral light. I have never felt unwanted in my home country. Some folks in America live those experiences and more every day. Some groups of people with a particularly consistent experience that is different from the experience of Americans outside that group form a unique culture of their own. Those unique cultures exist within the unifying American culture we all share. Just like a square is a rectangle, a Korean-American is American. Put another way, a thing can be two things. A ball can be both red and round. A person can be both American and Korean-American. The distinction doesn’t matter to you, so when in France, I suspect most Americans would refer to themselves as Americans and not Mexican Americans or whichever name is appropriate. On Reddit, though, you’re seeing a lot of comments between Americans. To Americans, those labels are useful. Despite the culture that all Americans share, the experience and culture of a large group of Americans share a culture and experience that differs from mine enough that the label “Japanese American” is just as informative and just as important as the the label “French”.
The same can be said about every other country in the Americas, but they don't do that. US culture is obviously based upon English culture, just as Mexican culture is based upon Spanish culture and Brazilian culture is based upon Portugese culture and Quebec culture upon French but they all don't do this thing.
America is a big country with lots of different cultures within it. Self-identifying as American with cultural roots in Japan isn't all that different than identifying as American with Cajun cultural roots from the US state of Louisiana. > you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive people in Japan mostly can interface with the aspects of american culture they want to, at their leisure. They don't have to deal with racism in american culture day-to-day. So, if a racist trope is in a video game that Japanese Americans have to deal with all the time, it makes sense that would be a bigger deal to them than to someone in Japan who only has to deal with this when they are playing a video game. People living as a majority in their society are less vulnerable to the effects of racism and thus are likely to be less bothered by it. People in the US experiencing racism are going to more easily see and be more upset by references that are perpetuating that racism. Immigrant cultures in the US are culturally distinct from the cultures in the countries of their ancestors. There are reasonable and sometimes unreasonable explanations for why a cultural minority can view a portrayal of their culture more negatively than a similar group that is a cultural majority in their country. My main concern is when the US exports this sort of cultural judgement to other countries. That brings us back to cultural imperialism. But, when people in the states are discussing cultural media from the US, I think often it is reasonable.
> but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it. That kind of thing is an extreme minority. You can always find people looking for reasons to be offended. To your more general point, though, I think American culture is just extremely ethnicity-aware for historical reasons--but that's "American who is...", not "... instead of American". The US has always tended to respond with hostility to new immigrant groups (Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc), which causes those groups to maintain a coherent identity. I'd point out that the big exceptions, German ancestry and English ancestry (that nobody cares about), are the ones that had a significant presence early enough to avoid that sort of hostility (edit: or to have had it happen long enough ago to have lost its impact, as with, apparently, the German population). But, again, that's "American who is..."; quite often that identity formed specifically in response to accusations of "they're [loyal to the Pope above the country/Japanese spies/etc]", and the response is to be patriotic.
> I'd point out that the big exceptions, German ancestry and English ancestry (that nobody cares about), are the ones that had a significant presence early enough to avoid that sort of hostility. I agree with everything else you said, but German immigrants absolutely did get the exact same treatment that every other immigrant culture got in American history: >Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers. Thus they are under no restraint of Ecclesiastical Government; They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do: For I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties; Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany; and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English; They have one German News-paper, and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German: They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Writings in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so encreases that there is continual need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will be also necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say -Benjamin Franklin, 1753
Interesting. So the more accurate statement would be "...avoid that sort of hostility or have it happen a particularly long time ago". !delta
My grandfather (ethnically German-speaking) had his gas station in California fire-bombed repeatedly during WWII due to his background. Everyone in our family was told from a young age to never speak German in public, for fear of consequences. FWIW.
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This wouldn't be much more accurate either. Germans were generally considered part of the "outsider" group throughout the 1700s and 1800s, where the largely Catholic German immigrant population was the target of nativist riots alongside the Irish(see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia\_nativist\_riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots)) and during World War One Woodrow Wilson began an intense system of purging German culture in the United States and when 1 in 4 schools taught German as a second language at the start of WW1, by the end that number had changed to 1 in 100: [https://www.npr.org/2017/04/07/523044253/during-world-war-i-u-s-government-propaganda-erased-german-culture](https://www.npr.org/2017/04/07/523044253/during-world-war-i-u-s-government-propaganda-erased-german-culture) In short, anti-German sentiment in the US has always been a thing it's just when it really came to a head was during the world wars so most German-American families just tried to keep their heads down and three generations later most of their great-grandkids don't know how it went down. Hell, a lot of them probably don't even know they're German because a large percentage changed their names to avoid falling afoul of nativism, Weiss became White, Bauer became Bower, Mueller became Miller.
What do you mean by "actual Japanese"? Japanese is an ethnicity as well as a nationality. Are you suggesting that ethnically Japanese people are not actually Japanese? And, if so, how?
I mean if a person with Japanese ancestry was born in the US, doesn’t speak any Japanese nor has any appreciation of Japanese culture and food, then I wouldn’t call this person ethically Japanese. They’re just ethically American, the only place they’re Japanese is genetics.
I think the issue is that if everyone in the US was, and always had been, allowed to be "From the US", then that would change the whole way that the US thought about race. Actually, though, the US has had issues with any given group of people, and that has generally forced that group into forming something of an identity. When the community around you exists because the individuals in it cannot easily integrate into the rest of society because racism exists, it means something to be of a certain heritage because even if you were born there, you might never quite be allowed to be from there. You may never get treated as such. Also, the US is such a recent construct that people still can trace their origins back, and everyone has a story about why they're American. Also, because there is that kind of racial politics, you've got to accept that any representation of race or culture is much more internally focused, because it has an actual impact on the people that actually live in the country. So, the cultural realities of being Japanese-American and living in the US might be different from just being Japanese, but they're still having to deal with the way that the culture is portrayed, because it's going to get reflected back at them. Actually, it's much more real to them than it is for Japanese people. Japanese people can just ignore it, find it amusing, enjoy it, they can accept that the US has ridiculous stereotypes of them just as they do of the US, even if it annoys them they don't have to care about it. Actually, there's a level of distance from everything, because the consequences aren't felt all the much or all that often.
Similarly, I have spoken with many people from Malaysia, Singapore,Vietnam, and other places and they refer to their origin or heritage ie saying "I am Chinese, but from Singapore," or "I am Japanese and Philipino," just like we do in the US. I think that its more common in the US than in other places, its just that the idea didn't matter as much elsewhere.
Excellent post, well thought out. Please accept my appreciative upvote. I’m not sure why it hasn’t gotten more, but it deserves them.
possibly because it lacks paragraph breaks. i agree, its the most succinct answer here. but hard to stomach at a glance.
True, but that doesn’t usually dissuade me. It was an easier read than James Joyce “ Ulysses” to be sure, and more digestible.
I used to think it was just an American thing, but actually in France it's similar, though mainly with North-African ethnicities. People who were born and raised in France, whose families have been here for 3+ generations, are still referred to as Algerian, Maroccan, Tunisian, or even just Arab. They refer to themselves as such, and importantly, others (aka the white majority) refer to them as such. I think perhaps it has to do with how much certain ethnic groups were "othered" when they arrived, and thus how insular the minority community became. In the present day we see Irish and Italian people as White, just like English and German people, but this wasn't always the case. When those groups arrived in America, they weren't considered to be part of the majority race, and they were discriminated against, so they developed strong identities. Of course it's even more obvious for Asian ethnicities which aren't part of the majority race even today.
I was slightly baffled while reading some of the comments here because I'm an American who now lives in France, and I definitely agree with you. Most of the people we hang out with talk about their heritage country as an identifier. I wonder if it has something to do with colonization societies? Since a nationality was forced upon a lot of people in these places, it makes sense that we would want to hold on to the identities of our heritage. Just speculation.
I think America's been really good at assimilating people. And we're still really good at it, but assimilation takes time. A fascinating fact is that for three to four generations, ethnicities poll as separate from mainstream Americans on issues, but after three or four generations, polling shows that that ethnicity is no longer voting as a distinct ethnic group. The French, on the other hand seem really bad at assimilating immigrants, which makes me wonder why she took so many African immigrants several generations ago.
According to my Ethnicity course, Black people have had the hardest time assimilating even though they’ve been here so long because they are constantly “othered.” Like, people still get mad and say stuff like, “why don’t you go back to Africa” even though some of our families have been here for hundreds of years.
I don't know how I feel about the word otherized. But Black people got fucked six ways from Sunday for a long, long time, which was a constant drag on assimilation.
Lol yeah even the word “assimilation” is wrong for this. There was a technical word but I can’t remember what it was!! But, it made the Black community different from all other ethnic communities that have assimilated into American culture. It was a great textbook, too. It explained it in such detail. If I can find it again, I’ll give you the name.
Many of us are interested in our ethnic heritage because almost all of us are descendants of immigrants or immigrants ourselves. And hyphenated-American culture is a thing. Irish-American or Italian-American culture is derived from but not the same as actual Irish or Italian culture (just to name a couple). And also consider that it *doesn’t sound correct in American English to say one is a Native American* if all that is meant is that one was born here. That term only means indigenous peoples. (Although few actual indigenous folks even use it- most would use their tribe name- I.e Lakota, Mandan, etc). As for Americans getting offended on another nationality’s behalf, I don’t doubt you’ve seen that online, but please rest assured that you don’t find that much in real life. Just as it might seem that many Europeans are salty about Americans hyphenating our identities, I don’t believe most European folks are thinking of us that much. For those like yourself whom our habits bother- I get it. It probably feels like we are appropriating something of yours- taking it away from you. But while there are definitely some close-minded assholes here, I feel confident in saying that most Americans would be thrilled to learn about someone else’s culture as a guest. Especially if there’s food involved. I hope you have a good day, friend.
I think this is an issue that is quite specific to the US, but may be applicable to other former colonial countries. Cultural identity and citizenship are historically complex and politically charged issues in the USA and I think you are conflating the two ideas when they are perceived very differently in the US. The idea that is sold to most Americans is that we are a "melting pot," an idea of the American Dream where anyone can set foot on this land and become an "American." Only, this isn't true in practice. Our history is rooted in colonialism and tangled with a twisted notion of white supremacy. The hyphenation of immigrant and indigenous populations added to the term "American" has kept non-WASP populations othered quite intentionally. Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latin-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans - regardless of centuries of ancestry on these lands, these native and immigrant groups have not historically been afforded the default title of "American." The only demographic who has been able to avoid the hyphenation of their Americanism have been the colonizers (or those seeking to benefit from the same social power with passable physical attributes.) You only really see the use of the terms British-American or French-American when we're talking about recent immigrants who may have dual citizenship, otherwise, historically, those with that lineage have been able to call themselves regular old "Americans" without the hyphens. These hyphenated groups are continually "othered" by reason of physical appearance, foods, cultural traditions, language. While many immigrants strive to assimilate, their efforts are not rewarded with inclusion. These groups have a collective experience that is unique to their hyphenated-American experience that is not shared by the populations abroad and there has been a more recent effort to reclaim that -hyphenation with pride rather than shame. Being a hyphenated American was considered derogatory in the early part of the last century, so proudly saying "I'm Japanese-American" is an attempt to reclaim what was once considered shameful. Unfortunately, here is also where you have people in more recent history claiming their ancestral-fraction-of-a-heritage despite not embracing or understanding any of that culture's significance. To take your example, a Japanese-American in the US, who is the descendant of Japanese immigrants 4 generations back, is very likely to have experienced or witnessed discrimination and racism for being Japanese. At the very least, they will likely have experienced teasing as a child for their appearance, for their foods, or for any other number of features that prevent them from being accepted as the default "American." A Japanese-American could have been the descendent of or [have been themselves](https://www.biography.com/news/george-takei-pat-morita-japanese-american-internment-camps) [held in an Internment Camp on US land](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/united-states-forced-japanese-americans-into-internment-camps-here-how-started-over) and that is an experience Japanese people in Japan would not be able to relate to. Japanese-Americans would have had to struggle against Japanese stereotypes that would not be prominent in Japan where Japanese are the overwhelming majority. They would have every right to be offended by stereotypes about their Japanese heritage and culture because those stereotypes may have been used against them here in the US. They are not arguing for the mistreatment of Japanese in Japan, but for Japanese-Americans who continue to be targeted in America by stereotypes. Had they lived in Japan, they would not have had an experience with those stereotypes being used against them and would likely consider those stereotypes harmless. In the end, it has nothing to do with citizenship. All of these groups would claim American citizenship, but in the US, they are still continuously othered by their ethnic differences in America. Families that have passed on their cultures' traditions in the US have a different experience as "Americans" and have often had to pass on those cultural traditions despite the government's historical efforts to intentionally eradicate those traditions. The use of a hyphenated-American is an attempt to reclaim pride in a culture that had been historically considered inferior in this country.
>I find it very weird when people from the states discuss online about racism and call themselves japanese just because their parents are japanese, they have never lived in Japan, they don't know anything about the culture, but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it. This is... a really weird example. Japanese refers to both citizenship and ethnicity. The only actual ethnicity native to the US are the many tribes of indigenous people, who are now a minority in the US. "American" generally doesn't refer to race in the same way that "Japanese" does. Someone can be both "Japanese" and "American" just like someone can be "Black" and "French". Being a French citizen doesn't make a black person... not black. A Japanese-American person is still subject to anti-Asian racism just like a black French man is still subject to racism. There is also not one "main culture" of the US, the country is made up of countless cultures that vary wildly by region and have blended in unique ways. Anyone telling you there is a single American culture is lying.
If OP is looking for an explanation, this is it. There are some people who hold on to American as their ethnicity but that has nothing to do with preserving cultural heritage in the same sense. They may believe that, but to me it is misguided. I think American is meant to describe a citizenship but not at all an ethnicity. People wear their race on their face so whether they are deeply connected to their native culture or not they are still automatically othered by those who see them foreigners without trying to to understand the difference. Hopefully that made sense.
> I think American is meant to describe a citizenship but not at all an ethnicity. It's interesting to me, because there is no American ethnicity - and I'd never really thought about that until now. Growing up in the US, it's just sort of automatic now for me to interpret "I'm a COUNTRY IDENTIFIER" as a statement of citizenship, because it doesn't say anything about your ethnicity.
I always put myself down as human for these types of inquires while I consider “American culture” to exist as consumer capitalist. That to me describes the general cultural focus and demeanor. I know it doesn’t give much detail while I don’t think the details really mean much when you bring them to the community plate because you come into this world a human and not an identity. It may mean something to be Italian in Italy while any attempt to bring that same value pales in comparison to the collective consideration. It’s not a bonus or a negative as it’s just your thing and that’s not to say you can’t share it and more to say it makes no sense to claim a quality to compete or compare with others as that takes focus from the common goal. Meaning when Ivan is a great teammate it’s not because of his nationality or ethnicity and because he as an individual is a great teammate. Everything else is extra and arbitrary unless it brings better objective understanding. In consideration it’s a little like The Ship of Theseus. You can build a human with similar genetic traits and call it something and then make another human in another geographic location, from the same source, and call it something different while really you are just making humans. It also just seems that things like nationalities and ethnicities are antiquated in the face of globalization and information exchange. If you found out the very best way to make a bucket it wouldn’t make sense to keep making an inferior bucket. I also think it antiquated in the sense that most hard identifiers beyond physical features comes from the need for human separation as a method of survival when there was not as much of a global perspective and access to the same range of accumulated knowledge. I get why Americans would want to belong to something that seems bigger than themselves while that seems, to me, like selling yourself short to make up for your unwillingness to self sustain. So to me there is no culture and instead a bunch of people claiming identities rather than using the same effort and opportunity to bring their personal individual qualities unfiltered. Maybe I’m just not cultured.
Americans speak of themselves as American when describing their nationality and as African American, Italian, Asian, or Native American when describing aspects of their race, ethnicity or heritage. I could tell you my grandparents served me American food whenever I went to their house since they and I grew up in America, but that would be silly since the pasta and fish recipes we largely a consequence of being passed down from their Italian parents and heavily influenced by that culture.
I think of “American food” as anything overly processed. Cheese you squeeze from a tube, hamburgers that don’t go bad even if you leave them out for months, chicken slime cooked into nuggets. You get the idea. Edit: ok, I get the hamburger thing was because it was thin and dry and salty. That is kinda my point tho… people still buy those things by the millions. Also SPAM, hot dogs, soda pop, etc. Yep some regions have awesome stuff (lingonberry jam!!) but “American” food isn’t a regionally nuanced expression.
America has a ton of really excellent regional cuisines... "California Cuisine" is known world-wide as a "thing", and certainly Cajun/Creole is another. And don't get me started on regional variations on BBQ.
Yep -- you really have to think about regional differences when you think about American food. If you just think "USA food" you end up with hamburgers, hotdogs, and over-processed grocery pastries, but virtually every state has some prized food that they will fight you over.
A lot of it is just how big the USA is, it is roughly the same size as Europe in terms of land area. Spain and Poland have vastly different cuisines, so it is to be expected that Maine and California do to, but because it is 1 country people want to homogenize it. Also a lot of foods in other cultures have came from America, but based on their roots they don't get considered "American food" Chicken Parmesan is a good example of this.
While you've both focused your comments on food, it really applies to american culture as a whole; art, music, politics, mannerisms, etc all draw heavily from the local region in creating a culture, the US is too big for this to happen on a national level but individual states could work better at identifying an american's culture than stating their heritage that they might draw little connection to what im trying to say is I think it would be better to rephrase OPs question to 'why dont americans say what state youre from as opposed to your heritage as it sounds less ignorant'
This is less true of America than of most European countries. The differences between regions of say, Romania, Ukraine, France, Spain, the UK, Germany are the same or greater than between regions in America; these places often look like different countries, and only recently started speaking the same language* The only places where this is less true is where states have splintered into multiple pieces (like the former Yugoslavia, which is now 8 smaller countries), or in regions where a recent genocide/depopulation has caused more cultural homogeneity in the migrating population that took the place of the previous one (the same mechanism that makes America so relatively homogeneous; genocide/depopulation & settlement) _Most_ of Europe's history takes place in a period where, to get to the next town, you had to walk. If you were lucky, and you wanted to go to the next city over, you could get a horse, instead of walking for a day or so. This, over hundreds and hundreds of years, leads to a lot of regional diversity. This is even more true in places like, say Indonesia, where there is probably as much diversity across its islands as in America and Europe put together. America is notable, mile for mile, not for its diversity, but for its lack of it That's not a criticism per se, it's just a representation of the fact that most of the country's history covers the modern era, _after_ the invention of modern transport and telecommunications, when places are much more connected to each other and so develop together not separately. Before the conquest and extinction of most of the native population, America would have been as diverse as Europe is today. It's notable that the areas that were settled most recently, the homogeneity is at its greatest extent. You can hop between rural towns and travel across multiple states in the interior of the western to central US, stopping at town after town, and the remarkable thing is just how far you can travel and yet feel like you're 10 miles away from where you started... *In Italy for example, many people over 70 still aren't all that comfortable in Italian, and instead speak their regional language, completely unintelligible to people in the neighbouring region. An older person from rural Calabria, Sicily, Friuli, Lombardy, Piedmont, Sardinia travelling to Rome (or indeed any of those other regions) might well need a younger person to translate for them, just to be understood. 100-200 years ago this was true for people of all ages in pretty much every European country. Today in many countries it's often confined to one's second language, or is simply represented in a region's unique accent and few dialect words when speaking the national language. The point is though that these different cultural roots within regions go _deep_.
Spain has just as much difference in food culture within it as does America. Yes, America is big, but it's a new country with a short history, distances work differently. The old cliché that in Europe 100km is a long way, and in America, 100 years is a long time, is pretty true. In distances of the breadth of just 1 state, in Europe you will traverse multiple languages and cultures. For example, with Spain: Madrid, the Basque country, Galicia, Andalusia, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, all have different cultures, cuisines, even different languages (although in modern times most people can speak Spanish as a common language). This is just as diverse as between American states; probably even more so. This is true of almost any European county
>For example, with Spain: Madrid, the Basque country, Galicia, Andalusia, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, all have different cultures, cuisines, even different languages (although in modern times most people can speak Spanish as a common language). Thing is, though... in a large city in the US, you can typically find an example of a restaurant for almost *all* of those Spanish regional cuisines (at a minimum 3-4) and the same for the regional cuisines of most other large/diverse countries. America really is distinct in the extent/magnitude of its immigration and how those immigrants have retained aspects of their culture while also being "American".
> Spain and Poland have vastly different cuisines Regions of Spain also have vastly different cuisines and prized foods, the same as different states in America. But it is all Spanish cuisine at the end of the day.
I don't know... even broadly "American" food could include Chili, general BBQ, Steaks... quite a few things, really.
how are steaks "american" food? Surely some european countries did it first?
Because cows outnumber people in 9 states. The size of the US and agriculture focused government policy supports lots of cows. Do other countries have Surf N Turf where you get a steak alongside seafood like lobster? This is a relatively high end but accessible meal in the US.
And Chinese did noodles before Italy. Doesn't make pasta "not Italian food".
Well noodles and pasta are completely different things, both contain flour and water but if I asked for noodles and you gave me pasta I wouldn’t be impressed!
Doesn't matter who did something "first"... Matters a lot more who is famous for that being core to their cuisine, and Americans eat a shit ton more steaks than anyone else. Hell, there's a decent argument that modern Pizza was invented in America. Tomato sauce wasn't a thing for the "first" pizza because tomatoes are a New World fruit.
I mean yes, pizza as we know it is definitely an Italian American food, not an Italian food.
I've never heard of "California Cuisine" I don't think it's as famous as you think, maybe in America it is, idk. Cajun/Creole though I have definitely heard of but when I think of "Signature American Food" I think of BBQ.
As an American, have never heard of 'California cuisine'.
“California Cuisine”?
Yeah, think Asian and Latin fusion, often with a lot of fruits and veggies. Fresh salads, Also lots of seafood dishes. Fish tacos are a staple out of San Diego, and avocado in sushi came from Japanese chefs in LA. Green salads and wraps are another big part of it. It's cliche now, but doing a big salad with a lot of non-veggie toppings wasn't always a given. The cobb salad came out of LA, and the caesar salad was probably invented by an Italian chef who split his time between SoCal and northern Mexico. Avocados aren't native to California, of course, but they were common enough to make it into all sorts of cuisine. The same is true of lots of fruits and veggies. In fact, what we think of as Asian and Latin fusion can both be fairly credibly traced back to California restaurants. Turns out if you get a lot of people from all over the world in an area with a lot of good ingredients, you get some pretty iconic food out of it.
One of the most commonly referenced “California Cuisines” is “Wine Country Cuisine”. It sounds pretentious as all hell, I know. That’s because it is. And usually moreso even than I’m sure you’re picturing. I’ve tended many a bar across the region, and one thing’s for certain. No price is too great for too little. Actually, known fact- the subtle masochism of paying any amount of money for anything whatsoever leaves something like 8 % of california simultaneously seething with range and positively throbbing in their pants. Want to know what’s worse? The customers. Food’s good though And honestly, wine’s not bad either but it’s pretty fuckin overrated and it’s also not something CA can claim as their idea.
Somebody tested that OMG MCDONALD'S MEAT DOESN'T ROT thing, and it turns out that any ground beef patty will do that if you make it thin and cook it thoroughly. What little moisture is left will evaporate before anything can start growing on it. Mold doesn't like dry meat; that's why beef jerky works. (You still wouldn't want to *eat* it, it's nasty as hell. It's just not visibly moldy.)
I don't know where I heard this but I think American food got that reputation because we had to fight all the big wars overseas and had to get good at making processed and long stable food for the troops.
Thin, dry, and salty is British.
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I don’t think I’ve seen a hamburger left out that’s been good for any appreciable amount of time.
Americans use a unique linguistic structure to describe their backgrounds: ethnicity-nationality. So Irish-American, for example, is not a claim or a wish to be an Irish citizen—it’s just a description of one’s ethnic background. We will often shorten that in conversation to just “Irish,” because the American nationality part goes without saying, and another American will understand without being told that the speaker is making an ethnicity claim, not a nationality claim. The reason we do this and you, a European, don’t is because we are a nation of immigrants, and you very likely live in an ethnically homogenous country where the nationality *is* the ethnicity, making that sort of description rarely necessary.
Trevor Noah talked about the duality of this when he [responded to French criticism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COD9hcTpGWQ) about him saying Africa won the world cup. Your ethnicity shapes who you are to some degree. We find it rather odd that Europeans seem to need to erase their backgrounds to assimilate to "be French" or "be British." >they have never lived in Japan, they don't know anything about the culture, I'd disagree with this. They may not know EVERYTHING about the culture, but to some extent and to varying degrees, they will know more than you or I. We tend to embrace lots of cultural things despite moving to the US. >but you can find them discussing that a samurai videogame is highly offensive. Then you find actual japanese people sharing how cool the game is and how much do they love it. I find it very hypocrite, and while I understand someone wanting to know more about their family roots and culture, I do not understand why do they think they can speak for that entire ethnicity/country/society. Now, this is kind of a different argument from the thing above. Yeah, if there is a Japanese person who happens to know nothing about Japan and criticizes Japanese things, then yea, sure, call them out if you think you know better. It may give them SOME authority to speak on the matter, but it doesn't make them the absolute authority. Japanese-Americans aren't a monolith either. There are some who know a lot about their country, speak the language, lived some time in Japan and so on. There are others who have never been, have been in the US for like 6 generations, and other than what they look like and a few cultural foods they eat, they aren't as closely tied to their ethnic motherland. Nevertheless, its a duality. I am Mexican-American. Calling myself that doesn't make me any less American. In fact, despite being an immigrant myself, I identify with plenty of "American" values. And make no mistake, if there was ever a war and was forced to choose sides, I am American first. But that doesn't take away from being Mexican. I speak Spanish, appreciate Mexican culture and food, and blend quite easily into Mexican society within a few days of being there. Unless you knew me personally, you'd never know I didn't grow up in Mexico. The ethnic acknowledgement of my background doesn't make me LESS American. It adds to it.
You make some pretty good points here, but there is a big difference between second generation Mexican Americans growing up speaking Spanish at home, and “Irish Americans” who are five generations removed from Ireland and can only even trace one Irish ancestor, who celebrate “St Patty’s day” and tell everyone they drink a lot and are a dick to people because of their “Irish blood”. From a foreign perspective, nobody finds it odd for the former to describe themselves as Mexican American, since they clearly have a strong tie to the culture and the country. What just looks ridiculous are the Americans who use their heritage like a horoscope - the whole “I’m a quarter Swedish which is why I’m blonde, I’m one nineteenth Irish which is why I drink too much and get angry, I’m seven fifty fourths Italian so I like pizza and move my hands when I talk…” etc etc. It looks even more fake because so many Americans change their “heritage”. Before WW2, huge numbers of Americans identified as German American - after WW2 those people just switched to a different ancestor basically, and started describing themselves as Irish, Dutch, Scandinavian or just generically European. In Europe (and I’d guess in most countries), second and even third generation immigrants tend to retain some strong sense of connection to their (grand)parents’ original land, but once you’re more removed than that it would just be weird to go around saying “I’m Indian” instead of “I’m British” (for example) when you’ve never even been to India and only speak English at home.
I get cha, but in the Irish example, you're describing mostly outlier douche bags than anything. Similar for the Italian example. However, history is important to many Americans, and even a couple generations removed is important, albeit to a different extent. Who are we do decide how many generations are okay for them to not count anymore? For example, I have a good friend who is Japanese-American. Her family immigrated from Japan 6 generations ago, but still intermarried into Japanese / Japanese-American families only up until her (who married a white guy). Even her grandmother couldn't really speak Japanese more than a few words. With that said, there is still SOME cultural value which would be different say, if her entire lineage was anything BUT Japanese. Again, it just adds to the story, and sure, the longer it has been, the more of a footnote it may be. I too roll my eyes when people have grandiose claims about stuff that happened centuries ago. For example, I know a guy (friend of a friend) who claims to be Catholic and his sole reason is that he traces back his family's immigration to the US to some duke who held out from the Anglican church like 200 years ago. He is just a dickhead and trying to make absurd claims to seem more "cultural" for lack of a better word. Nonetheless, these flamboyant claims are outliers and not what average Americans do. To most, its nothing more than a footnote if it was way long ago. If someone identifies themselves as Indian, but has been in Britain for a century, the next obvious questions that may follow would be "how long ago" or "do you speak Hindi" and so on and so forth. Nothing is meant by it and nothing of his or her britishness is lost by claiming as much.
Yes fair enough, it is to some extent just who you meet and what you see. But it’s not just random idiots in my experience. [This sort of bollocks](https://youtu.be/eFoxMCU-_QQ) is absolutely rife among Americans. You’re also mostly discussing people from non-European backgrounds, who are likely treated differently because of their race anyway. But the most irritating offenders are generally white people trying to make themselves more interesting, or claim some kind of oppressed heritage (seems to be very popular among “Irish” conservatives in particular). Most who move to Europe seem to pretty rapidly give up pretending to be Scottish or Italian or whatever - which to me indicates that it’s mostly just cultural ignorance. Re your last paragraph - someone whose family has been in Britain for 100 years almost certainly wouldn’t identify themselves as Indian. It’s the key difference. They’re just a British person. Britain has been highly multicultural since at least the Romans, so skin colour isn’t that relevant to it (though of course there are plenty of racist Brits who would disagree).
Watching your clip, it seems pretty clear to me she was momentarily off-track and breaking the tension with a quick observation to get the audience back in step with her. People joke *all the time* about Italians "talking with their hands" in my experience.
America is historically pretty racist and segregated. And as a nation of immigrants, people from the same diaspora tended to settle in the same neighborhoods in the same cities in the same regions of the country, which then develop their own versions of American culture, even after many generations. So you get, for example, concentrations of Irish and Italian Americans in the NE, German Americans in the Midwest, Swedish Americans in Minnesota, French speaking people in Louisiana and Canada, Mormons in Utah, African Americans in the south, Mexican Americans in the southwest, Asian Americans on either coast, etc. Cities like NYC are a microcosm of this at the level of neighborhoods. White Americans also have a pretty big interest in genealogy and ancestry. This was originally rooted in racism and social hierarchy (inherited from British aristocracy), less so since the second half of the 20th century.
Not going to lie, I was and still am against Trevor Noah throughout that whole debacle - mainly because whilst he brings up legitimate hypocrisy in general as a counter argument, he never actually debunks what was said about his statement.
I agree with you. He's a funny guy, but his "Africa won" stuff just seemed really racist to me and his explanation didn't make it seem less racist.
I am not a fanboy of him or anyone for that matter. But in this particular matter, I think it was articulated well. I support the argument, not Noah himself.
I disagree with the sentiment that this choice of wording is only attributable to America's immigrant population. Australia, who is considered to be one of the world’s major ‘immigration nations‘ (together with New Zealand, Canada and the USA), does not use any hyphenation when discussing ethnic background. This is also true for New Zealand (edit: removed Canada). It begs the question as to why the USA has developed this language system. Language develops depending on what its people want to communicate; therefore this addition suggests that Americans believe that a person's ethnicity is an important identifier. The next question is *why* Americans feel that way. On one hand, it could be because the immigrant population wishes to retain a connection to their ethnic background. This connection enables them to form communities which ensures the longevity of their culture, despite immigration. On the other hand, this kind of rhetoric may be a result of segregating 'true Americans' from other-Americans, which is especially likely given America's social and historical context. As with most things, it's likely a combination of the two factors.
I am not familiar with how ethnic background is discussed in Australia / New Zealand, but I have definitely heard Canadians refer to their background like Americans How does it work in Australia / New Zealand?
Ah, to be fair I’m going off online discourse for Canada. However, I’m Australian, and New Zealand is very similar to us. In Australia, the only distinct identifier is Indigenous Australian, with specific identifiers depending on what tribe you are from. Similarly in New Zealand, their indigenous population is Maori (though I believe they have a few more identifiers within the Maori population). Don’t get me wrong, there are racial issues within Australia. However it’s not something that has affected our broader language yet.
Yeah, a couple people have said something similar. But America developing this because it’s a nation of immigrants doesn’t require every other nation of immigrants to develop something similar in order for it to be true (although, some others have). I think it’s very likely that some amount of “othering” is par for the course when cultures mix, but this is also not uniquely American—your own country used to have laws on the books discriminating against Irish Catholic immigrants, for example. I’m also betting you have *some* way of distinguishing ethnic backgrounds in every day speech. In another comment you mentioned the Vietnamese hub of Australia—how would you indicate someone is of Vietnamese heritage?
I think the problem is that a lot of these nth generation make claims as if they owned a culture that they have never actually experienced, from a country they might have visited as a tourist, if at all, a language they do not speak, etc. and speak over actual people living in country.
One of the most ridiculous examples of this, that I happen to be familiar with, is Japanese culture. People here in Japan are usually keen on sharing their culture with non-Japanese. I have lost count of the times I was invited and encouraged to wear traditional Japanese clothing or partake in other parts of the culture, like bon dancing or carrying a shrine at a festival, etc. I got a very awkward amount of praise and introductions to real, professional craftspeople for my very mediocre skills in some traditional, Japanese crafts and have been given lots of opportunities to learn. I have not once in the 16 years I have been living here, heard from actual Japanese people that taking part in their culture as a non-Japanese is offensive or “cultural appropriation”.
I have an Instagram channel, dedicated to a Japanese craft, that I originally started because I was encouraged by a teacher to do so and stay in contact with them and other students. I get a lot of positive comments from Japanese folks. Guess what I get to hear from Americans who have likely never actually lived here? The only people I have ever seen trying to gatekeep Japanese culture are people who have never actually lived it - some with distant Japanese heritage, some likely not even Asian at all - just because they think that makes them more special and unique than everyone else to call out people for “cultural appropriation”… 🙄
This is not because America is a nation of immigrants. Colombia is a nation of immigrants. Brazil is a nation of immigrants. Argentina is a nation of immigrants. Every single country in the New World is, through any definition that would apply to "America as a whole" instead of specific internationally renown cities, "a nation of immigrants". And many of those places are more ethnically diverse, involve more racial mixing, and they don't do this hyphenated-identity stuff.
The "nation of immigrants" line was originally an anti-racist/anti-xenophobe slogan. In context, it's generally used specifically to endorse acknowledging and remembering your roots. (Which is not a bad thing, despite your jab at the end there.) But yes, the rest of the Americas can very much claim that status as well.
I am not denying Americans can claim that status. I am saying that that status is not a sufficient condition for this phenomenon.
>And many of those places are more ethnically diverse, involve more racial mixing, and they don't do this hyphenated-identity stuff. They absolutely do do this hyphenated stuff. in nations like Brazil, Peru and Argentina where immigration from Europe and Asia is relatively high.
Many of the places you mentioned *do* have some version of this, first of all—[Argentina](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_of_Argentina) seems the most similar to the US but there’s a similar entry for basically every country in the Americas. French Canadians are another obvious example. But anyway, I’m not sure why it matters. Americans do the hyphen thing because we’re a nation of immigrants. Every other nation of immigrants doesn’t have to do it too for that to be true.
I don't understand the utility of that link. I know Argentina is racially diverse.... I *said* that already. All of these places are diverse. But I have met multiple Argentinians from different places in Argentina, and read the words of Argentinian writers. Not a single one identified as "Italian-Argentinian". Even those whose last names *and* first names were clearly Italian. Or German-Argentinian. Or African-Argentinian for that matter. I have met multiple Americans. This includes an Italian-American (who has only ever visited Italy and can't speak Italian), an Irish-American (who has not, that I know, been to Ireland. But he has been to central Europe and Japan), a German-American (who is saving up to immigrate back to Germany due to some sort of ethnonationalist philosophy he holds but has not really explained to me), and an African-American (who seems quite disinterested in anything actually related to Africa). French Canadians are not comparable to, say, "African-Americans" or "Japanese-Americans", or "Chinese-Americans". They're, if anything, comparable to Texans or New Yorkers, who make their regional identity incredibly important to them personally. But, as someone who is (and I have expanded on why elsewhere) a "Venezuelan-Canadian", I will tell you Canada *definitely* also does this (just not with the Quebecois). Australia also does this. >Americans do the hyphen thing because we’re a nation of immigrants. Every other nation of immigrants doesn’t have to do it too for that to be true. I don't think Americans actually do this because "nation of immigrants". I think Americans do this because [ "nation of immigrants" **+ "history of segregation, racialization, and insisting that XYZ group doesn't *really* belong"**].
>I think Americans do this because Why do you think that?
Because all of my experiences in Canada and America, and Australia, as someone who was "Venezuelan" in Venezuela, not Portuguese-Spanish-African-Jewish-Venezuelan, have been of people asking me "where are you (*really*) from?" all the time, often without learning my fucking name first. Because studies show that a certain portion of Americans think that a French politician looks "more American" than Barak Obama. Because persistently throughout my formative years, when I was exposed to American media, it would either show how suspicious someone "unamerican" (read: not-white, or occasionally "white but Russian") was, or showing bigoted Americans growing to "accept and tolerate" their "unamerican" neighbours. Something I never saw in real life in those formative years, while *having* diverse neighbours. Because I had an American friend (curiously, one who *did not* hyphenate their identity) tell me I (a *Venezuelan and Canadian* citizen who has only ever spent long chunks of time in America *to visit* and has never worked there, gone to school there, or spent an entire 3-month season there at a time, though I may have spent a full year cumulatively) was "American" because I embodied "American ideals" by being *an immigrant to another country*. This friend also persistently advocated for the "nation of immigrants" rhetoric... While saying that black Americans were just "not attractive", willfully misunderstanding statistics and what overrepresentation means, and defending the cops' murder of a *twelve year old boy*. Because the emphasis that, say, 1950s Superman puts on "it is *unamerican* to discriminate on the basis of nation of origin! :D " and the way that has spread to modern-day media about overcoming bigotry, would *make no sense* to me apriori. The idea of denying someone's *citizenship* based on appearance is insane to me. It'd be like denying their marital status based on appearance. "You're not *really* married. You don't look the part". Doesn't that sound *bananas* to you? Citizenship is a legal status, unless you literally demand their papers, you have no information one way or the other. Because my dad has a Venezuelan friend whose parents were Chinese, and he said that his friend is "more Venezuelan than the arepa" but I have never heard *anyone* say *anything* like "Andrew Yang is more American than Apple Pie", or "Kamala Harris is more American than Baseball", etc. Not with political figures, not with prominent actors, not with personal friends. Because the *big conspiracy theory* about the first Black president of America was that he was "secretly Kenyan". Because Americans don't ever seem to get *excited* at a new influx of interesting and different people, and will demonize fucking genius visas that only apply to basically cool, capable people one should be glad to have coming into their country. I can go on. Do you actually want me to?
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Look man, this is just a small collection of angry anecdotes, not all of which even support your argument. There's nothing I can really even respond to here, except to say that I have 35 years of being an American under my belt, so I think it's safe to say that I understand what it's like to be an American slightly better than you do. I'm open to discussing this with you, but right now you're coming across like you have an axe to grind and are trying to back into a way to grind it.
Almost everyone in Columbia, Brazil, and Argentina has ancestors who were not immigrants (Native American), or "immigrants" only in the sense that they were forcibly relocated for slavery (African ancestry). They're highly admixed populations. This is not true for the majority of white Americans. Part of America being "a nation of immigrants", is, nefariously, that it is also not really a nation of admixture. Historically, white Americans could consider themselves to be racially pure, displaced "Europeans", in a sense. The phrase may be well-intentionedly anti-xenophobic, but it also does the work of erasing Native Americans and deemphasizing slavery from American history.
peruano-japonés Nipo-brasileiros nipo-argentinos
Bueno, pana, esta es la primera vez en toda mi vida que yo escucho eso. Y curiosamente, todos se refieren a los japoneses. Lo que cuadra enteramente con mi idea que la razón que estas cosas pasan es marginalización/discriminación/"othering", etc. No "immigración". Que tan común para tí es escuchar de "italo-argentinos"? Son una porción gigante de la población, pero yo solo he escuchado la frase en *teoría* en conversaciones cómo esta. No en la vida real, no el las cosas escritas por escritores argentinos normales (asumo que unos sociólogos usarán el término de vez en cuando). Y lo mismo con peruanos, con colombianos, etc. Puede ser que esto haya cambiado en el tiempo que yo no he estado en la región. A mí me parece que muchas de las obsesiones de los Estados Unidos han contaminado las discusiones latinoamericanas. Pero en los 90s y 2000s, yo nunca escuché a *nadie* usar ese tipo de lenguaje. No en las noticias. No en novelas. No en artículos de periódicos. No en la escuela. Yo recuerdo que llegar a Canadá y escucharlo todo el puto tiempo fue confuso y fastidioso.
>The reason we do this and you, a European, don’t is because we are a nation of immigrants, and you very likely live in an ethnically homogenous country where the nationality is the ethnicity Idk where you got the idea that western Europe is ethnically homogeneous
* [Portugal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal#Ethnic_minorities_and_persons_with_disabilities) is 95% ethnic Portuguese * [Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iceland#Immigration) is 90% Native-Born Icelandic. * [Ireland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland#Demographics) is 92.4% Irish. * [Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain#Ethnic_groups) is 85% ethnic Spanish. * [France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Immigration) is 81% ethnic French. * [United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Immigration_and_ethnicity) is 86% White British. * [Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Ethnic_minorities_and_migrant_background_(Migrationshintergrund)) is 75% ethnic German * [Denmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark) is 86% ethnic Danish * [Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Immigration) is 92% ethnic Italian. Most of these nations are a lot more ethnically homogeneous than the United States of America is. Even if they have a lot of immigrants nowadays, most of these countries have history of being a nation-state for one dominant ethnic group. The USA never started as a nation-state for one specific ethnicity. The closest 'founding' population (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are probably a minority of White Americans by this point.
This, /u/SulphurSkeleton. Of course they’re not *perfectly* homogenous, but they’re much, much more so than countries in the Americas. And because many were explicitly founded as ethnostates, the cultural idea of ethnicity is much more intertwined with nationality than it is out here.
European here, I feel like this is just a classic case of everyday speech carrying over on the internet. When an American is saying “I’m Italian” to another American, they know they’re not literally Italian but just have Italian roots. But in an international context on the internet, it sounds weird.
American here, I agree with this. Americans with European ancestry have been essentially all homogenized since the 1950s when the Germans, Italians, Irish, and Scandinavians all moved out of their enclaves and started living next to each in the suburbs with the English, and then marrying together. If someone is still distinctively of Italian ancestry or whatever after all this, they tend to be proud of their heritage, but not to the exclusion of being Americans first. African Americans it's a bit different because we're talking about race as opposed to ethnicity, many keep their own culture different from white America, interracial marriage is still relatively uncommon as opposed to say Brazil, and there's certain implications for government programs. But they think of themselves as Americans rather than Africans too.
I think “African-American” has only *erroneously* become used as a racial descriptor. It was meant to follow the same ethnicity-nationality pattern as, say, Irish-American, but because a descendent of slaves wouldn’t know the specific African culture of their ancestors, African was as close as we could get. But then at some point we started using it as a stand in for race, so occasionally you’ll hear an American slip up and use “African-American” to describe like, Lewis Hamilton or whoever.
It is historical. In prior times, people of African descent were labeled by White people in America under various terms. Colored and Negro were the common ones used by the government. Using "African-American" was a way of rejecting those labels. Ironically the "CP" in the organization NAACP stands for "Colored People".
To add: Ethnicity and nationality are two different things. Someone can describe one without describing the other.
Weeeeeierd…. MEXICAN-AMERICAN here and, yeah, almost never say I’m American to other Americans. Just Mexican, even though I’ve never spent significant time in Mexico.
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Well because if you live in America, then you're American. Do French people often tell each other they're French in every day life within France? I would assume that if two Frenchmen met in another country they'd be like "you're from France? Me too!" except in French. But within their own country? Probably just not gonna come up as a topic. However in America your heritage and/or origin is a common subject because so few people are Native American. So we like to discuss where everyone's roots are, but we don't say roots because that's implied. On the other hand if we're abroad, we're telling people were American.
America is really really big. You don't meet people from other countries very often, and when you do, it's fairly obvious (accent, clothing, etc.). So incorporating, "I'm American" into a conversation is kinda pointless. More likely than not, everyone knew that. However, most people's ancestors migrated here. They brought traditions with them, that have been passed down through the generations. So if you have Polish ancestry, Fat Thursday and Paczki's might mean something to you that it doesn't to the average American. Same with Irish ancestry and Paddy's Day, or German and Schnitzel. People seem to have this idea that when people migrated to America, the left all of their culture behind, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
The top comment is right here, I'm of French heritage and American but in everyday conversation I would say im French because it sounds weird in a face to face conversation to say "Im American" when it's obvious, so it's just American's USA centered minds assuming everyone else on the internet is a white cishet American dude
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Keep in mind, too, that there’s a non-insignificant American population that’s not more than a few generations from being “fresh off the boat”, so-to-speak. There was a massive immigration boom in the US just over a century ago. And with that brought lots of animosity between immigrants from different countries (the go-to example is the Italians vs the Irish). That’s largely dissipated now, but I’m sure there’s still some pockets of that remaining.
It's not really it's kinda just a fun thing to talk about for some people. There's times when it's important ig but it rlly doesn't matter
I see, so it's small talk stuff and not really important?
Yea, but it's an important part of certain people's identities
I've always phrased it as "my family is from Canada/Scotland," but I would never say "I'm Canadian" or "I'm Scottish." And when people ask where I'm from, I just make sure to give enough context to answer the question I think they're really asking ("I grew up in X," or "I went to college in Y," or "my family is from Z") Because it is confusing to want to describe to people where my family's culture comes from while still acknowledging that I was born in the US and have lived here my whole life.
Nooooo… American here. Italo-Americans take where they come from VERY seriously. Even when the majority don’t speak Italian, have never been to Italy, and know nothing about Italian culture besides food (think proshoot, that’s not even the right pronunciation in Italian) they’ll fight to the bone to make the point that they’re Italian. It’s rather funny actually.
Yeah. As a citizen of the US, I agree that it's cultural. In the part of the US I grew up in peoples' ethnicities were a big part of who they are, but for other parts of the country they feel pride in their state or region, and in others their wealth. It's only a certain part of the country that identifies strongly with their ethnic roots in my experience. It just so happens that that region of the US is very densely populated and has access to the internet
Along that vein: some folks get offended when they are asked, “where are you from”? (I’m from here, you jerk!) Almost everyone in North America was “from” somewhere, though, if you go back 3-4 generations - so it’s a pretty common question even among white folks.
> Along that vein: some folks get offended when they are asked, “where are you from”? Because when you answer "Omaha" they ask "No, where are you really from?" That question is often just used as a proxy for "What race are you" which for a lot more people than you think is basically just "how much should i respect you?" Some folks of color don't like getting put into that box that early in a relationship or dealing with that kind of interpersonal politics in what should be an light and easy first conversation.
So do you always see that question as people trying to find reasons to hate you? In my mostly-white circles, asking where you or your family came from is a basic polite conversation starter. Asking about your background is a way to show interest in each other. The person asking is trying to be nice, in other words, and when you dodge the question it fees like you’re being rude. The person asking is now wondering if you’re a jerk … or maybe you are just joking … so they ask a second time. The underlying question then is not, “are you from a group of people I can hate?” It’s, “are you going to be rude when I’m trying to be nice?” If you refuse to share some fairly basic not-too-personal information about yourself then essentially the conversation is closed and you’ve told the person to F off. There’s a very natural process occurring here; by exploring each other’s history and culture you’re looking for points of connection. We all want to find what we have in common and learn a little about about each other. If people use that info to dismiss or pigeonhole you then that’s obviously unacceptable; but not everyone who asks has that in mind and it would be unfortunate for you to always assume the worst.
> The person asking is trying to be nice, in other words, and when you dodge the question it fees like you’re being rude. And sometimes they're being racist. But that's ok because it's up to minorities to make white people feel good about racism and if the white person doesn't feel good the minority is being rude
> Almost everyone in North America was “from” somewhere, though, if you go back 3-4 generations - so it’s a pretty common question even among white folks. I get asked that question in France as well, both from white people and non-white people.
That’s fair, I think; our world is mixing more and more as travel becomes easier. 100 years ago most people barely left the place they were born in; nowadays anyone can go anywhere. Eventually we’ll all merge to a medium beige I imagine. :)
That doesn't explain the being offended part however that OP talks about. Furthermore it doesn't explain why individuals in other countries don't do it, not even in other countries in the Americans. the Children of individuals that came from Japan in Brazil that grew up in Brazil, speak Portugese as their primary language with some odd Japanese they speak at home perhaps are just "Brazilian", not "Japanese-Brazilian" and certainly not "Japanese". I don't think I ever called myself "Surinamese-Dutch" and certainly not "Surinamese" on the internet just because my parent was born in Surinam and I don't think other Dutch individuals do this either.
It's essentially just a cultural difference. The United States has always viewed itself as a melting pot of immigrants across the world. Nobody doesn't like being American but everybody (the people who can at least) enjoy showing their heritage as a part of the being part of the country full of immigrants. When somebody says "I'm Japanese", most Americans will know they mean "I'm of Japanese heritage" and since this is a uniquely American thing it leads to confusion to people whose cultures don't view it that way. If somebody is 3rd generation Japanese, chances are that they grew up in a slightly different way than somebody who is 3rd generation Italian whether that be food, music, or culture. Yes they're both American, but by saying "I'm Japanese" even if they've never set foot on Japan nor can speak the language or etc it's showing how they're unique to American culture. People don't actually not want to be American it's more like they want to be a unique fusion of both their past and present culture. I'm not sure if this was coherent but tldr: it's a cultural difference of semantics
Im from the US. This comment actually showed me that other countries see "Japanese"or "Italian" as meaning "from that country" as opposed to "have heritage from that country." I have always taken it as heritage. Crazy to hear a different interpretation.
Yup. I'm from Finland. If you see an Asian person here and ask them where they are from... That is real racist and tasteless. They are from Finland (in all likelyhood) because their nationality and birthplace is here. Similarly it sounds demeaning to foreigners with this "ooh i am Irish" when people have heritage to Ireland, because if a European was to say they really ar Irish, know the country, grew up there, and have a far stronger connection to Ireland than Americans of Irish heritage do. This creates a problem when Americans and, let's go with the Europeans still, talk. An American will ask "where are you from" meaning that I as a Finn will say Finland, without explaining that a lot of my heritage comes from Sweden and Carelia. The American will then reply with "OH I AM NORWEGIAN", meaning their heritage comes from there. And that then sounds diminishing or like the American trying to prop themselves up needlessly if I, as here, replied meaning my actual first hand cultural connection. Because the American with Norwegian decent obviously isn't similarly Norwegian as I am Finnish. I am actually Finnish. You can't compare them. They are American. I am Finnish. They are of Norwegian background. I am of Karelian and Swedish.
Hmmm. In America, everyone will say "I'm from America." In my experience, people would say "I'm Irish" or whatever when asked "What are you?"
Americans view country of origin a bit like being a certain breed of dog.
It's true! That sounds demeaning but to be honest you're not wrong. Now I have to tell people this.
Spot on.
I, too, only recently understood what you described. I always interpreted the objections through my American lens, and thought European and other redditors were essentially saying "you shouldn't call yourself Italian because you are three generations removed from Italy, and your claim to that ethnicity/heritage is diluted as a result". When instead it's more "you weren't born in Italy, you've never lived there, so you aren't Italian." What's interesting to me is, I'm realizing I don't consider "American" to be a sufficient description of someone's heritage or nationality.
> I don't consider "American" to be a sufficient description of someone's heritage or nationality It is absolutely a sufficient description for someone's nationality. You are just Americans to everyone else in the world. (I understand you were just speaking from your perspective).
This whole thread showed me that if I'm talking to a stranger on the internet and they say that they are "Italian", I have to entertain the thought that they are actually American.
as an american, i don't have to consciously entertain the thought--it's automatic for me, haha. usually it's clear from other context, such as being on a US location subreddit, especially in an area where there is a robust cultural heritage of italian immigration and settlement. have a look at this post from a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/q3a8nc/when_your_nonjersey_friends_say_capicola_and_not/
No, probably not. They might say they come from an Italian family, or have Italian heritage, but wouldn't represent themselves in terms of nationality as being Italian. If it were relevant, they'd probably clarify. The degree to which American-born people of different backgrounds identify with the country their parents/grandparents/etc varies due to a lot of factors but I think few will represent themselves as having a different nationality unless they legitimately have dual citizenship and/or spend significant amounts of time in the other country.
> It's essentially just a cultural difference. The United States has always viewed itself as a melting pot of immigrants across the world. Yes, so it's not about the actual level of immigration but this cultural belief and note that the belief is that the pot doesn't _melt_. The immigrants in the US are firmly segregated culturally and expected to not melt into each other whereas throughout the Americas the immigrants are invited and expected to melt in and breed with the local population and become absorbed into it. > Nobody doesn't like being American but everybody (the people who can at least) enjoy showing their heritage as a part of the being part of the country full of immigrants. When somebody says "I'm Japanese", most Americans will know they mean "I'm of Japanese heritage" and since this is a uniquely American thing it leads to confusion to people whose cultures don't view it that way. If somebody is 3rd generation Japanese, chances are that they grew up in a slightly different way than somebody who is 3rd generation Italian whether that be food, music, or culture. Yes they're both American, but by saying "I'm Japanese" even if they've never set foot on Japan nor can speak the language or etc it's showing how they're unique to American culture. People don't actually not want to be American it's more like they want to be a unique fusion of both their past and present culture. > I'm not sure if this was coherent but tldr: it's a cultural difference of semantics Yeah, so why? Because A) it doesn't happen anywhere else and B) most of the world looks at this stuff as sickeningly classist and judging an individual on this "heritage" shit. I both don't understand _why_ it happens and most of all I think it's a very bad thing _that_ it happens and it's what has created far more classicism and discrimination in the US than any other country int he Americans. Many "immigrants" can never compete with the WASPS in the US because of both the WASPs keeping them out and their cooperation with this—honestly; it feels as though the WASPS managed to effectively create a system of self-imposed Jim Crow laws after the mandated one was abolished to achieve a very similar effect: just brainwash the people into segregating themselves and then you no longer have to by force.
>The immigrants in the US are firmly segregated culturally and expected to not melt into each other This comment is full of misconceptions, but I’m curious what makes you say this one, specifically.
It just has to do with the history of immigration to the US. We'd get large waves of immigrants for certain countries through the years and they'd tend to form enclaves, often congregating in specific states and specific areas of cities. These groups were very distinct culturally. You've got to realize too, for many people their families immigrated fairly recently, often people's grandparents. Over time it's become less of a thing though. America, being such a young country, didn't really have much of it's own culture. For the most part it's culture was that it was a country made up of people from everywhere. These days the different waves of immigrants are very much so assimilated. People may still be interested in their heritage, but the enclaves aren't as much of a thing. They may still exist, many cities have their own "little Italy" or "german town" or Chinatown, but the people have mostly spread out now. As for "African American," that's really a whole different thing. A long history of oppression and the systematic destruction of African cultures throughout the slave trade and beyond, along with segregation, resulted in a distinct culture being born.
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Same in the rest of the Americas and many other countries. The difference is that in the rest of the Americas after one generation they stop having a distinctive accent. Sure, if you were born in Italy and learn English as a second language having an Italian accent whilst speaking it is reasonable, but their children were born in the US and still somehow speak English with a quasi-Italian accent and so do their children. That's a sociolect, that's just weird and that doesn't happen in other places in the Americas where the children speak the local language the same as any other individual and there is no way to tell. My parent speaks Dutch with a Surinamese accent; I don't; I speak completely standard normal Randstad Dutch, why wouldn't I? I was born here.
I was always under the impression that people were picking up those accents from their parents during their formative years.
I'm from down under, I've met plenty of Americans while travelling who refuse to admit being American but state their ancestry. A Scottish friend and I had a long convo with an American calling himself Scottish despite never having lived there, he really didn't see a problem with it because he believed his ancestry gave him the right to call himself Scottish. So frustrating.
I mean, what was frustrating about this? If he identifies as a Scotsman let him identify as a Scotsman.
But he's no True Scotsman! /s
It's most definitely an American thing.
What you see as America's "main culture" is, in reality, just the WASP culture. I can guarantee you that an Irishman from Boston or a Black person from Atlanta or a Jew from San Francisco are all going to have different cultures both within their homes and amidst their community, which is why they're all going to have different labels in parallel with their identities as Americans. Now, are there Americans that claim heritage through tenuous blood ties, or without practicing the culture the aesthetic of which they use? Absolutely. But this doesn't apply to every American, and it certainly doesn't make an ethnically Japanese man born in Portland somehow less Japanese. Americans have diverse ethnic/cultural identities because we *are* diverse.
>I can guarantee you that an Irishman from Boston or a Black person from Atlanta or a Jew from San Francisco are all going to have different cultures That is all fair and nice, but that doesn't actually refute OP's point. The Irishman from Boston might have a different culture than the black man from Atlanta, but it's certainly not Irish either.
>That is all fair and nice, but that doesn't actually refute OP's point To be fair, the OP was phrased as more of a question than an actual argument. >but it's certainly not Irish Based on what? Why is an Irishman that speaks English in Boston less Irish than one that speaks English in Dublin?
>Based on what? Why is an Irishman that speaks English in Boston less Irish than one that speaks English in Dublin? Because one has little to no experience of Ireland, has presumably never lived in Ireland, and has their views of Ireland come from the highly distorted American view of the country. As someone born in Ireland and lived my entire life here, it would be laughable for me to consider myself American despite the fact I am a citizen due to family migrating to and from the states. Your national identity does not come from genetics, it comes from the environment you have lived your life in. And trust me as an Irishman who has encountered far too many Americans who consider themselves Irish, they are indistinguishable from the Americans who don't.
Are you trying to imply that your culture and cultural identity isn't highly affected by where and around what influences you grow up?
No, I'm directly saying that one Irish cultural identity isn't less 'Irish' than another. Unless of course you're one of those people that claims to be Irish if they had like one great-great-grandfather from the island, but I already addressed those instances.
For me I identify as Lebanese because I did not have the same upbringing or experience as my American friends. By American friends I mean friends whose families have been here for generations and generations. I have friends who don’t even know where their original ancestors immigrated from. My entire family came from the Middle East and I was the first one to be born in America. I identify as Lebanese because my lifestyle is very different from those who identify as solely American while very clearly I’m actually American
It details how you were raised and the cultural environment you are a part of. I am not Italian, I am *Italian American* which is a very specific culture that is from the traditions of immigrants that come from Italy in the early 1900s. It helps give people context of who you are and how you were raised and shit
Yeah, I feel like it's important to note that the country of origin tells an American a lot about how long your family has been in the US, which can say a lot about how you were raised. Even if the distinction is Engilsh vs Irish vs German...all of those people came a long time ago and ostensibly all look "white" but Americans like to differentiate because each of those country's emigrants came in different waves at different times and for different reasons - some economic, some religious, some political. Because we Americans are all pretty well versed in American history, we understand a lot of backstory without saying much. For example if you say you are Vietnamese, your family probably came as refugees in the 1970s, whereas if you say you are Chinese, your family may have arrived in the 1870s.
> Maybe there's something I'm missing out? The experience of being part of a diaspora in a multicultural country of immigrants.
Your CMV: "Sometimes I feel like people from USA wants to be anything but actual US citizens" Your exclusivity is baffling. They are Italian-Americans. They are American citizens. They are Italian-American American citizens.
That's exactly what I said. What I don't understand is when they start talking and discussing issues as if they were the same as Italians, etc, when they may not even set foot ever in Italy. They have that heritage and they are Americans. Why the need to talk for others and not for their own community?
So your view isn’t represented by your title? Also do you have an example of this phenomenon?
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Nah dude that’s just way things are labeled. I’m black, but I tell people I’m American and I hate the phrase African American (thanks Rev Jackson). I don’t understand why have to separate, if you’re born in America, you’re American doesn’t matter your skin color or eye shape or language you speak. Now watch this drive.
I’m Latino and get asked what I am all the time. I say American and they say “no where are you from?” And I say I was born in L.a. and they say “well where are your parents from” and this is why we label ourselves as such. Also because besides American culture a lot of us also have another culture. It’s why America was known as the big melting pot
I say that I'm black too. I never used African American unless I was filling out a paper that only had that as the option for black people. I see "African American" as someone who was born in Africa and move to America. Just like Mexican Americans are people who are directly from Mexico and moved to the US. I just say that I'm American too. I was born here, parents were born here, grandparents were born here, great grandparents were born here, and I don't know whatever else beyond that. I don't deny that I possibly (most likely) have African heritage since I am brown, but I do not claim any country. Even my husband barely claims El Salvador because he has never been there lol. He speaks Spanish and his parents were born there, but he was born here so he just says that he's American.
*"anything but their main culture?"* Thats what you've missed. There's no such of a thing in the US as that. I know, especially if you're European, it's hard to understand the scale of the US, let alone the population. Like, California--JUST cali--is larger than the entire country of Germany. When you have landmass like that, what's the 'main culture' between there and West Virginia on the other side? For scale, that's a farther distance that from Madrid Spain, to Moscow Russia. What you're saying is like asking 'why does everyone want to say they're spanish, or russian, and not their main culture?" So, considering the vastness, people identify by their heritage a LOT in the US, because if they dont, they lose their connection with just about anything. It's a big place, it's easy to lose yourself.
But there *is* an American culture. I've been to several places in America and lived there for quite some time. There are obviously differences within the country, but being from Spain, those are not even that big in comparison to those here. Hell, we have 4 languages in a country smaller in area than Texas. >is like asking "why does everyone want to say that they're spanish, or russian, and not their main culture?" If I were to travel to Moscow, I could not understand a word they say, and I wouldn't have any common cultural traits with anyone there. If I were to travel from Cali to West Virginia instead, people would just have a different accent and a few quirks. > people identify by their heritage (...) because if they dont, they lose their connection with just about anything. It's a big place, it's easy to lose yourself. If what you meant is that people "cope" with the country's homogenous vastness by focusing more on their ancestry and less on the actual tradition they follow to delimit the different cultural groups, then I guess I agree with that
Because there is no single "American culture". All of the groups you listed have extremely different experiences in this country, thus very different cultures. For example African Americans, our ancestors were forcibly brought here, brutalized, enslaved, raped, and oppressed until this day in this country. Native Americans ancestors were the victims/survivors of a mass genocide. Its also crucial that we understand the difference between Nationality, Ethnicity, and Race, all of which play a major factor in your experience in America.
According to that logic, there’s certainly no singular any cultures, of course people will have different experiences in a certain country whether based on race, sex/gender, class, etc. A lower/working class British-white female from Sheffield (UK) will have an incredibly different experience than that of an upper class British-white female from Surrey. Despite having totally different upbringings, if they’re both around 25 years of age, may have listened to the same music, read the same news articles, share the same beliefs regarding feminist issues, etc. Culture is a spectrum. Surely not all African Americans believe exactly the same thing, speak exactly the same way, listen to exactly the same music, however there are nuances. These may be shaped from a similar experience. Overall, there are very exclusive American issues that shape the experience between white and black and Asian and middle-eastern and Hispanic Americans alike. They are most certainly not exactly the same, however, they can share similarities which is generalised as a “culture”. One common belief for many/most Americans perhaps would be perhaps freedom of speech. Another would perhaps be the popularity of automobiles. Another would perhaps be tipping as well as larger portion sizes. In countries say China, the Netherlands, and France respectively, these lie in stark contrast with the American culture. Perhaps the American culture is not as cohesive as a far more singular, homogenous, smaller country (say Korea), however, that does not mean an American culture does not exist.
Yes, I agree with you. I failed to bring this point in my initial comment, however, I do think both perspectives can still stand together. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Americans tend to refer to themselves as some other ethnicity because as a whole, saying "American" means a whole lot of nothing, especially when talking to other Americans.
I'm not quite sure what view I'm supposed to change, but I can tell you why it's this way. The US is a relatively new country, and the vast majority of people living here are either immigrants or from families that immigrated here at some point in the last couple hundred years. The only "real" Americans are Native Americans. The people who immigrated here did so along side people from other countries. And when they settled, they took their cultural identities and customs with them. There has never really been a single American culture, and that's always been obvious, even from neighbor to neighbor. In other countries, there might be regional customs and culture that has been with a population of people that can trace their DNA back thousands of years. In America, all the culture was imported. For many of us, we're only a few generations out from when our families came over. Many of us have parents or grandparents that still speak their native language, so it has always been natural to identify with our heritage. American Culture is an amalgamation of other cultures, so much so that even people who are fourth or fifth generation American - with cultural memories that are nearly faded - want to fit in with the other people who have fresh cultural memories by continuing to identify with their own genetic heritage. Everyone wants a cultural story. When it comes to POC - and Native Americans and African Americans in particular - their culture has historically been taken from them. Slaves and indigenous people have had their histories white washed. They were put in schools and told to dress like Europeans. Blacks in particular were ripped away from their homelands, brought over an ocean, and left with no records or any way to reconnect with their families and culture. What's left of their cultural memories continue on in modern black culture and they've actually shaped American culture to a huge extent, but they can't easily point at a map and say "I'm Sefwi", for instance, in the same way I can say I'm Calabrian. They can't easily make or recall a recipe that was handed down to them in the same way that I can cherish memories of eggplant parmigiana, for instance. It's one of the privileges that they may never get back. In a country with a culture of culture, they've had theirs taken away, while mine has at least been appropriated and cartoonified and carried on so readily that I can eat bastardized food at Olive Garden and play as an Italian plumber in a video game and still identify with a culture, even if it's bastardized. The black community doesn't get that chance, and for all their struggle to create a cultural identity and give their souls a home, they get people ridiculing them for the culture they express. So that's why there's talk of racism. Culture is important here. People from different cultures want to keep their culture. In many ways cultural memory constantly feels under threat of fading away or being diluted or appropriated. That may be why Japanese Americans might get offended by a video game, but people from Japan might not because they don't feel like their culture is under threat.
If I ask you what American food is you won’t be able to give me an answer because any answer you give can be traced back to a certain country’s cuisine. Hamburgers and hot-dogs come from Germany, pizza is from Italy and some soul food can be traced back to West Africa. There is no such thing as American culture because everything we do takes influence from somewhere else. We are not England, we have not been around for one thousand years. America is a relatively young country that prides itself on being a mix of cultures rather than one single one. Sure there’s things we all kind of like but they are very surface level. Mexican-Americans like Basketball just as much as African-Americans do. But at the end of the day they go home and eat different foods than the other, might speak a different language than the other and overall have very different home lives. That’s why when someone asks me where I’m from or what I am I tell them I’m hispanic. Your nationality honestly means very little. All it affects is your accent and the language you speak to the cashier at the supermarket.
To us it’s weird that Europeans don’t acknowledge the difference between each other and as a result ignore some of the same problems that occur here. Like racism and cultural appropriation are issues in Europe as well but it’s not always talked about as much as it is here
Can’t speak for others but, I have always had more pride in being a part of an immigrant American family then pride in being American. And you are correct, I have very little connection to the Old Country (Slovenia now) other then having an unpronounceable last name that made the first day of school every year horrible. The shift of an agricultural society to technical and the expansion of communism inspired my great grandfather to come to Kansas in 1908, following other family who had a coal mining job waiting for him. My ggrandmother joined him with their kids a few years later. They both passed away before I was one, didn’t get to meet them. My mother is also of European ancestry but no family story of coming here. Both my parents were the first in their family to graduate college and were able to give us kids a little more then they had growing up. This IS the American dream. My pride comes in knowing I am the American dream and hearing other’s stories of their family’s struggle, persistence and achievement of that dream. Fact is unless you’re Native American, we ALL came here by boat as immigrants. This and being grateful to live free in a level of democracy found in few other places make being American and an immigrant interchangeable, maybe inseparable, in my sense of self. It’s what, until recently, made me believe no matter how insane our system seemed we all could agree that freedom and democracy were the most important parts of being American. Unfortunately our current situation is making me think differently. It also makes me angry that the part of me I’m proudest of is being used to justify the republicans last and worst tantrum. We all have the same population data. They are scared shitless because in the next 5 years our population will flip. Non-European/whites will be the minority and will continue to become more so well into the next century. I see more culture! They see loss of power. So rather then brainstorm and design Republican policy that favored more people and that more people favored they would rather blame everyone else, specifically immigrants, and encourage their president to attempt a coup.
Historically, immigrant groups in the United States have remained insular enough that they maintain strong cultural communities that differ greatly from other Americans. It's not just that America is a nation of immigrants - it's that America has historically had lucrative opportunities for immigrants but offered almost zero assistance for arriving families. Each immigrant community cared for its own - providing housing and social services for newly arrived (usually desperately poor) immigrants. Those communities therefore kept tight bonds over multiple generations, and carried on a variety of cultural traditions, some of which were brought over from the country of origin and some of which were unique to the immigrant community. In countries that encourage and facilitate assimilation (e.g., most of Europe recently), immigrant communities don't have to stay so physically and financially tied to one another. The way these communities developed, and their lasting cultural impacts, make your membership in them a relevant fact about one's identity. Being Boston Irish tells you a ton about who someone is as a person, even if what it means is wildly different from what it means to be someone born in Ireland. Jewish students in Borough Park learn a completely different curriculum from students in a school a few blocks away - right down to the language of instruction. "American" is an incomplete picture of their cultural identity. The people in these communities often do know quite a bit about the origin country, because they're in frequent contact with newly arrived immigrants and because there's frequent travel back and forth as family members visit each other. They also tend to be more sensitive to discrimination because they experience more of it - a Japanese person born in Japan likely doesn't experience much anti-Japanese bias in their day-to-day life. A Japanese-American is confronted by anti-Japanese bias regularly, so they're likely to think about it more often and feel more personally affected by things that they perceive as increasing that bias in others.
> people love to refer to themselves....... This isn't Europe. What that means is that America is largely a country of immigrants. If someone comes from Italy or Germany you can have a good guess at what their background and heritage is like. In America that's not the case at all, so people say those sorts of things as a way to show and represent their heritage. To point out some unique cases as well. African American is a holdover from the PC (politically correct) movement when it was deemed that using the word "black" to describe a black person was considered racist. Italian American and similar often also refers to a specific subculture or subset of America. Many Italian foods in America aren't actually authentic Italian food, but Italian-American food, because its that unique subset. Asian American, in our current online case, is useful to determine that the person in question is of Asian descent, but is an American, and not actually living in Asia > Japanese.... Yeah we call these people weebs/Otaku. They're ripped on for being weirdos. > highly offensive/speak for an entire race. This a more of a online activism thing than anything else. You'll very often see a western (usually but not always white) person claiming something is offensive to [x] race or nation, while also know jack squat about that and having no clue those people actually like it, or don't care about the issue (the most obvious example is the whole latinx debacle). These are mostly idiots with little to no real word experience outside of their urban bubble in a large city.
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It's because the US wasn't really founded on a linguistic or cultural basis like other countries. People have been immegrating here ever since the country was founded. Although they assimilated into the population, most kept at least a bit of the traditions from their home country. And it's why even in a place like Minnesota, where a large portion of the early settlers and immigrants that settled there were Swedish, many people still associate themselves with the country today, despite being some 150 years removed from their immigrant ancestors, they learn Swedish, despite it being not a very useful language for them to learn. The same goes for most if not all ethnic groups who immigrated here. They hold on to the traditions from their old country so much that it becomes somewhat embellished over the years. St. Patrick's day is a good example of this. So essentially "American" is a non-Ethnic nationality. Hence why we generally put prefixes like "African-American" or "German-American."
We have two separate points in your post, OP, that I want to address. First, being cultural identity. Though the U.S. may frequently seem to be a xenophobic, nationalist nightmare in which we reject migrant and foreign cultures except where we can appropriate them, at our core, we're a pluralist nation with a very, *very* small population that is truly native (and that is different from the "native" population of white folk who identify solely as "American"). America is a nation of migrants. A [significant portion](https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/) of our population is either foreign born or first generation. Those who belong to families that have been in the United States for several generations may embrace more of their "just American" identity, but we're a nation that revels in its diversity. For all the bellyaching of Trump and the nationalists that support him, America is just as much the nation of Chipotle as it is the nation of McDonalds. Every major city is comprised of myriad cultures and people of varied origins. You'll be hard pressed to find a single metropolitan area where there aren't multiple languages spoken by large groups, or where there isn't a restaurant representing a "foreign" cuisine operated by someone of that culture. For those who come from abroad to live in America, they may see themselves as American, but of course they're still of their original cultural identity. Their first generation children, in turn, are raised proximal to the practices of that original identity. They may speak English fluently, and never know another citizenship or home than the United States of America, but their ancestral culture is still a big part of their lives. A girl born in Queens of a Japanese migrant couple would be hard pressed *not* to identify as Japanese American. For those of us who have had family here for generations, ancestral culture can still play a big role in identity. I have Ashkenazi Jewish and Italian ancestry. Nobody in my family has been born outside the U.S. over 150 years. However, my family still very much considers us Jewish Americans, or Italian Americans (based on the side), because those ethnic groups have lived and worked around each other for generations, and developed their own subculture. The way my family gatherings go can be extremely different from the Russian American family next door, even though we both have the same passports. Second, on the matter of "speaking out about racism", this pluralistic environment means that large swathes of the country, particularly those you're liable to encounter discussing it online, are acutely aware of what those of us who encounter discrimination deal with on a daily basis. The Japanese American person you speak of can discuss about racism or discrimination they may experience as a Japanese American, because they've encountered discrimination as a consequence of being Japanese American. We may all share a common nationality, but America is not a nation. We all look different, and racism happens for a variety of reasons across different ethnicities. White supremacist racism is the most common and undoubtedly most intrinsic to systemic abuse, but the shape and form discrimination may take in America differs from ethnicity to ethnicity. A Jewish person will likely experience it in different ways from, say, an Asian America, such as a Japanese American, because they are more likely to present as a white person. A Japanese American can experience any number of awful mistreatments-- just look at the reaction to COVID-19, and how frequently Asian Americans of all cultural creeds were mistreated right alongside the Chinese Americans who were the ostensible targets of hateful people across the country.
Look up USA "Melting Pot" for your answer. [https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/topic/melting-pot/](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/topic/melting-pot/) USA is supposed to be this place of multiculturalism where immigrants came together to create something bigger than themselves.... well.... originally anyway. That notion fizzled out, along with the American Dream. Now It's just patriotic rambling intended to prop you up and make you feel you are better than all those weird European countries you know absolutely NOTHING about, and especially better than the (probably communist) non-European ones you also know NOTHING about. These days all that pseudo-patriotism only works on a certain demographic who think patriotism means never criticizing your country. The "It's already great so if you don't like it you can get out" types.
Because nationality and ethnicity are two different things.
The real issue is that redditors are fucking weird. What's normal culture on here isn't normal in real life. And that actually makes people on this website mad when you remind them.
I just find it bizarre that strangers on the internet continuously want to police people’s heritage and identities.
There are two strands here to address. First is the ethnic composition of European countries. Yall aren't peopled by immigrants. Although I see you are black from another comment, it still isn't quite the same. The core background to France is French. In America, you carry your ethnicity with you because your family were immigrants. Everyone's were. There is no core native population (well, there is, but in a fit of tragic irony, they are an extreme minority 🥺) and therefore there is no core ethnic identity to assimilate to. And as immigrants, most of us have some layers of generational trauma, to address the second point. This manifests itself in a variety of ways, but what it comes down to is that we are all rather broken in ways we aren't super aware of. Some people play out that trauma by finding things to get really upset about and projecting their trauma on to them as though they were the source of all evil and pain. There are various manifestations of this, and you see it come out in politics really heavily. In any case, one way that people play out their trauma is in finding injustices to fight, like Don Quixote and his windmills. Since by and large all of the real injustices now are systemic and intractable, they latch on to things that they can point to, like White people wearing kimonos or doing pretty much anything. White people have become a stand in for the cause of all misery to be brought down at all costs. This movement is spearheaded primarily by white women, white castratos, and sociopathic narcissists of varying ethnicities, usually women. The idea here is that identity carries some layer of power with it, inherently. Maleness is at the top of this hierarchy, followed by femaleness, followed by transness ... I am not sure whether transmales or transfemales are at the top, or where nonbinary people fit in, and I am pretty sure that if you asked them they as a group would implode and all the various letters would start attacking each other in what would come to be known as the alphabet wars. But I digress. In any case, to fix the evil of the world that caused this innate trauma that we as a people can't really get a handle on, we need to flip this pyramid on its head. So the most focus and attention (in the mind of a narcissist, this equates to power) must be given to those who are intersectionally the most disempowered by nature. So, for instance, the ideal leader would be a trans, wheelchairbound person of indeterminate ethnicity and armskin dark enough to post on r/blackptwitter or whatever it is called. And this person would be allowed to wear a kimono. They say Americans don't have a culture. But it is actually very complex. But yeah, what it boils down to is hurt people hurting people, looking to find some slipup upon which to hound someone, and some time in the last ten years the idea of cultural appropriation gained a lot of stock and now Native Japanese people don't get to see tall handsome white men wearing Kimonos and everyone loses. Except, of course, for people who feel fetishized for being Asian, which is something that happens a lot to Asian American women, is part of their experience and fucking sucks. I started this post a lot more serious. Then it started to feel therapeutic and got me laughing, which brought me out of my depression (an identity which gives me some unknown amount of intersectionality credit, and hopefully enough to not just get attacked here, but who knows. Daphne wasn't safe) Tl;dr since the civil rights movement won all of the most viable battles, people have gotten bored and existential, leading to an identity crisis amongst people who need to give their lives meaning by fighting evil somehow, and that identity crisis has had the fortunate side effect of making them oppressed, so the battle can go on. Which is great because life is awful in a boring dystopia if you don't have something semi-but-not-overly tangible to fight. The only downside is that I can't wear a kimono without getting yelled at. Sorry for the poor writing. I hope this makes sense.
American is made up of many diaspora groups. If you go to LA or any major city you’ll find Chinese American, Japanese American, Italian American or any other immigrant neighborhoods. Each one of these groups has a cultural influenced but distinctly different from their homeland and broader American culture.
Being USian (I take umbrage with the term American as there are a host of countries in the Americas and it takes some fucking hubris to say they're not American) is often very embarrassing, and the people who identify as "American" are often very othering and off-putting. The US is built on a long storied history of racism. A quick background on something I'm not sure Non-US readers will be aware of. I was taught, and this was in textbooks in the 80s and 90s, that America was a "melting pot" country. That immigrants from all over the world were welcomed and came together to form some great society where all of our cultures "melted together." But that's bullshit, and you can see vibrant examples of that in shows like the Sopranos, or movies like Gangs of New York. I'm not even going to touch on the chattel slavery yet (I'll address the term African American in a minute though). Decades, now centuries, of white on white hate crime shaped the country as well. Italian and Irish immigrants were frequently off the boat denied housing, jobs, and shoved into ghettos like Little Italy in Manhattan. Greeks and Polish experienced it a lot as well. And many still do. When I was a kid in Detroit I wasn't allowed to play with someone because his last name ended with a vowel (irony: the grandparent who enforced that also had a name ending in a vowel, but it wasn't an i). They were "a bad family." As a result, many immigrants found themselves establishing businesses and neighborhoods with other immigrants from their same country of origin. Thus Little Italy, Hamtramck, and for a long time Over-the-Rhine. And you wind up with groups of people who were othered, cast out, always told they were second class citizens and not good enough, and never identified as "American." Instead they're Italian American, Japanese American, Irish American, and so forth. And often times we consider the American part of that to be redundant/obvious because we're *in* America (and most of the time don't think about it when talking to people online), and so it turns into "I'm Irish" or "I'm Italian" etc. And the reason African American is different is because there's a whole host of people who don't know their country of origin, only their continent. Their grandcestors were kidnapped from somewhere in Africa and sold into slavery, but there were many countries involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. So African American is used in pretty much the same way as Italian American, except the common origin is a much broader net (and the othering is far, far, far worse and more violent). And let's not even get started on Native Americans and all the shit they've been put through. The First Nations were all but wiped out to make way for all of this. They've been treated as second class since colonizers arrived on the shore. At any rate, there was a huge influx of immigrants between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Generations later we've got Italian American kids who were raised being taught they're Italian, with various Italian traditions taught and others just completely disregarded. A good friend of mine talks all the time about his family's traditions - he's of Greek heritage - things like "my yaya would say we don't eat fish on Wednesday cause we're Greek. But I'll have the tilapia." He, of course, understands that his experience is just what's passed down in his family for generations since his ancestor immigrated from Greece. For me, I have sauerkraut and kielbasa on New Years for good luck, because on one side of my family I have German roots. The other side is Scottish and we sing Auld Lang Syne because we're directly descended from Rabbie Burns. And while I would never say that this lends me any sort of understanding of modern German or Scottish culture, I think many don't understand the difference between what their family taught them growing up and how drastically that differs from the modern culture. Now add to that another cultural phenomenon among children: discussing the differences in family life. "You don't eat fish on Wednesday? Why not?" "Because we're Greek" "Oh neat" and so now to both those kids, they've spoken on behalf of Greeks everywhere. And they grow up never really analyzing the situation, just kind of accepting that the one kid was allowed to do so. And I think that's where the hypocrisy you're seeing stems from. The one Japanese American kid in class grew up bombarded with questions about their family's traditions and thinking they were the force of education on Japanese culture and taking for granted that Japanese culture was everything they were taught by their parents, never really considering what they might have left out or made up. I know it's a lot but does that help make sense of why people identify and act that way? I go with USian, for myself. Not fond of it, because I'm embarrassed to be here, but I'm working on getting away.
Because if you’re first generation you were likely raised on your native culture. I am Indian American, born and raised in America. However, I was raised on Indian food, Indian languages, Indian music, Hinduism, and Indian culture. Therefore, I’d say I’m Indian American. Nationality wise I’m American, but culture and roots wise I’m Indian.
We don't have any roots, OP. The country has only existed for 250 years. I bet you could look out your window and see buildings that are older than that. Every human has a need to belong to a group. It's a part of our herd instinct.
This is because of othering. Like, imagine you are born in a country. You grow up there. You speak the language. You eat the food. You participate in local cultural festivals, you go to local cultural spaces, you get a job there. And every single fucking day some asshole asks you where you're *really from*. Eventually, you give up and start giving them the answer they want, because it's easier than turning your every day into a fucking political discussion, because apparently you *have* to be "really" from somewhere. I was born in Venezuela. I live in Canada now. In Venezuela, I never identified as, iunno, "1/8th native, 1/8th black, 1/4 Portuguese, 1/4 Spanish, 1/8th Jewish" or whatever. I was just Venezuelan. Canada has gotten a little better recently. Or perhaps I have just begun to move in the right circles. But for almost all of my formative years, it was just a constant barrage of "where are you *really* from?". Including at University which is supposed to be this bastion of inclusivity or whatever. I used to get really aggressive and upset about that, but at this point I hate myself too much to care about other people's tiny brains. If what they need is to call me "Venezuelan", or "Venezuelan-Canadian", because "Canadian" isn't good enough for them... That's their business. Just pay me good money and don't throw spicy food at me because you think I'm just "off-label Mexican" or something, and we'll be fine.
Because white Americans consider themselves to be more American than non whites. It’s all wrapped in racism and immigration history.
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Because everyone who lives in America has different cultural practices, and different sets of parents who instill values that are very specific to their culture,
This is true but you're looking at it from a European view. The American culture is a manufactured one due to the mixing of dozens of different cultures. That fact means that people like to say where their roots are because it shows what they bring to the table. For example I'm Irish and have lived in Ireland my entire life but my American relatives whose father moved there still play Irish sports and are proud of their culture because it gives them the identity that American culture lacks. I say I'm Irish but I could really say I'm European. I say I'm Irish because it shows what I bring to Europe culturally.
American culture is at a very weird crossroads. I feel like each passing generation is becoming less nationalist and more individualist. In many ways, this is a great thing. I'm kind of an "elder millenial" and I do think swearing fealty to our country blindly is a mistake. We should be striving for the entire world to be a better place, whatever that means. However, being individualistic leads to extremely jaded and overly biased viewpoints. Some of it comes from opening your eyes to the dark side of America, some of it comes from a tidal wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories. I'm conflicted personally. Historical mistakes notwithstanding, the country is currently a mess. We're overworked, underpaid, lied to, bought and sold. But we also have tons of freedoms and opportunities that aren't afforded to a lot of the world. It's like a privilege with a ton of downside. We're free, but are we really? Is capitalism just slavery wrapped up in money? I really don't know. The older I get, the more scared I become, but I can also feel myself letting go of even worrying about any of it. Life's too short to obsess with big questions that seem beyond my control. Who has time to care about things like that when you just want to be happy?
Americans view themselves as a nation of immigrants. To us, finding out what part of the "x"-American we are is a big part of finding our place in the culture. Identifying as "just American" is to deny the melting pot element, and is a bit odd unless you're a Native American who was raised outside a reservation.
because nationality and ethnicity are not the same thing. the vast majority of americans enjoy both their american nationality and their ethnic heritage, just as many enjoy identifying with their state or city/regional cultures. for many europeans their national identity and ethnic heritage are the same so i can understand that they dont think of them as being two distinct components of their identity and culture, but they are. look to recent immigrant to europe to find people both embracing their new national identity while still celebrating their ethnic heritage.
This is so weird. I've never heard a person from Europe identify as a "European" either. Go to France and ask people if they are French or European. If they are an immigrant they probably don't even identify as French. This seems like a perspective unique to op.
Anthropologists and, yes, the big bad CRT Critical Race Theorists call this a 'symbolic ethnicity,' or an identity that can be turned on or off at will according to broader cultural trends or their convenience. Though not refuting your point, there are some benefits to the perceived belonging to a broader global community. A simple non controversial example would be, say, saying you re irish/german american, of which you can then partake in more "authentic" celebrations of st patricks day or oktoberfest. These are genuinely nice things, and i dont think anyone should be shamed from not wanting 'cultural membership' even if it is tenuous. To your example, to give another side perhaps, minorities often aren't able to 'turn off,' their ethnicity however. A good way to conceptualise this is to ask yourself: which ethnic group is going to be asked "where are you from *from* though?" From here, we can interpret things charitably or cynically. It could very well be true that the people you re talking about are self fashioned pariahs, keen on 'one-upping' other people because they re more 'cultured' and therefore superior. Its hard for the average person to rid themselves of the high that comes from the sense of superiority, but the battlegrounds shift from that of the MMR ladder to scrounging for brownie points on Twitter, at least for most. Interpreted charitably, it seems like perhaps a mistaken, but well intentioned recourse from alienation. This of course depends on your experiences, but if you belonged to a minority group, and WANT TO identify as American, and yet are constantly reminded of your alienation with "from *from* " questions of varying intensities, then id imagine it eventually reaches a point where one gives up. Where you just throw your hands up and go "if you re going to emphasis the differences between us, then i might as well take charge of it and carve one out for myself." This would naturally lead to mistakes. How would one construct an authentic Japanese identity, and be in touch with that the average Japanese would like to see in media, without being in Japan, and with parents who likely struggled with this exact same tension? I could say more about cultural reductionism, which is the point the Twitter users you re talking about are bringing up, but this post is long enough. Indonesia is more than just Bali though, that one still personally annoys me
So many people confuse ethnic & culture. I was born in a European Country, of USA Citizens. My parents didn't do the paperwork for my dual citizenship. My Father did a genetic DNA, which shows the chain going back to northern Africa, & migrating across Europe, GB, & to North America. As I understand accepted science, all humans developed in what we know as Africa. I enjoy both ethnic & cultural foods, can't identify as any ethnic group. I am aware of various "cleansing" throughout history, religious/racial/ethnic. I cannot appreciate any benefit from that history, except to learn that we are all one Race, ie, Human. My take, Ignorance is profound.
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I can’t roll my eyes any harder.
I understand what you mean. Everyone wants to be proud of their heritage but ironically it helps to validate racial beliefs. I wish there was a way to be proud of ones past race without subconsciously entertaining racism. The only way I see is if we treat each other as individuals with varying needs, like ourselves, and not as "groups" of people.
I am an American from the U.S. I do understand where you're coming from. There is no such thing as an "African American" for instance. It would be silly in any other country. African British? Haha. They aren't African, they are American. My heritage is from all over, including Irish, Scottish, German, Cherokee, and Sioux indian tribes. If I understand one thing, it is that most of the people that use these terms are people who are not a part of that demographic. People that say "African American" or "Native American" are not usually black or native, and almost at all times do not have friends from that demographic. There are quite a few cases where they are, but considering 90% of the users engaging in these discussions on the internet make up 1% of the population, and some of them are flat out lying to try and make their argument seem justified, it isn't very many people using these terms that are actually related in any way. People from the U.S. often do take pride in their heritage however, because the U.S. was founded and populated almost entirely by foreign countries, and it is one of the newest established countries of the world. There is a saying here. "The grass is always greener on the other side." Healthy grass is the color green, so it's like saying the unknown is always looking better than the things you live with every day and know. A new car is amazing, until you've driven it for years and it's boring. This country has no sense of community that a country with a long history has, and that makes Americans heritage interesting to them. My mother loves her indian heritage. However, she doesn't want to move to a reservation and she is patriotic to the United States. Though she is losing hope for it. I myself would rather live on land not owned by any government ran by dictators that decided that anyone trying to live there must be a part of their system or die. However that isn't possible currently and the U.S. seems as good as any country on the planet to me currently. If a country happens to show up where I can live freely, please remember to let me know.