"I'm Irish American"

[MacMahon]

I've noticed that to many Americans their Irish, Scots, Italian etc. roots are a big part of their current identity. As a nation of immigrants in a New World I can see why this link to earlier generations is interesting and important.

But it's also something I find confusing.

I live in Yorkshire. I'm English. I have Irish ancestors on both side (great grandparents and great x2 grandparents). If I was in America this would quite possibly be a big deal. I'd be an Irish American and identify with the struggles and persecution that my people suffered at the hands of the English. But I wasn't born in America, I was born in Leeds, and my Irish ancestry play zero role in my identity.

I'm on an ancestry group and Americans are getting that DNA test done and finding out that, contrary to family lore that they are Cherokee or Mexican or Italian Americans, they're actually pretty much 'just' 100% British.

It makes me wonder how authentic this celebrating or identifying with their Irish/First Nations/Italian roots is, and how much is just (mistaken) tribalism and division.

Does this happen in Australia too?
No.
So it can't be explained by the US being a country of immigrants.
I knew an otherwise lovely man who started getting very north American about his Dutch ancestry, to the point of fretting on Facebook about who to barrack for when the Netherlands played (association) football against Australia. People just asked him if he was really into football, told him to enjoy the game and not worry about it, politely making it clear that that sort of nonsense wouldn't fly with them.

You OK? Little Dandelion You seem very angry.

You know what? I would love to go and live in the land of my great grandmother to get away from all the angry little Englanders who have landed us in the current shitshow. As well as being a lovely country with an amazing rich culture of music, dance, poetry and writing, they have petrol in their stations, and full shelves in their supermarkets and they are not facing a Christmas with skyhigh infection rates of a mutating virus, possible power cuts and a shortage of Turkeys. Only problem is that that right to move there or any other EU country has been taken away from us hasn’t it?

I haven't read the entire thread but just wanted to offer a little perspective. I live very close to some famine cottages that pre covid saw their fair share of tourists and Irish Americans. Beside the cottages are wayside graves that hold some of the children of two particular houses. They were victims of a famine in which vast amounts of food were exported out of Ireland and are dead because of it. Their relatives were burned out when they couldn't pay rent and either died, moved or emigrated. If someone wants to call themselves Irish American and come here and see for themselves the likely reason why they are Irish American I don't have any problem with that. We must never forget the atrocities that the human race is capable of in pursuit of being dominant. Whole families are buried in fields and hedgerows all over the west of Ireland, most marked with just a few rocks placed lovingly.

@CoalTit

Does this happen in Australia too? No. So it can't be explained by the US being a country of immigrants. I knew an otherwise lovely man who started getting very north American about his Dutch ancestry, to the point of fretting on Facebook about who to barrack for when the Netherlands played (association) football against Australia. People just asked him if he was really into football, told him to enjoy the game and not worry about it, politely making it clear that that sort of nonsense wouldn't fly with them.

I don’t agree. I don’t think it exists to the same degree as in the US and not in a way that people would call themselves ‘Greek Australian’ but there is still, in my experience, a strong association with the immigrant experience and where your forebears came from, and that being quite tied up in your identity.

I think this thread is incredibly condescending and shows the narrowmindedness and lack of imagination of some British people at how people in other parts of the world might see the world differently. I love Mumsnet, but sometimes it does reveal a very ugly provincialism. And that is the nicest word I can come up with to describe what I am saying. You should be truly ashamed of yourselves.

Sick Well he actually clung on to that citizenship long after he was faced with a tax demand and only surrendered it as part of a negotiated settlement. But then that was in his liberal Mayor days. I am sure it changed from a minus to a plus when it came to his plans to be world King…..

How is it provincial to not share the same perspective as scotch or Irish Americans? ? I thought everybody on the thread got it; America is a melting pot. Thought it was an interesting thread.

dandelion

I would very much like to be excluded from your rant. For which there are no words. Maybe have some cake?

My husband is Jewish but has an Irish surname. His granny was Irish born but left as a child. My DD looks celtic in that she has dark red hair but actually we think that is most likely the Jewish side as many of her 2nd cousins have dark red hair and dark brown eyes with black eyelashes. I remember a time in Edinburgh where she was dancing a little gig in the street in front of one of the street performers and an American lady remarked, 'how sweet a dancing little Scottish girl'. I do think the idea of these manifestations of what it means to be Irish/Scottish are caught up in quite a few clichés and stereotypes because as I said her looks appear more from the Jewish side of the family. I am sure I read somewhere about the whole celtic features thing of red hair or very dark black hair and pale skin being a myth in terms of genealogy.

@LittleDandelionClock it's not cherry picking. One of my colleagues was born here to Syrian parents, they all would love to go back, are very proud of their heritage & her parents remember what an amazing country Syria used to be. 🙄

Manifesting I think Princess is addressing her comments to the people who are belittling people for claiming an identity when the connection with the person who initially came from another country was a long time ago. There are some posters in here who just don’t get that culture and identity are not governed just by geography, possibly because their own geography has never shifted, hence they could be seen as provincial attitudes. I am not sure it is even provincial. You can live in one place all your life and still be open to understanding other cultures and identities. But of course that curiosity and openness has to be planted there first and it would seem our educations system / society has fallen short on that. I do think though that the people who do have that understanding are winning the day on this thread, it is quite difficult to sustain a stereotype that isn’t rooted in reality in the face of argument from people who have experienced the actual reality…..

I would say it's where you grow up but family history can be I retesting. 5 of my great grandparents were Irish. 1 Scottish, 1 Welsh and 1 English so what does that make me?

I actually think o of myself as being from the great city I've grown up in more than anything.

@EdgeOfTheSky my Irish Catholic friends were invited to join the local Orange Order when they moved to Ontario. They said no

Apparently it is more like the Rotary club over there (and they are obviously fine with Catholics joining). But even so, we were all open mouthed that self-proclaimed Irish Canadians had no idea understanding of why a Catholic might not want to join the Orange Order.

To those whose urine reaches boiling point by how complete strangers choose to identify themselves culturally or ethnically, can I just ask: what the fuck difference does it make to you or your lives?! If someone described themselves as Azerbaijani-American going back 10 generations, I honestly wouldn't give a shit. Why should anyone care?!

I see what people are saying BUT what I experienced is that a lot of people claiming to be Scots (or whatever) were not interested in the REAL people or culture. They only wanted to hear about the picture book Hollywood Outlander/Braveheart story, and not one one them had actually ever visited Scotland or made an effort to really find out about it beyond their vague notion of what it is to be a Scot.
and I think THAT is what's narrowminded TBH.

I dislike this thread because it is arrogant and because it is ignorant. Again and again, posters reveal their ignorance of world history ("potato famine" etc.) including U.S. history. They make grand pronouncements about why Americans are stupid to use certain words or act in certain ways without understanding the context behind those behaviors. Even when other posters politely correct them and give them the behind-the-scene stories of why things evolved logically the way they did, posters carry on with sneering. They say things that are not true, such as claiming that no one wants to say that they have English heritage, only Irish. And most of all, there is a fundamental lack of imagination and empathy at the idea that different people who have a different history might approach their sense of heritage in a different way as well. That closemindedness is really disappointing. Mumsnet posters, you are getting this wrong, you are not being curious, and you are being meanspirited--this is not your best work.

I was born and brought up in London to Irish-born parents. I spent every holiday there for weeks every year, learnt Irish (mainly curse-words!), grew up in a very Irish area with Irish shops and accented people everywhere, learned the violin at the local Irish centre and did Irish dancing and my brother played GAA and yes, I absolutely consider myself Irish although you would never know that if you just heard me speaking with my London accent. Just because my parents had to emigrate due to the lack of opportunities for them in the 70s doesn't mean their children lose connection to hundreds of generations of culture and family. I find the snide commentary on how others identify themselves so weird.

I think this thread is incredibly condescending and shows the narrowmindedness and lack of imagination of some British people at how people in other parts of the world might see the world differently.
My problem with US Americans describing themselves as Irish/Italian/Basque et cetera, with no "American" at the end, is that it's incredibly narrow minded and lacking in humility to think that your Greek/Polish/Dutch great grandparents give you a right to the descriptor, leaving no word for the people who were actually born in that country, who grew up there and who speak the language.
I know the thread was originally about practice of calling yourself a hyphen- American, which I have no problem with, but lots of people don't bother with the "-American" part at the end,. It's as if they just haven't considered the possibility that there are real people in those countries who aren't from the US, who have their own culture which you won't have if you are from the US. I find that insanely arrogant.

@AosSi

I've no issue with Americans claiming to be Irish-American. By all means, be proud of your ancestors and the struggles they had.

It's when they say they are Irish that it annoys me. There's a big difference between the actually Irish and the historically Irish ime. I find that they don't tend to understand Ireland as a modern day nation and expect to see donkeys, thatch cottages and girls dancing at the crossroads. I remember having a great row with a boatload of Irish-Americans over to campaign against the 2015 marriage referendum here...the fecking cheek of them, interfering in another country's democratic process "because that's what my great granny would have wanted".

I feel similar to this in that there is a difference between Irish and Irish American. I would roll my eyes and someone who has never set foot in Ireland describing themselves as Irish and not having any idea about what life in Ireland is like. If you want to call yourself Irish American though them crack on but understand that it doesn't actually mean that we have anything in common.

goldenbear Whilst I entirely take your point on stereotyping, redhair is arguably actually a Celtic trait. It is a recessive gene ie both parents have to have it and both the incidence and gene are most common in Ireland (10 to 30% incidence depending on how you define it) followed by Scotland and then Wales. The pattern is almost completely consistent with the movement of the Celtic Germanic tribes and rarely occurs beyond, though it does. I have no time for notions of us being rooted in some sort of anglo saxon purity, they are now able to ascertain where a skeleton grew up and in both Anglo Saxon and Viking graveyards they are finding that a surprising proportion of both communities grew up in southern climates. But this one gene is most prevalent in people of Celtic heritage. So my Irish great grandmother is most likely the source of the gene in my pool which caused my shock as one of my babies came into the world, the first redhead in the family in living memory!

It's not just Irish. I am Russian and I have been lectured by American Russians (immigrants from pre-revolution) about how how Russian they are and how they eat borscht(incorrectly transliterated) all the time when i lived in ny. They don't understand how patronising they are that they reduce a culture down to a few recipes and supposed love of vodka.

British russians and french ones (many of them) don't play this game. They might say oh my great grandfather was from st Petersburg and chat about some childhood things. They won't try and tell me I'm doing Russian all wrong like the Americans.

@Leavisite said: ... or so I would assume, but surely you can see how irritating it is to have English people who think the Troubles consisted solely of the IRA bombs in England, or don’t understand the difference between Ireland and NI

It really depends on what you find irritating, that is your issue. We (England) have a long history of expansion and invading foreign lands. Ireland is only one of many many countries where we've sent troops in the past to conquer, murder, rape, exploit, etc.

As a result of that we've left a lot of legacy issues and problems around the world, NI being just one. While wars in Ireland is just a small part of English history, it might be a bigger part of Irish history.

My GF fought in Burma in WW2, and later served in Kenya. These are parts of our history I've done some research on. Not on Ireland.

GF = grandfather, not girl friend :)

@Leavisite, apologies if my post comes across as a bit harsh, but I really have little interest in Ireland (other than my DD doing her studies there ... and she loves it!!)

Don't blame them for wanting to be Irish