# Why do Americans forget their ethnic roots? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069 "2018-06-30T21:00:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/41 "2018-07-03T20:47:17Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > My ethnic heritage has absolutely no bearing on my day to day life in any way. Tell me why i should care? About my ethnicity or anyone else’s? People are people are people. Everyone starts at the same baseline of deserving respect and equality. From that shared point, only they themselves as individuals can cause a justified removal of those rights. If an individual comminicates an imporantance of their ethnicity to me in some form, then i will be sure to respect that heritage. If I am having someone over as a guest in my home who happens to be a Muslim who follows the customs of their heritage by, in part, wearing a head scarf (i forget the proper name), then by all means i will respect that choice. But that is because i respect this person as an individual with full agency and autonomy, it has nothing to do with ethnicity or heritage. I’d be just as respectful of a person in my home whose beliefs dictate any sort of custom, ritual, clothing choice or anything, just as long as those beliefs don’t intrude into my life , my home, in a tangible, negative way. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/42 "2018-07-03T21:34:20Z")
> [@Kennedy1960](#): > > My question is, why is this such a reoccuring phenomena in our history? Is there any psychology behind it? Why are people so quick to forget their own roots and hate on others who are more similar to them, than different? When kids study American history, I don’t see a lot about how the Irish and Italians were viewed. It always seemed positive in high school texts, so kids of different heritages don’t imagine that their ancestors were hated. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/43 "2018-07-03T21:37:34Z")
My history courses certainly included “No Irish Need Apply”. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/44 "2018-07-03T21:53:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > My history courses certainly included “No Irish Need Apply”. Huh. Rough school. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/45 "2018-07-03T23:28:48Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Most countries don’t have the history of settlement by recent immigration that America has. Anti-immigrants in France, for example, can at least tell themselves that their ancestors are true Frenchmen who have been living in France from time immemorial. So they can draw a clear line between “us” and “them”. You’re wrong. There has been immigration in France for a while. And like in the USA, those immigrants were despised when they came first, then integrated and began despising the new batch of immigrants. There were the Poles, then the Italians, then the Spaniards and Portuguese. French people with a name with a lot of consonants and ending in “sky” feel perfectly comfortable with complaining about immigration even though their great-grandfather was considered the lowest of the low one century ago. Of course, you can’t tell if someone ancestor was a Polish immigrant coming in 1910, while you can if he was a Malian immigrant coming in 1960. Which, seemingly, makes all the difference in the world. Even though it’s less obvious than in the case of the USA where almost everybody is the descendant of some category of immigrant or another, the phenomenon described by the OP isn’t unique to the USA. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/46 "2018-07-03T23:36:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Most countries don’t have the history of settlement by recent immigration that America has. Anti-immigrants in France, for example, can at least tell themselves that their ancestors are true Frenchmen who have been living in France from time immemorial. So they can draw a clear line between “us” and “them”. You’re wrong. There has been immigration in France for a while. And like in the USA, those immigrants were despised when they came first, then integrated and began despising the new batch of immigrants. There were the Poles, then the Italians, then the Spaniards and Portuguese. French people with a name with a lot of consonants and ending in “sky” feel perfectly comfortable with complaining about immigration even though their great-grandfather was considered the lowest of the low one century ago. Of course, you can’t tell if someone grand father was a Polish immigrant, while you can if he was a Malian immigrant. Which, seemingly, makes all the difference in the world. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/47 "2018-07-04T01:58:47Z")
The US has its own ideology that must be shoved down the throats of all incoming groups. They throttled the identity of the enslaved workers. After the Civil War, the Yankees set up indoctrination camps for the enslaved Africans. They wanted to mold them into good Protestants. They sent the Indians to indoctrination centers for many decades. The Protestant pietists of the 19th century did not appreciate the influx of Catholics and high Lutherans. The immigrants drank beer on sundays and started their own schools. The pietists started to demand state schools so they could indoctrinate the Catholics. These are the proto-progressives here who believed every soul needed to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Over time they dropped the religiosity. The dirty Catholics had large, extended families. The pietists hated this about them, and instead fetishized the American nuclear family. The first generation Americans were shamed into confirming to this mode of family, breaking centuries of traditional family bonds. Of course the progressives had adopted the Prussian method of instruction. The early progressives were the intellectuals. There were little PhD opportunities in US at this time so they studied in Europe. They came home with this method designed to create soldiers and factory workers. It was a strictly regimented system complete with conditioning with a bell or whistle. These were part of some of the most recent advances in human psychology, although it seems quite haunting to think of it today. They used the system to impose their version of Americanism on the youth of the entire country, decimating ethnic traditions. The system functions to this day. Post WWII things really got kicked into high gear. Look at the militancy exhibited in 1950s classrooms. Schools churned out Americans like a modern factory. Later came another blow to social cohesion, tradition, and in many cases the family. It came in the form of social programs. This is what America is all about. Conformance to State Puritanism. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/48 "2018-07-04T02:14:34Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > You’re wrong. There has been immigration in France for a while. And like in the USA, those immigrants were despised when they came first, then integrated and began despising the new batch of immigrants. There were the Poles, then the Italians, then the Spaniards and Portuguese. French people with a name with a lot of consonants and ending in “sky” feel perfectly comfortable with complaining about immigration even though their great-grandfather was considered the lowest of the low one century ago. Of course, you can’t tell if someone grand father was a Polish immigrant, while you can if he was a Malian immigrant. Which, seemingly, makes all the difference in the world. I didn’t say what they tell themselves is true. When has bigotry ever needed to be rational? But anti-immigrant bigots in Europe can at least pretend that their ancestors have been around forever. Pretty much every American knows that their ancestors came from another county and only a few generations ago. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/49 "2018-07-04T10:37:22Z")
“I’m an American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit.” ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/50 "2018-07-04T16:30:01Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > The US has its own ideology that must be shoved down the throats of all incoming groups. > > They throttled the identity of the enslaved workers. After the Civil War, the Yankees set up indoctrination camps for the enslaved Africans. They wanted to mold them into good Protestants. They sent the Indians to indoctrination centers for many decades. > > The Protestant pietists of the 19th century did not appreciate the influx of Catholics and high Lutherans. The immigrants drank beer on sundays and started their own schools. The pietists started to demand state schools so they could indoctrinate the Catholics. These are the proto-progressives here who believed every soul needed to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Over time they dropped the religiosity. > > The dirty Catholics had large, extended families. The pietists hated this about them, and instead fetishized the American nuclear family. The first generation Americans were shamed into confirming to this mode of family, breaking centuries of traditional family bonds. > > Of course the progressives had adopted the Prussian method of instruction. The early progressives were the intellectuals. There were little PhD opportunities in US at this time so they studied in Europe. They came home with this method designed to create soldiers and factory workers. It was a strictly regimented system complete with conditioning with a bell or whistle. These were part of some of the most recent advances in human psychology, although it seems quite haunting to think of it today. They used the system to impose their version of Americanism on the youth of the entire country, decimating ethnic traditions. The system functions to this day. > > Post WWII things really got kicked into high gear. Look at the militancy exhibited in 1950s classrooms. Schools churned out Americans like a modern factory. Later came another blow to social cohesion, tradition, and in many cases the family. It came in the form of social programs. > This is what America is all about. Conformance to State Puritanism. I’m almost tempted to subscribe to your newsletter but on second thought, I’m going to pass. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/51 "2018-07-04T16:31:58Z")
> [@Mdcastle](#): > > First of all, leftists try to make conservatives look mean by deliberately muddling the difference between legal immigrants and illegal aliens by just calling them all “immigrants”. There’s a lot more opposition to illegal aliens as opposed to legal immigrants, and most of our ancestors were legal immigrants. I welcome legal immigrants 0f any race but I hope ICE gets every single illegal alien out of the country. I don’t want people in the country that have shown unwillingness to respect our laws and rules, including those pertaining to immigration, and are in excess of what we’ve determined our society can absorb without affecting wages and draining social resources. > > Second, if you’re talking about white America, the last big wave of European immigration ended 100 years ago. That’s not what I’d call “quick”; that’s a lot of time to both forget. I don’t think there’s many people alive today that encountered the kind of hostility say Iaccoca encountered. Except if you were Jewish, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/52 "2018-07-04T16:54:28Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > When kids study American history, I don’t see a lot about how the Irish and Italians were viewed. It always seemed positive in high school texts, so kids of different heritages don’t imagine that their ancestors were hated. I definitely remember reading about the poor treatment of the Irish. In history classes in high school, we learned about anti-Irish sentiment in the late 1800s, saw cartoons and pamphlets that were distributed at the time…the Irish were definitely hated very much, at least as much as the current immigrants from Latin America by American nativists - possibly even worse. They _really_ hated the Irish. They were portrayed as looking like pigs or evil goblins in all the popular political propaganda…the Catholicism was almost secondary to it, it was like they thought of the Irish as truly a lesser species. I don’t really remember learning about anything comparable regarding Italian immigrants. The most I can recall is that there was an association between Italians and anarchist movements. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/53 "2018-07-04T17:02:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > There’s been people moving all around Europe and out of Europe and into Europe… since before the US were founded. The wars of the last century… uh, two centuries… uh, well, lots of centuries alone led to both waves of refugees and to soldiers hooking up or raping women all over the place. Sometimes I think we agreed to create the EU so the waves of migration would look less like arson and more like moving house. IME there is no correlation between the amount of “local” blood someone has and how xenophobic they are; a lot of xenophobes wouldn’t allow themselves or their parents or grandparents in. It’s a matter of “I’m in, fuck those of you who are out”. As a side anecdote- a former housemate’s Mum, who was Chinese Malay and immigrated to the UK, was a [BNP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party) voter. Cognitive dissonance is an amazing thing. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/54 "2018-07-06T03:22:16Z")
> [@Kennedy1960](#): > > I come from an Italian family. Many members of my family sadly are bigoted against the Hispanic community and especially against Mexicans, for the usual reasons - usual Trumpian logic. I have pointed out to them that a white person a hundred years ago would’ve made the very same arguments against our ‘swarthy’ Italian ancestors. This seems to be a common facet in American society - after each new immigrant group becomes “white”, they hate on the next group and seem to forget that their own ancestors were thought of in the same way. The Germans were mistrusted by the Anglo settlers, and then the German Americans in turn mistreated the Irish, who in turn disliked the Italians and other groups, who then in turn now feel animosity toward Hispanics and Asians. > > My question is, why is this such a reoccuring phenomena in our history? Is there any psychology behind it? Why are people so quick to forget their own roots and hate on others who are more similar to them, than different? Maybe they read this on FB or elsewhere : [https://rense.com//general77/ted.htm](https://rense.com//general77/ted.htm) \*\*My niece shared it on her FB page…the same niece who grew up bilingual, whose mom is from El Salvador and whose maternal grandma speaks mostly Spanish because it’s hard to learn another language when you’re older. ---
**Author:** ![ohiomstr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/82dd89/32.png) [@ohiomstr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ohiomstr2)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069/55 "2018-07-13T23:00:03Z")
I do not nor do I care to know my “ethnic” heritage. I will say that while I don’t recall getting an particular benefit, I qualify for white privilege That being said, I think that the real reason is what some of the other folks here have pointed out, there is almost always a tribal connection. Most humans seem to cling to small ( relatively ) groups who gravitate towards those most familiar to or at least similar to themselves. Anyone else is viewed with suspicion and, until they assimilate, will be ostracized. This can be seen in the factionalism that grows up among virtually any topic on the web. People on one or another side break down into “warring” factions very easily Can’t think things weren’t all that different in the Paleolithic, it has been the case with every new immigrant to the USA since virtually the beginning of colonisation and is really not much different now than any other period I suspect this is true every where humans interact [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-americans-forget-their-ethnic-roots/817069.md?page=2)