Its a simple question from, why are Americans and to a lesser extent Canadians so bothered about thier personal heritage?
ie, when talking to one of my American collegues he mentions hes Irish. I immediately enquire innocently where he was born in Ireland and when he moved to the states. His answer; it was his Great, Great, Great Grandmother who was from Ireland.
Now my Grandmoter is Irish and i dont claim to be from there. So whats the deal with all that? And as a tag on, how can you be a third somthing?
From a confused Brit(/Irish?) person trying to understand.
The United States and Canada are largely populated by the descendants of immigrants. It’s often impossible to tell the difference between someone who emigrated as a child, is the first generation child of immigrants, or whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. A lot of the recent ones maintain close ties to their previous countries, because they still have parents or other close relatives over there.
As they moved here, the immigrants often settled into small enclaves of others from the same country. They shared the same language (many did not speak English when they arrived), culture, religion, jokes, etc., and often faced the same prejudices (that guy’s great- great- great- grandmother was probably treated like dirt for being Irish). To this day, you’ll find large numbers people claiming Irish heritage in South Boston, or German in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And of course most large cities will have a Chinatown.
To a certain extent, it’s also a holdover of a class system. Many of the newly rich wanted to be able to claim some sort of aristocratic heritage, as we didn’t have aristocrats of our own.
Imagine you are an American of primarily European descent. You share your ethnicity with 200,000,000 other people. Your own culture is, by and large, the majority culture, and therefore unmarked. You rarely encounter people of other ethnicities who are not also distinguished by race (as Americans use the term). So your ancestors’ ethnicities become something that distinguishes you from the herd. Besides, the story of how one became an American is not only interesting in and of itself, it also establishes American street cred, as it were. If your great-great-great-great grandmother came from Ireland, well, then you’ve got nice, deep roots in the country, much more American than those Johnny-come-latelies who came over in the 20th century.
As to why they say “I’m Irish” as opposed to “I’m Irish-American,” there are a lot of reasons. For one thing, there are comparatively few Irish-born people in the U.S., especially outside of major cities. For another, it’s a convenient shorthand, and fellow Americans understand the “…or at least my distant ancestor was” without having to add it. It also makes the connection seem much more real than it actually is, which is important if you’re going to identify with a land you’ve never been to.
Thanks for the speedy responses and i hope no offence was caused! I do understand , although sometimes it can be difficult when hostility comes with it, especially from the Irish link, with me being a Brit etc. Its interesting to hear.
Irish is a bit of a special case in the US, as there is a definite undercurrent of anti-UK, pro-Eire in some folks & some cities, regardless of their ethnic background. One of the largest sources of IRA cash during the last 30 years was (is?) donations from the USA, much of it from people whose Irish ethnicity is ancient & highly dilute, if not nil.
I suspect the typical motivation is simple knee-jerk anticolonialism coupled with absolutely no real knowledge of the situation over there beyond a couple of soundbites. Besides, we love anybody who can throw a good party and to a typical US yob the rowdy Irish sound like more fun than the stuffy English.
One American’s opinion, and worth the tuppence you paid for it.
For me it was an interest in history and the possibility of finding an anomaly. The horse thief, the train robber, the politician, the entrepreneur, etc. and of course the migrant pioneer. I found that, five generations back, my ancestor migrated from the east coast to the midwest and the family pretty much stayed there. There were farmers, carpenters and the odd school teacher, kind of ho-hum, until I found that my gg grandfather had gone on to California and, in the 1870’s, been appointed to the state supreme court. No great shakes, but interesting, to me at least, and it makes me want to know more about his adventures. I think many people are looking for this kind of personal interest story in their family.
I would add that some of us are perhaps as much or more passionate about researching our heritage as we are about the heritage itself. Genealogy is often like detective work, with many surprises possible and heretofore-closeted skeletons exposed.
For me it wasn’t where my ancestors came from, as much as it was who they were and what the did here in N. America. Remember, they were often taming a wilderness, establishing a new social order, building a new nation, that’s what interests me.
Another follow up question. Not intended for those who have genuinely researched etc. But does the family history thing go through fads with some people? ie. sometimes being Irsih is cool, other times being Cuban is cool etc etc.
Not that I ever noticed. There are definitely heritages that have a certain amount of cache, but I haven’t noticed them changing over the years. For instance, my family is proud of its Native American heritage, even though my generation can’t be more than 1/32nd, and no one actually knows what tribe she was from.
Oh, god, everybody’s got an Indian princess. I work in the periodicals department of the public library, and we handle all the obituary stuff. Genealogy is a full time hobby for a lot of people. In a way they’re great patrons because they’re interested and quiet and they support the library and almost never get in fist fights, but in the other way they’re incredibly annoying because they always want to tell you all about their great great great whosits, and they always think their stories are much, much more interesting than they actually are. Much. And they’ll go on for hours. The only stories that are actually interesting are almost always unbearably sad, in the “I’m looking for any information I can get about my birth family, I don’t know anything because my mother died in childbirth and I want to find my twin sister. Can you help me?” vein. But everybody has an Indian princess. Or are misunderstood heirs to some European throne or other which no longer exists.
I have to say as i guy who knows alot of Irish people and quite a few Americans, it dies tend to be the Americans who get worked up on the whole IRA/PIRA/RIRA/UFF/UPP etc. as opposed to the Irish who tend not to (not including the ones in the afformentioned groups).
Its the same reason that adopted children want to find their birth-parents. it creates a cohesive picture and ties to other things in the past. I am a direct male descendant to the first colony at Jamestown and I have the last name as my for-bearers. I can even pay for a DNA test to prove it through my family genealogical society. I have my whole lineage on that side and it helps me understand how my family came from England discarding everything else and later became true Southerners, slave-owning plantation owners, and then moved on to create other things after the Civil War. This history has lasted 400 years and yet it I can still see the large and small implications to this day including w. This doesn’t mean a lot in comparison with my fellow Americans put it does help paint a picture of how I came to be.
I think some groups are cooler to mention than others. Americans love to play up their Native American history, often knowing it down to the fraction, while not caring so much about the other components of their DNA.
I’m Canadian. Europe holds no charm for me, except in thinking about how fellow Canadians had to go over there and help straighten things out when the Europeans fucked up.
Apparently my ancestry traces back to the British isles, Wales, England and Ireland, but that doesn’t mean a lot to me, except maybe on St. Paddy’s day and then just for fun.
BTW, I misspoke earlier, it was my gg uncle who traveled to Ca. in the mid 1800’s, not my gg granddad.
I am damned proud of my Scottish heritage and can completely understand why others in North America might want to justify their own respective ancestors.
I have a definite lineage to my past; a lot of Americans want the same connection.