There are occasionally threads like this one, inquiring as to the ethnic/cultural background of the Dopers. Many Dopers are, however, inhabitants of the New World (defined for the purposes of this thread as the Americas and the islands of the Western hemisphere) and therefore hail from nations populated by the descendants of immigrants from far-flung corners of the world. Some of the responses from, for instance, European Dopers stated that they were (for example) English, and of English descent as far back as they knew. I find myself wondering how common it is in the Old World, ie Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia to be of mixed ethnic origin.
For the purposes of this thread, you can define ‘mixed ethnicity’ yourself; that can mean you could be descended from two ethnic groups considered to be ‘white’ for the most part (such as Persian and German), from ethno-religious groups such as Jews, from two different national origins such as Japanese and Koreans, from ethnic groups considered to be of the same nationality (such as Basque and ethnic Spaniards) or from any of the typically recognized ‘races’ of humanity, such as Negroid, Mongoloid, etc. And yes, I fully recognize that race is a man-made construct, this isn’t a debate about race. I will ask y’all to refrain from the most ridiculous examples, such as “My grandmother was from a village on the west side of the river and my grandfather was from a village on the east side of the river”, if grandma and grandpa were from the same basic ethnic stock.
You can tell us how common it is to be of mixed ethnic background in your nation or region, or tell us of examples from your own family.
Pretty common in the North West of England which had a huge influx of Scottish and Irish working in the pits and mills. Further, many villages and towns were founded by the Vikings after being forced out of Dublin. This is still reflected in the place names and dialect.
For that matter, England is more ethnically mixed than a lot of Americans frequently suppose. 25% of the population has some Irish ancestry. 10% have ancestry that is mostly not European (i.e., from Asia or Africa originally):
I think it’s important to point out that mostly (in the UK at least but I suspect also elsewhere) we are not so focussed on ethnic origin as less established countries. We don’t really know or particularly care if some guy came over from France or wherever and married into the family. Sure, we could go and rustle up the information but it’s not considered all that important or interesting. So mostly we’ll just say ‘Oh I’m from here’ or something similar.
I’d call myself British or maybe Scottish. I’d even do the latter knowing that an uncle has been interested in genealogy and has discovered that we’re somehow related to people in the North of England. But that wouldn’t influence how I referred to myself. I certainly wouldn’t call myself British-French or English-Czech or anything like that. That would be considered slightly strange. Origin is much less important here.
What Zelie said. I’m part Irish, part French (recently), part English-as-can-be-which-really-means-Norman (came over in 1066 kind of thing), part all sorts of other shit, but it’s not important here. We recently found out that my partner is part Viking, which is cool! but again, irrelevant. No-one here really cares much.
In my family we’re all descended from other French folks for like 400 years. So what we talk about is from which part of France this or that branch of the family tree comes from. Which is not very mixed, even like that!
I’m Dutch, but 1/8 German. There’s some French mixed into somewhere way back (probably Napoleonic times), which is only interesting to us because the genes for being dark and short-ish keeps that part of the family from looking stereotpically tall and blond.
Having said that, even if there are many tall and blond Dutchies we get all sorts in the Netherlands. It’s a small nation without any natural barriers at the borders. Add a long history of trade and it’s logical that we’re going to be a mixed bunch. With more recent immigration the next generation are/are going to be even more diverse.
Well, by the standards of when I was born I’m mixed ancestry: my parents are both Spanish, but he’s Navarrese (100% Basque blood) and she’s Catalan (and, as her father puts it, “a mongrel”, including Alsatian? blood on grandpa’s side and Italian on grandma’s, and at least four different Spanish regions).
By current standards, what’s exotic is someone 100%-whatever like most of my paternal family. But then, I saw my first black person “in person” at age 15 and abroad, whereas nowadays my mother buys her bread from a Spanish baker whose husband is Nigerian, one of the flats in her building is owned by an Argentinian couple, another one by a Chinese family, another one is rented by an always-changing stream of Andeans…
Oh, and an “nation-nation” expressions just don’t exist in Spain outside of US movies and TV series. The baker’s children are described as “the father is Nigerian” but they’re 100% Spanish, even the worst racists I know don’t call them “Nigerian-Spanish” or doubt that they are as Spanish as anybody born there.
I’m Dutch, but my background has a bit Hungarian, Austrian, Slovenian, Dutch, Indonesian and my last name indicates there is some French there as well. On the other hand I know plenty of people who have grandparents that were all from pretty much the same province.
Pure bloodlines still mean a lot in Korea, although somewhere in history a lot of Mongolian brides were imported (I think - vague memories of history class in middle school). I think most of those descendants still live mainly along the China-Korea border. A lot of Koreans turn their noses up at them (we are a xenophobic lot). Mixed couples are still viewed with skepticism by most of society.
On a side note: almost every family has a record of their family history dating all the way back to the founder of their particular clan, so it’s quite easy to trace back your roots (ours goes as far back as the late 14th century). But in the 19th century a lot of impoverished noble families sold their family records to middle class merchant families (who were rich but lacked the bloodlines to be socially accepted by the upper class) so really it’s almost impossible to know nowadays if the family records you own are actually yours.
It’s very common in Britain for white British people to have a mix of English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish in various combinations. For instance, my girlfriend is Welsh but has an Irish surname and a Scottish (now deceased) grandparent. But she identifies as Welsh first, then British, not Welsh-Irish or whatever. People tend to identify with either where they were born (England, Scotland, wherever) or where their parents are from.
It’s more exotic to have a bit of continental European in the mix (‘Ooh, your mother is Spanish! Are you bilingual?’)
Obviously, there are many British people who’s parents or grandparents immigrated from elsewhere, particularly former colonies such as the Caribbean or Indian Subcontinent.
Any foreign heritage before grandparents really isn’t of much interest to anyone.
As far as I can discover, I’m 100% English (family have raced us back about 400 years). Which is fairly unusual, I’d say. Particularly as a lot of my ancestors were in the navy.
I forgot to add that my girlfriend grew up in a street where virtually every family had an Irish surname (descendants of refugees from the potato famine), but none of them identified with being Irish - it was more to do with Catholics clustering together in close proximity to the local Catholic Church (a minority religion in that part of Wales). They are all fiercely/proudly Welsh.
I’m basically Swedish with some Finnish, possibly Sami (I don’t know, really), German and Belarusian thrown in. If there is more in the mix I have no idea.
All human ancestries are “mixed.” All the distinct ethnicities we identify today are themselves mixtures of each other or of other now-vanished identities.
Well yeah, there is no hard seperation between the races, only a continuum. But I didn’t want this to turn into a debate about race – I just want to know if Old Worlders have a concept of themselves as being of mixed ethnic origin.
As noted it’s common in the UK (especially in England) for people to be aware of Scots, Irish or Welsh ancestry.
I know vaguely that part of my family were welsh, my mum’s from Liverpool so there’s probably some Irish in there somewhere. My wife’s nan came over from Ireland in the 1950s, but the other side of the fmaily are welsh (although they live in the Marches, so there’s mixes of English in there too).
I dated a guy whose mother was Filipina (born there) and father was Thai (also born there). Which really meant that his mother was half-ethnic Chinese, a quarter Spanish, and a quarter Pacific Islander, and his father was half-ethnic Chinese and half indigenous Thai (whatever that means).
Those ethnic Chinese got around, apparently - not to speak of the Spaniards.
The past 3 generations have all been Scottish, with the preceding ancestors coming from Ulster-Scots, English, Southern Irish, American, Nordic, Angles, Saxons and Norman heritages.
My family is a mix of Ukrainian and Polish. To be honest, I don’t see much of a difference. We skew towards Ukrainian though, so we use the Ukrainian word for perogy instead of the Polish word.
However, on the Canadian Prairies, when it comes time for post-secondary funding or similar things, suddenly everyone finds a trace of Aboriginal ancestry (oh look, my great-grandpa’s cousin married a Metis woman!), even if I’ve known them for years and they’ve never mentioned it before. :dubious: