Not a jingoistic thread, just a question. At some point, we all migrated from somewhere to somewhere. I’m the third generation in my family born in the US, but I still relate my heritage to my “people’s” point of origin–German, Italian and Slovak. At some point in history, people from those countries stopped calling themselves Turks or Armenians or wherever they came from and people who migrated to those countries stopped refering to Africa as their “old country” People of most nation have migrated from one point (theoretically from Africa) to somewhere else in the world and eventually identified themselves with their new homelands and, more importantly, or at least interestingly, dropped their identification with their ancestor’s homeland.
Why do you think that hasn’t happened in the US and when, if ever, do you think it will start?
I believe this is far more prevalent in the Northeast and Great Lakes region, where there are still sizable neighborhoods, if not entire cities and towns, dominated by people with roots in one or two “old countries”. When I lived in the Southwest and Texas, the breakdown was basically “Mexicans”, “Americans”, and “miscellaneous recent immigrants from Asia and the Middle East”. Generally, Mexican immigrants and those of Mexican descent were the only ones that made a big deal about their ethnicity. In the Great Lakes region, it’s much more granular, and there’s far more chest puffery about one’s ethnic origins.
Anyhow, around here, it’s the “Big Three” ethnic groups that tend to have the strongest self-identification with an ethnic group: Polish, Italian and Irish. Those with roots in other countries really don’t do the “Yo, I’m [group]” thing even a tenth as much as Poles, Italians or Irish. It’s impossible to find a “Buffalo German” t-shirt, even though they’re really just as numerous as the Poles, Italians or Irish.
For that matter, when did we stop being Africans? If we follow prevailing scientific evidence, we all left there at some point, some more recently than others, and are all, in a sense, African-whatevers.
Since everybody in my lineage that I know anything about firsthand was born in the USA, I contend that my awareness of any other setting is pure hearsay. I’m much more comfortable with the idea that I’m a blend of Alabamian and Tennessean than I am with any foreign country’s influences. My curiosity over which European land my forebears migrated from is just that, a curiosity. I feel no real connections there. I do feel a connection to Alabama and Tennessee, though.
The reason I relate to those states more than the rest of the USA is that that’s where my experiences have been. I feel less affinity for other parts of the country out of pure ignorance about why they are different, where they are. I feel more Southern than American.
I think it is the point that you self-identify as an American, decide to raise your children as Americans, and decide your future is here instead of there. This might take a couple of weeks, it might take a couple of generations.
I think you experience may be a bit atypical. In California, most people I know beyond the second generation strongly identified as Americans and had at most a symbolic bond with any homeland.
America is a pretty exceptional place, because you can do that. I could live in China for decades and never be considered Chinese. But all you have to do to become American is move there and decide you believe in the place.
Since I like clean and tidy answers I’ll say as soon as you obtain citizenship. I’ll consider myself American hopefully next year some time when I apply and hopefully receive American citizenship.
That said I do understand you are talking a little less legal and a little more cultural here. Personally I think if you were born in the United States, or spent your young formative years here you are more American than you realize. Sure, you may still keep the old traditions alive but I bet this person if magically transported to a random spot in the originated country or the United States would be better off in the United States - the customs, attitudes, social structures, etc would be more familiar.
Legally you become American when you become naturalized or if you’re born here.
In practice though there’s more involved than just “showing up.” To be American you need to assimilate into the culture.
Immigrants 100 years ago may have had it easier. Immigration was at an all time high and schools were on a mission to turn out Americans. Teddy Roosevelt was quite keen on it:
Even in those days, when individuals maintained their “otherness” to some degree, they were not accepted. I’m reminded of the famous
A dear friend of mine immigrated to the US from Mexico as a young child. He works as an engineer in a very high tech company in California. He’s surrounded by other engineers and scientists from around the world who came here on work visas and fully intend to stay in the US. Some have already been here more than ten years and still cannot communicate in English. According to him, there are serious problems in the company caused by this failure to communicate - it’s Babel in his workplace. He once said to me, “As an immigrant myself, I never thought I’d say this but why don’t these damn people learn to speak English?!”
So, there’s a lot more to “becoming American” than residence or citizenship alone.
I believe that white Americans are very interested in their ethnic ancestry, and often still identify with it generations after their ancestor immigrated to the new country, because they find belonging to an ethnic group more “interesting” than being merely a white American. Majority cultures are always seen as default with minority cultures compared positively or negatively to them, and fairly or not white American culture is seen as “white bread”, while “ethnic” cultures are seen as tied to interesting food, interesting history, interesting customs, etc. So Americans tend to claim a link to their ethnic ancestry even when there isn’t much left in reality.
Canadians tend to do the same for similar though perhaps slightly different reasons.
And yet we have St Patrick’s day celebrations, Columbus Day (at least east of the Mississippi) celebrates Italian heritage, etc. American’s continue to celebrate their heritage. In fact, “multiculturism” is a celebration of the cultures of our origins. I won’t go as far as to say its uniquely American, but I think it is uniquely emphasized in America.
Several of the above posts kind of missed my point. I am an American without doubt. If I go overseas and someone asks, of course I say I’m an American. However, as demonstrated in the thread mentioned in the OP, people identify their ethnicity as something else whereas a German would say, German, an Italian, Italian, etc. How many generations need to pass before we just plain forget about where our people came from?
Ironically… i just got in from enjoying a solid quiet hour of reading the great Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who discusses this very issue in his latest memoir.
Personally I bristle when I hear someone other than an African-American make some issue with or question the usage thereof. It seems to me to be an issue of attempting to define oneself without that being defined by the majority. Growing up in the Windy City i never thought gee when will these parades end… St Patrick… Columbus… or the extensive Polish celebration when Lech Walesa came. I’m sure that all of my Chicagoans would come off of their ethnic horses to clearly speak that we are Americans. Myself… I think that the duality will always exist. While I’m as American as apple pie (or perhaps cherry) its pretty clear that I’m a black man so my nationality would always be split in two.
St Patrick’s Day seems to be celebrated by a lot of Americans, whether they have Irish ancestors or not. It has become more like National Drinking Party Day. People who don’t have any Irish connections wear green and buttons that say, “Kiss me, I’m Irish” on March 17.
October 12 seems to be commemorated all over the Americas, whether you call it “Columbus Day” or “Día de la Raza”. Although it used to be a general holiday in the US, to keep it at ten holidays per year, most corporations don’t give it as a day off from work. In some other countries it’s still a general holiday though.
Even though I don’t have a drop of Greek, Scots, or Japanese blood, I enjoy going to the local Greek Festival, Highland Games, and Japan Day celebrations. I don’t think the organizers are fomenting sedition; I get the impression they’re saying, “Hey our families do things this way. It’s fun! Come have fun with us.” E pluribus unum and all that jazz, don’t cha know. After the party’s over, we still share the same language and culture as Americans.
Difficult to say since it hasn’t happened yet for the overwhelming majority.
The Americas have been assimilating immigrants for a few hundred years, building as they go. The last huge wave came over only 100 years ago, and they’ve had generations going through the school system, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, etc. Just because you know where your great-great grandparents are from doesn’t mean you identify yourself more with that country than this one. I think people are celebrating their ancestors more than an actual nation.
It’s funny reading about this because I’m so use to my situation being the norm for most people I meet.
I’m a mutt. I have five different nationalities that I’m aware of in my family tree. I don’t identify with any of them. Neither does my mother, and I don’t believe my father did while he was alive. I’m not sure what nationalities are in my wife’s family tree, but I don’t see her identifying or carrying on the traditions of any of the old countries. And a lot of people I meet seem to be just Americans.
Sure, I’m aware of Italian, or Greek, or other ethnic communities and people who do identify as Italian American or whatever, but I always thought that people like that were in the minority. I guess it goes on more than I thought.
Three of my 4 grandparents were born here. I cannot conceive of myself as anything but an American. Not a Wherever-American. An American. The accidents of their birthplaces over a century ago have zero to do with my self-conception.
I suspect I’d feel the same way even if all 4 grandparents & both parents were born elsewhere. *They *might be former Italians or former Mexicans or former Germans or whatever. But I’d be an American. Had they spent my entire childhood filling me with tales of the Old Country I’d probably feel almost the same. As a kid I remember being utterly dissmissive of any history. The future mattered; that was where we were all going to live and getting it right mattered. The past was just an unchangeable irrelevance.
I thnk it’s a shame more people in the world don’t think that way today. We’d probably be able to eliminate a lot of modern tit-for-tat warfare with basises going back centuries. A lot of the value of history now is simply in its utility to predict how the people who refuse to learn from it will choose to repeat it. Damn Chimps; that’s all we are sometimes.
I am an American. I can’t tell you what all my ascendants were. It doesn’t matter as I was born here. You an American as soon as your a citizen in my books.
Two Muslims arrive in the US with their families, and decide to make a bet: they’ll meet again in 10 years and decide who did a better job of becoming a true American.
After 10 years, the two meet again on the street. The first Muslim says, “I work in factory that makes flags. My wife sings the National anthem at baseball games. My two children are both in religious private schools, and we all go to Protestant Church every Sunday. Doesn’t that make me an American?”
The second Muslim replies, “Get away from me you fucking terrorist.”
It’s funny, because while Italian-Americans may display an oversize sense of pride Italy, actual Italians probably have the weakest sense of national identity in Europe. An Italian is likely to identify himself first as a Lombard or a Genoan then as an Italian.
I think it happens more readily in the United States than in most countries. Plenty of Americans have no real idea where their ancestors came from in the Old World, and don’t care. Even among those who do have a sense of heritage, for the most part we don’t act like immigrant populations out of our element.
For contrast, imagine yourself moving to, say, Japan. Could you ever fit in? You can learn Japanese, you can have a great affinity for Japanese culture, but can you, or even your kids born in Japan, ever “become Japanese”?