"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.

Yes, I happily have picked and chosen this element to claim. So what?

It means that people who have cherry picked ‘being Irish’, will probably be very upset when their children go to Irish universities and aren’t welcomed with open arms into the Irish community as ‘being Irish’ as mentioned upthread. That sort of thing.

@justmaybenot

*'American' is a political nationality, it is not an ethnicity.

For some people that's fine, for others who feel close to their ancestral ethnic heritage, they want to acknowledge that.

We are all American, but we are not all the same. The lived experiences of a Mexican-American, an Irish-American and a Japanese-American are really quite different in many ways. Why should we erase that? It's part of who we are.

If you don't get it that's fine, but don't tell us we're all wrong or dumb. We're just different.*

Exactly. The only 'wrong' and 'dumb' people are those who laugh at other peoples' culture - and as the convention for so many people in the USA is to hyphenate their identity, that is a part of American culture. Just because it isn't the same as the UK doesn't mean it's wrong, just different. The intolerance on here, and sense of entitlement to pronounce on the norms of other cultures is unreal!

So Americans can perpetuate as many harmful and bigoted stereotypes about a country as they like as long as 1 of 16 or 32 or 64 grandparents came from that place !!!!

The intolerance on here, and sense of entitlement to pronounce on the norms of other cultures is unreal!
Couldn't agree more!

@KindergartenKop

Everyone in America is a something-american. The government, over the years, have done a fantastic job of uniting all these people from completely different backgrounds into all being 'American'. I'd say it's not designed to be divisive, quite the opposite (if we ignore all the racism etc etc, which I actually can't).

In America patriotism is a major thing. They sing the anthem at baseball games and pledge allegiance to the flag every day at school. That's the glue they use to stick everyone together which we just don't have on the UK!

Yes this. I spent 30 years living there, at first it was very odd when people say Irish American, as most have many nationalities in their background Dh's best friend recently found out he's not just of Irish heritage but also Welsh and French, he's now very proud of all 3, and tells anyone who will listen. I love all the reciting the pledge and singing the national anthem, it does encourage pride in there country. They also develop massive pride in their school, college and University. Something you don't see to this degree in the UK.

@Howshouldibehave

Yes, I happily have picked and chosen this element to claim. So what?

It means that people who have cherry picked ‘being Irish’, will probably be very upset when their children go to Irish universities and aren’t welcomed with open arms into the Irish community as ‘being Irish’ as mentioned upthread. That sort of thing.

I was the person who said that up the thread, and while it was an annual headache to deal with upset visiting students, I think it was actually probably a useful and potentially enriching, if initially uncomfortable, experience for them, usually. As with anyone who heads abroad for the first time and has certain preconceptions challenged. (I had them myself when I first left Ireland.) And it was certainly not just Irish-Americans I had a Korean-American student who had previously lived very much within a devoutly Christian Korean-American community in his hometown, and who ended up going home halfway through his stay because of extreme culture shock he'd never before come directly into contact with atheists or people having no-strings-attached sex that wasn't at least between engaged people.

So Americans can perpetuate as many harmful and bigoted stereotypes about a country as they like as long as 1 of 16 or 32 or 64 grandparents came from that place !!!!

If that is what you got out of what they posted, it says more about you than them. Many Americans don’t even use the term (insert whatever ancestry)- American. Most say they’re American. You’re no better if you’re lumping all together because of the few out of 330 million+ you’ve met who’ve annoyed you. Plus, the U.K. is no better when it comes to harmful and bigoted stereotypes within its own borders.

@Howshouldibehave

Yes, I happily have picked and chosen this element to claim. So what?

It means that people who have cherry picked ‘being Irish’, will probably be very upset when their children go to Irish universities and aren’t welcomed with open arms into the Irish community as ‘being Irish’ as mentioned upthread. That sort of thing.

I can't speak for others, but when I, as a Scottish-American, went to a Scottish university, I was warmly welcomed as someone from the diaspora "coming home." Perhaps the surname helped.

I don't care about Americans saying they are American. I care about my culture and my people who do not have the privileges of Americans who are harmed by Americans bandying around stereotypes about the old country
Clearly it can be harmless for Irish. But it's not harmless for my people. I think irs absolutely indicative of how acceptable it is to be anti E European in Ireland and US that when an E European comes and says that this can be quite offensive that their concerns are just dismissed and belittled. Extremely telling

@Howshouldibehave - It means that those who have cherry picked ‘being Irish’, will probably be very upset when their children go to Irish universities and aren’t welcomed with open arms into the Irish community as ‘being Irish’ as mentioned upthread. That sort of thing.

I teach in an Irish University. We have lots of Irish Americans here. I don't think I've ever come across one who expects to be treated as if they were Irish. Yes, they are proud of their roots, yes they like to have those roots acknowledged but they pretty much all know they are not actually Irish.

Sometimes Ireland is very different to what they expected but they get over that very quickly.

But @znaika I think you are conflating two different things here. One is about spreading inaccurate stereotypes of what modern Russians (or current day people in any of the countries we are discussing) are like which can be hurtful and harmful.

The other is people feeling a sense of affinity with their heritage and the community that has grown up around that heritage in their own country, whether they spell the food names correctly and use authentic ingredients or not. (And holy god trying to get hold of authentic Austrian ingredients in 70s and 80s regional Australia… well, there’s a reason my cousin set up his own deli and import business.)

That’s about Americans, or Canadians or Australians or New Zealanders or whomever having a sense of local community and affinity with their ancestry, which as I’ve said can be quite hard for people who haven’t come from these kinds of countries to understand why it matters to a lot of people.m

It’s probably a Venn diagram where some people are in both groups, but membership of one does not automatically lead to the other.

But their perceptions are of themselves are based on harmful stereotypes rather than anything meaningful or real. So when they say I got this tattoo od a knife because im Russian or I dress really slutty because im a russian. This harms Russians. They can walk away from it and assume the straight forward "American" nationality whereas we can't. We condemned to be the killer or Natasha. I think it's quite hard to understand if you haven't been Russian in the US how fucking awful the negative stereotypes are and how relentless the prejudice is. Seeing Americans coopt this for laughs or street cred isnt very funny

Also I am a Russian in the UK from the 90s actually when there weren't many of us. I know exactly what a immigrant community looks like

I care about my culture and my people who do not have the privileges of Americans who are harmed by Americans bandying around stereotypes about the old country
Clearly it can be harmless for Irish. But it's not harmless for my people. I think irs absolutely indicative of how acceptable it is to be anti E European in Ireland and US that when an E European comes and says that this can be quite offensive that their concerns are just dismissed and belittled. Extremely telling

Yet, you’re ignoring the mass amounts of anti-EE in England too. It’s not just Ireland and the States. I’ve heard some pretty offensive things about Eastern Europeans living in England yet never heard that growing up in the States. I had friends who had close family still living there and worked for a couple for two years and never heard of any stereotypes of them (not saying that some don’t exist, just my experience) compared to what I’ve heard in England.

Others are just explaining why SOME Americans hyphen, adding their ancestry on. It’s not on ALL Americans because some of those that have some type of ties to your country think a certain way. Why not put that on their family and not all Americans?

I’m always a little surprised by European people who don’t recognise that they share their history and heritage with people who live elsewhere, but whose ancestors emigrated from that country, and that immigration and heritage shaped communities and the way those countries developed.

So the Great Famine is just as much a part of the heritage and history of an American with significant Irish ancestry from the nineteenth and twentieth century immigration waves as someone living in modern Ireland but with, say, one non-Irish grandparent.

Just as the Clearances are a large part of my family’s history, as they are for many modern Scottish people, and played a particularly significant role in how my region developed, in local religion and schools that exist to this day, in the economy, and much else.

It’s a shared history. It’s theirs, just as much as it is yours. I find it personally weird that people can’t get their heads around it, but I d come from a place where those different histories are part of our shared story, and we understand that our history prior to our ancestors’ emigration wasn’t magically erased when they stepped on a ship.

Anyone who says 'I dress slutty because I'm Russian' isn't saying that because they're Russian-American, they're saying it because they're stupid.

You could erase all the Russian-Americans, there would still be loads of negative stereotypes about Russia and prejudiced people, from people all over the world.

You can't judge a whole community because a few people are stupid, just like you can't judge all Russians because some of them are xenophobic themselves.

I just think that the practise of referring to yourself as being from a country you have never visited and only have a hackneyed or stereotyped view of is harmful sometimes.
As a real EEuropean I can say the prejudice I experienced in the US was relentlessly horrendous I have had nothing like it in the UK
I have been spat at in 3 countries-Poland (possibly expected) Ireland (shocking) and USA (too many times to count).

But their perceptions are of themselves are based on harmful stereotypes rather than anything meaningful or real.

I don’t think you get to decide what’s meaningful or real for other people and their heritage, though I think it is totally fair for them to be challenged on harmful stereotypes associated with current people in those countries. I don’t think the two are as totally inextricable as you do. Yes, there will be a subset who identify as X heritage who buy into and peddle the harmful modern stereotypes.

So when they say I got this tattoo od a knife because im Russian or I dress really slutty because im a russian. This harms Russians. They can walk away from it and assume the straight forward "American" nationality whereas we can't. We condemned to be the killer or Natasha. I think it's quite hard to understand if you haven't been Russian in the US how fucking awful the negative stereotypes are and how relentless the prejudice is. Seeing Americans coopt this for laughs or street cred isnt very funny

No, I don’t doubt that, and I’m not questioning your experience. That’s awful and it should absolutely be challenged. That’s what I meant when I talked about what they say about modern people in their country of heritage absolutely being open to challenge and condemnation.

I am however saying that’s in quite a different category for me than identifying as being of that heritage and making inauthentic versions of the cuisine or wanting to learn more about their heritage and history. The one is certainly a (nasty) subset of the wider group, and as other PPs have pointed out is also tied to wider stereotypes and intolerances. But I don’t think the wider group should be excoriated or condemned because of a shitty subset whose behaviour should definitely be called out.

I lived in the States for a while, I was surprised by the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, decorations, marching, events, food etc. but shocked by the anti-English sentiment that also went with some of it, lots of sectarian rhetoric and fundraising for the IRA. The worst thing about that was the total ignorance of the issues, not a single person had any actual understanding of the history of Ireland, utterly dismaying.

Yes, @Carpedimum, I saw that in the Irish- American community in the US, especially in the 70s and 80s. From people who'd never been to Ireland. Dismaying is the right word.

But the carrying the nationali
ty of the surname happens in other countries without the offensive side order of patronising and stereotypes.. Many russian emigres in France who proudly carry the names of their forebears, many in the UK who i have bonded with. What they never did was pretend to be something they're not.

@Tulipomania

To be fair to Trump (much as I loathe the man), his Mother was from Lewis so he is genuinely half Scots and has been to Scotland many, many times.

Reading the posts here from Irish folk and understanding why it bugs you, I had the thought that its a little like cultural appropriation (for those Americans who do it but yet have never been to Ireland or lived through some of the horrors some Irish people have had to - in my lifetime but prior also).

I always found it annoying (as a Brit) but I can see now how its actually really offensive too.

@Carpedimum

I lived in the States for a while, I was surprised by the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, decorations, marching, events, food etc. but shocked by the anti-English sentiment that also went with some of it, lots of sectarian rhetoric and fundraising for the IRA. The worst thing about that was the total ignorance of the issues, not a single person had any actual understanding of the history of Ireland, utterly dismaying.

When was that? I lived in the USA and experienced St Patrick's Day in a number of cities and never once heard of money being raised for the IRA.

In Ireland we have the double whammy of a Trump owned golf resort just down the road from the village Mike Pences family came from.

A lot of lazy stereotypes of Irish Americans here. I was on an Irish language course in Donegal 2 years ago. The teacher on the most advanced class was from the USA. One of the other teachers was from Canada. Naturally you will meet others more distantly connected. From my experience in England it is ppl with Irish mothers or grandmothers who have stronger links. Women are the bearers of culture.