Another thing I wanted to point out - most “ethnic" Americans know where the hell they came from. They have an ancestral heritage to celebrate. A lot of Black Americans have no clue about their history beyond slavery because their ancestors were intentionally ripped out of their countries of origin and enslaved alongside others who spoke completely different languages and cultures. Their children were also taken from them and sold to others. There was so much history lost, the best many can do is celebrate pan-African-ness but that’s a big continent. You can correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there are any other ethnicities common to the United States that don’t know exactly where they are from and can’t trace a clear path from where they came from to where they are now.
We must move in different circles. I know plenty of people proudly expressing their Irish, Italian, Polish, et cetera ethnic heritage (even though the ‘purity’ of that ancestral association is highly questionable, as is their actual knowledge of the culture from which they ostensibly came); the difference being that now that their ethnic group has become accepted as ‘native’ i.e. ethnically ‘White’. (Both culturally and legally; if you want a good laugh about how fungible ‘racial’ categories are just go back and look at US census criteria has evolved over the years with nomenclature that would not be considered highly offensive, or signs in shops saying, “Whites Only – No Irish!”).
Yes, there is plenty of intra-European discrimination, especially in hotbeds of cultural mixing. It just isn’t as systematically entrenched into every aspect of culture, governance, and even law as prejudice against blacks, Muslims, Asians, and other easily identifiable groups.
It’s not even that they were ripped from their own cultures and families being taken from Africa; as slaves, families were often torn asunder as members were sold off, sometimes being renamed in the process. Slaves were generally not allowed literacy, and if they were it was predominately in the context of reading the Bible or performing business tasks. Post-slavery, as black communities developed not only their own business and financial institutions but their own syncretic cultures from stories and music passed down by word-of-mouth as well as their limited knowledge of pan-African ‘culture’, they were frequently disrupted and disenfranchised every time they became to wealthy or autonomous, and when they finally developed a mature and refined literary and musical culture it was then co-opted by whites, often with little attribution.
Oppression isn’t just about a foot on the neck, a whip to the back, a denial of representation; it is also depriving people of hope and opportunity, taking away what unique cultural venues and arts they developed, and effectively claiming priority over them, not to mention vilifying and where possible criminalizing just being not-white, a la Lee Atwater’s championing of the “Southern Strategy” and the race-baiting, dog-whistling, manipulating the laws to effectively keep blacks effectively disenfranchised. “We ended slavery, what more do you want?” is essentially gaslighting over everything else that has been done to keep African-Americans from being integrated and treated as the full-fledged citizens and equal participants in American society.
I think what I actually meant is something a little different. It’s not that people stopped thinking of themselves as Irish-American or whatever, it’s that what that meant changed. AIUI, the ‘default American’ ethnically used to be something like a WASP, and now it’s become anyone white. So these ethnic Americans largely now see themselves (and are seen by others) as being part of that white default; the ethnic identities no longer differentiate them from it.
And that’s why I used the two interchangeably, @MrDibble. I don’t mean to endorse the idea that American = white, but I understand this white identity to be how these particular immigrants assimilated, so identifying as white was how they came to identify as American.
It’s doesn’t have to be a binary. It’s also as much about how others see them as how they see themselves. On that point:
Has your husband faced discrimination for the same reason? Or is this something that has genuinely changed over 3 generations?
I’m hoping it really has changed, especially because this is the example used in Europe to show immigrants can integrate and not remain as separate hyphenated groups forever.
If the ‘default American’ can change from WASP to white, it can change again to include these groups, and I think this probably will happen - or at least I did until recently. With the current US government, all bets on the future are off.
But I was and am less optimistic that black Americans will become part of this default, no longer seen as different in a significant way. I started to write more on this, but I don’t think I have time, unfortunately, so I’m posting the rest now.
I wrote everything above yesterday and was hoping to have time to finish and post in the evening, but as usual did not. I just now read your post, and I don’t think you’re really disagreeing with me. But if I’m wrong about this, you’ll have to blame Dopers collectively, because the majority of what I know about the subject, I learned here.
And I wish I had time to finish the other part about African Americans, but you and @Spice_Weasel have written parts of what I was going to say anyway. Maybe later in the week…
Me, too. I would say that’s the norm, and the only people who “don’t know” their heritage are the ones of English and German decent. Even Americans whose ancestors intermixed a lot generally know that. “My mother’s side is Irish and Italian, and it was a huge scandal when my grandparents got married. My father’s side is mixed [aka, English/German] on his mother’s side, and Swedish on his father’s side.”
Sorta. It’s more loosely accurate than it once was, though that change is almost certainly been more gradual and less complete than you might expect. I know acquaintances of mine who grew up in California’s Central Valley who still remember how as Portuguese-Americans they were considered “non-white” (certainly in the 1970’s/1980’s). And of course many evangelical Protestants in the U.S. consider Catholics non-Christians. Hell how to classify the Portuguese-American community continues to be a minor controversy (paywalled, but that article is from 2023).
While “white” is more broadly inclusive than it once was, it is not exactly a settled identity. Many people of Cuban ancestry in the United States consider themselves “white.” You will find many other “whites” of more direct European origin in the United States who rather vehemently disagree. Very similarly with Puerto Ricans. However pale-skinned and European-origined they may be, they can most often speak Spanish as well as English, speak English with slight accents and are often Catholic to boot - so for many they are ‘not of the body’.
You’ve got it backwards, it was the Wasps that, eventually, accepted other fucking Caucasian Europeans as White.
My great grandfather was so intent on assimilating that my grandmother never learned a single word of German.
Her quoting her father “We are Americans, we speak English in this house”.
A huge issue in our Latino circles has been not just White Cubans, but also many in our different White Latino cohorts, being perceived as counting on that they(we) were next in line to be “promoted to White” like the Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans before (the Cubans in particular as being obnoxiously entitled about it) and on account of that not showing much solidarity.
Yeah, if somebody makes sweeping generalizations about decades of history of “various immigrant groups” in the US based primarily on impressions they picked up from a few Americans exchanging opinions on a messageboard, they don’t get to blame their “sources” for what their generalizations get wrong.
If you’re (generic “you”) going to make claims about large-scale historical phenomena (or small-scale ones, for that matter), it’s on you to base such claims on adequate evidentiary sources. Or else accept the responsibility for your error when your poorly supported guesses based on inadequate evidentiary sources turn out to be inaccurate.
I have only a vague idea of my ancestors and it’s mostly a function of other family members becoming obsessed with it for a while. I believe I’m mostly English with some German. The most interesting thing about my history is that I’m a descendent of William Dawes, an actor who rode with Paul Revere. I guess I take some mild pleasure in knowing the arts run in my genes. Oh, another funny thing is my mother’s maiden name was changed several generations back because it includes a slang term that’s pretty offensive in the US. What’s doubly funny about that is that what they changed it to is still pronounced almost the same way so I don’t see how it made anything better. My mother was still taunted in the school yard.
But generally I don’t care where I came from and I think that applies to a fair amount of white people of European ancestry (well, not until DNA testing I guess, but I haven’t done that.)
My father was Jewish and had the last name of Buddha until the early 40s when neither served him well on a US Navy ship in the Pacific Theater. You can imagine how that went. He solved that problem with a name change and a hasty conversion to Episcopalianism.
De-ethnicization wasn’t reserved for Hollywood movie stars or folks with difficult surnames going through Ellis Island.
Sorry, missed this. The current US government is only possible because the people who voted Trump in want to be sure that ethnic minorities remain second class citizens forever. Those people never went away, they raised their children to think like them, and young people find their influencers’ arguments incredibly persuasive. The key point being this your fantasy of racial harmony was never going to be a possibility as long as the people who put Trump in office still exist.
To answer your other question, no, my husband doesn’t experience discrimination because of his ethnicity; everyone thinks he’s Jewish.
It’s also only possible because Trump won 48% of Hispanic voters and 47% of naturalised citizens. I find these facts somewhat strange, but people are complicated.
Now I see the problem. The people talking about how great integration is for those earlier immigrants to the USA were doing so after I expressed serious reservations about how immigration is going in Europe.
I’m not accusing anyone of hypocrisy, because I think it was almost entirely different people. But this thread does tend to reinforce my earlier opinion, that politicians supporting massive immigration to Europe are unfortunately introducing lasting and dangerous ethnic tensions: if America, a country with a strong identity based on shared values and aspirations, has not achieved harmony among very similar European groups even after 100 years, what chance do European ethnostates have of integrating immigrants from far more disparate cultures?
Lol. But does he experience discrimination for that reason, then? There was plenty of prejudice against Jews 100 years ago too. (And unfortunately it’s growing again today, but is still far less common and severe than it was.)
That made me laugh because my sister and I play a game when we see an actor new to us – “Italian or Jewish?” – if they look like they could be either. We’re probably about 50-50.
The propaganda (and I experienced that) launched towards Hispanics was that they should be resentful for new immigrants getting help (A help that was happening because Republicans had prevented immigrants from working legally even if they had been allowed to come in legally, nice racket, demonizing rules to help families remain together by making the talking point about making old immigrants fight against new ones and blame the democrats for that)
Of course the propaganda that also included the “we will only prosecute immigrant criminals” was poppycock too, and now the result is that the Hispanics that were deceived are not supporting Trump.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In case you missed it, a new USA Today report confirms what we’re hearing across battleground districts: Donald Trump’s cruel immigration policies are deeply unpopular—especially with Latino voters.
56% of Americans—and 63% of Latino voters—oppose mass deportations.
60% say Trump's plans go too far.
Yes. And it’s also important to keep in mind that Latinos can be pretty conservative, especially regarding abortion and gender roles. The influence of Catholicism is pretty strong there. And many are people who fled violence in their home countries who genuinely fear additional violence and criminal gangs.
So I’m not very surprised a lot of them voted for Trump. I think when they heard “Mexico doesn’t send their best" they thought, “Well he’s not talking about us."
I don’t think he’s ever experienced discrimination for either his actual ethnicity or his presumed one. It did allow him to do work in Jewish populations sort of seamlessly, and when we lived in New Jersey he found all the kosher food to be a boon to his allergies. He worked in an Orthodox Jewish community at one point.
But Michigan AFAIK doesn’t have a very high Jewish population outside of Detroit and I haven’t witnessed a lot of antisemitism in this area (doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.) I didn’t even know what a Jew was until I had a Jewish college roommate. And there were a lot of Jewish people at our university (mostly from NYC) so in most of my husband’s social contexts, his presence was pretty normalized.
My husband has passed for other ethnicities too; he has that vaguely Eastern European look so when traveling in Spain, Greece etc he was often confused with natives.
But his first and last name is a dead give away. When I met him in college I thought he had a highly unusual first name - I’d never known anyone else with that name, well there are like eight people in his family with that same name, they are coming out of my ears now, and turns out it’s actually common as dirt.
I was pretty sheltered, in terms of diversity, before I went to college.
