# Are you ethnic? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 23, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086 "2020-07-23T07:53:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![kswiss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ccd318/32.png) [@kswiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kswiss)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2020, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/141 "2020-07-28T13:56:03Z")
Any Asians here? I had a a Japanese-American friend in college. He didn’t like the whole asian thing. He went to Japanese language courses as a kid (he hated it), the family was active in the local Japanese-American community. He was expected to marry a nice Japanese girl (which he did) But he would get quite annoyed if anyone equated him as vaguely Asian, and certainly not Chinese/korean ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2020, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/142 "2020-07-28T15:57:21Z")
> [@kswiss](#): > > But he would get quite annoyed if anyone equated him as vaguely Asian, and certainly not Chinese/korean Is that because the Japanese regard themselves as superior to other Asians? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/143 "2020-07-29T02:46:16Z")
Like all real Americans, pa PREE kah ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/144 "2020-07-29T04:19:56Z")
The OP has been [banned](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-mourn-the-death-of-olivia-de-havilland/916455/162). If you click on kswiss’ avatar a couple of times, it shows as “suspended” because there is no “banned”. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/145 "2020-07-30T21:59:11Z")
> [@kswiss](#): > > Yes we all came out of the same valley in Africa. Every human is related. Wonder if I could use that to claim non white status … [joke] > [@kswiss](#): > > I was more interested in stories about people making their grandmothers recipe and such. Well, sort of. My Dad’s side of the family is Mayflower combined with Dutch [Nieu Amsterdam] - been here since whites pretty much showed up to screw with the natives. Mom, she was born Amish and was disowned when she left, however she cooked her familial heritage recipes along with learning English [to Amish, English is whomever isn’t Amish] foods. So, I make a heritage recipe of hers that has been more or less local to the area since they started mining salt prehistorially [one can trace cultural changes by seeing what we put in compared to random migrations of influences, and trade routes] and I learned to make stollen, used to be able to pull dough paper thin to make strudel, can cut spaetzel with the best of them, and my sauerbraten and hasanpfeffer are quite excellent, so I would say that yes I consider myself American of British and German ancestry. Though on my dad’s side, one thread was traced to the late 1100s in a sort of kid swapping series of marriages going back generations [Dutch to Flemish to Alsatian to French as treaty needs pushed. The Dutch part of his lineage is that thread.] ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/146 "2020-07-31T00:51:15Z")
> [@](#): > > How do you pronounce Paprika? Accent on the first syllable. Ends in “sh.” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/147 "2020-07-31T03:10:05Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Accent on the first syllable. Ends in “sh.” You’re not from around here, are you? ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/148 "2020-07-31T15:51:24Z")
Heh, about the only thing my mom passed down was the names of foods. 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/149 "2020-07-31T19:49:32Z")
I kind of wonder how many generations need to pass before someone stops being an “X-American” and just ends up a generic American mutt like a lot of us here. I mean, I know where my ancestors came from (England, Germany, France, Scotland, Ireland in that order), even if the most recent ones that I know of immigrated in the 1840s. So I guess I could call myself a sixth or seventh generation German-American on my paternal grandmother’s side, and more vague/generically American everywhere else. Even there, no actual cultural heritage has made its way down, at least nothing recognizable anyway. I think it would be absurd to call myself a German-American considering all that. I’m not German- I’m American. Or maybe Texan, which seems culturally and historically separate enough to count as separate from American. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/150 "2020-07-31T22:32:42Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I kind of wonder how many generations need to pass before someone stops being an “X-American” and just ends up a generic American mutt like a lot of us here. Pretty variable, I’m sure. I think it depends on the size and concentration of the immigrant community. Like I said my father’s 2nd generation was the fracture point for their community. I mean I have one aunt on that side who ended up as a cloistered Orthodox nun. But she got there only late in life through a very circuitous route that included a master’s degree in an unrelated field and a multi-year marriage. At that she ended up in a similar, but different Greek Orthodox tradition in another country. Even in its heyday my father’s generation’s Serbian community wasn’t quite large enough to have it own Orthodox church - instead a priest came by once a month or so. When my culturally Christian grandmother briefly wanted to school my irreligious father in religion, she tried sending him to a nearby Lutheran church (that didn’t last long). And instead of actively raising their kids to speak Serbo-Croatian, my grandmother’s generation used it more to talk behind their kid’s backs 😉. It’s not surprising the sense of tight ethnicity waned, especially as they were white folks who could assimilate pretty seamlessly in urban areas. Meanwhile my mother’s side talked about ethnic background quite often. And everyone had a different opinion of what it consists of 🙂. I’ve heard variously German, French, English, Welsh, ‘Black Dutch’ (variously defined, including one person who claimed it was code for Jewish ). They like chatting about it because it is a bit of an American conversational hobby. But none of them really know proportions or history and have zero connections to any related Old World culture. But that’s my family’s very white experience. I’m sure it would be somewhat different if my father’s side of the family was Cuban instead of Serbian. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/151 "2020-08-02T17:02:03Z")
Many second generation Canadians will haughtily respond “I am Canadian” if asked about ethnicity. People from a few countries usually mention it, though, even if their grandparents came to Canada. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/152 "2020-08-03T01:28:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I kind of wonder how many generations need to pass before someone stops being an “X-American” and just ends up a generic American mutt like a lot of us here. As mentioned above, definitely variable. I doubt my kids will refer to themselves as “dash American” of any kind. (I was the first generation born here.) My wife is Slovak/German - American, but the German side goes back a number of generations, and the Slovak side I believe is two generations. She doesn’t speak either of the languages, neither do her parents. So, it’s unlikely their ethnic identity will be passed on much past their generation, but they’re mutts. Meanwhile, my cousins from a paternal uncle, all three of them, very Polish. Born here just like me, but all three married Polish-born spouses and are into the Polish-American “scene” (yes, such a thing exists here in Chicago). All three definitely strongly identify as Polish/Polish-American, so that identity will go down at least another generation. If they continue marrying in the community, add a generation. If they branch off, we’re getting into “mutt” American territory. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/153 "2020-08-03T12:07:35Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Meanwhile, my cousins from a paternal uncle, all three of them, very Polish. Born here just like me, but all three married Polish-born spouses and are into the Polish-American “scene” (yes, such a thing exists here in Chicago). All three definitely strongly identify as Polish/Polish-American, so that identity will go down at least another generation. If they continue marrying in the community, add a generation. If they branch off, we’re getting into “mutt” American territory. This is really the whole story of this thread in a nutshell. People remain hyphenated as long as they choose to be insular. The big Italian influx to the US northeast was in the last of the 1800s & beginning of the 1900s. Now, 100+ years later, some of that diaspora has been totally integrated for a generation or more and other parts are still largely insular. Ref [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discrimination-in-the-us-how-bad-did-the-irish-have-it/915769) on the history of Irish vs Black discrimination, which tells a similar tale. What this suggests for the future is that groups that choose (or are forced) to stay insular will have slow or no integration while groups that choose to assimilate will lose the hyphenation in a generation or two at most. Here in Miami we see on the one hand a distinct Cuban society that mostly sticks together like @pulykamell’s Chicago Polish community, and a broader Latin American immigrant mass that’s assimilating at high speed. Unfortunately what this suggests for the ultimate hyphenated group, the African-Americans, is that until we’re all a uniform shade of cafe mocha they’re going to struggle being just Americans. It will happen, but it’ll take a couple hundred years since collectively we’ve just barely gotten started on the blending process. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/154 "2020-08-03T18:25:17Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > In fact, I base my cultural identity more on being a Chicagoan than an American. For day to day things, Chicago takes more energy than American. For my ethnicity, I pick [Chirish](https://www.etsy.com/market/chirish_chicago). It’s this sort of Irishness that permeates Chicago in the absence of another background. We don’t have any family back home in the old country but we identify as Catholic Irish. It’s nothing much, corned beef on Saint Patrick’s Day, watching Irish dancing in variety shows and such. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/155 "2020-08-03T23:22:43Z")
> [@kswiss](#): > > I was more interested in stories about people making their grandmothers recipe and such. You might get more of the answer you want by asking how people preserve their ‘heritage’ for future generations. Here is how I do it: start asking questions of older family now. Write down their memories and recipes now. Share those with future generations. Keep telling their stories and keeping the old traditions they tell you about. FWIW, I think you are the one not understanding the right interpretation of the question _as you asked it_, not the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2020, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/156 "2020-08-04T01:40:46Z")
( **kswiss** has been banned) ~Max ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2020, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086/157 "2020-08-10T19:33:44Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I kind of wonder how many generations need to pass before someone stops being an “X-American” and just ends up a generic American mutt like a lot of us here. > > I mean, I know where my ancestors came from (England, Germany, France, Scotland, Ireland in that order), even if the most recent ones that I know of immigrated in the 1840s. On my dad’s side, I’m very similar to you, except my order of predominance is different (for me, it’s Scotland, England\*. Ireland, Germany). And I have no immigrants on my dad’s side later than the early 1840s. I always considered myself a white mutt on my that side. \*I recently found out I was 5% Cornish. Cool. I loved Cornwall when I was there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-ethnic/916086.md?page=7)