"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.

@millenialblush

I agree. I have spent a lot of time in the USA and I always found it a bit cringe how much they play on being 'Irish'. Irish pubs everywhere, the obsession with St Patrick's day, dying the river green in Chicago. Yet ask them to point it out on a map and they'd be stuck...

Even more cringeworthy is the fact they call it patty’s day

I found it fascinating, years ago when I went to the states that some US colleagues seemed intent to pin down what ‘generation’ something I was. I’m actually compete mix of heritage and I had never given this kind of analysis a second thought.

I used to work in a fairly posh hotel in the heart of Rob Roy Country. We once had an American couple stay and the man's name was something like Charles Rob Roy MacGregor and there had been a Rob Roy in his family for oatcake generations. He proudly told me he was descended from THE Rob Roy. I tried to look impressed while thinking "You, me and half the county, mate".

He followed up by asking me "What kind of steer is that in the field over there". He'd never seen a Heilan' Coo before!

The difference is that the Irish American is several generations removed and is trying to capitalise on the struggles os the immigrant communities. African Americans are still struggling not just because of their ancestry but because they still personally feel the struggle.

My in laws are Irish, came to UK 50 years ago and sound fresh off the boat. I am mixed race, African and English but look Spanish. Noone asks my husband about his family but everyone asks me where I am from. People always see colour.
On a side note that horrible fake Irish accent some Americans use is gross, especially when they have never even been to Ireland on holiday.

I see your point. I think being “Italian British” (which obviously no one says but ykwim) does mean something to me.

My family does some things noticeably differently to most British - food being a big one.

I had an American friend like this who would constantly tell me he was from India. I was like “dude, you were born in the US, your parents were born in Malaysia, how many generations do you have to go back to be from India?” Bizarre.

@Mingmoo

This thread is honestly making me feel unwell, as someone who has been living in the UK for almost twenty years. There is no respect for Irish people or Irish history here, and if you have an Irish background almost certainly you were brought up to forget about that and hide it rather than celebrating it. Maybe it's worth thinking about why that was rather than sneering at people who do celebrate their culture and history and roots.

I always find it interesting that people in Britain focus on Noraid and the IRA bombing campaigns in England when they think about the Troubles. I grew up in the Republic of Ireland and the news headlines every morning on the car radio on my way to school were full of deaths that happened fifty or sixty miles away: civilians shot by British soldiers at checkpoints, or loyalist paramilitaries killing taxi drivers who were overwhelmingly from Catholic background, or rioting, or IRA punishment shootings and beatings, or IRA massacres of innocent Protestants for no reason other than their religion or their job as a prison officer or a police officer. The 'mainland' bombing campaign was a tiny, tiny part of the Northern Ireland troubles. It says so much that you all focus on that when you think about Irish Americans.

I couldn't agree more, it is an awful thread. Seeps of everything people with dual/multi heritages (who haven't internalised the xenophobia that is) have to deal with every day in the UK. This kind of irritation that someone could have they own meaning and pride towards a nationality, a culture that they feel within them, in some way. What exactly is the problem with that....?

@IsleofRum

Why don't we admit that anti American xenophobia or racism is a sport in the UK that is never tackled by moderators or the media.

Well said.

IsleofRum:

`Or "African American".

The term 'African American' acknowledges the cultural heritage and slave trade. Jesse L Jackson, the civil rights leader, has popularised this term.

I'm 25% Finnish, 75% English, should I be saying that I'm Finnish-English/British when filling in my nationality on forms etc or just carry on saying I'm English/British as I have my whole life?

One thing that I find particularly amusing is how many Americans claim to be direct descendants of Robert the Bruce or Mary Queen of Scots. I'm on a few Scottish Gaelic Facebook groups (because I've been learning Scots Gaelic) and there are so many on there. It's particularly funny because they're so anti-immigrant apart from when they're talking about themselves.
My biological father was from Scotland yet I'd never claim to be Scottish because I don't have that connection. It's just embarrassing when Yanks do it.

@Harmonypuss

I'm 25% Finnish, 75% English, should I be saying that I'm Finnish-English/British when filling in my nationality on forms etc or just carry on saying I'm English/British as I have my whole life?

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here, but Americans distinguish between nationality (American) and ethnicity (Irish American, etc.). For ethnicity, sometimes the term "national origin" is used.

@Margerine78

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.

Almost all the Irish people who have posted here have said it does not particularly bother them

@ClaireFraser2018

IsleofRum:

`Or "African American".

The term 'African American' acknowledges the cultural heritage and slave trade. Jesse L Jackson, the civil rights leader, has popularised this term.

Exactly. The reason so many people use ‘African American’ rather than, say, ‘Nigerian American’ is because their ancestors were enslaved, and had their children forcibly removed and sold, meaning that their cultural heritage and knowledge of where their family originally came from was lost. Including ‘African’ in their identity is a way of acknowledging this.

It's worth remembering too the impact Irish Americans had on the Good Friday Agreement. Project Children was set up by a retired NYPD Irish American and was designed to give Catholic and Protestant children some respite from the bombing. The children stayed with Irish American families.

It has been suggested that some of those families were prominent political families that saw up close the situation in Ireland. They put pressure on Clinton to get involved. His involvement is thought to have been important. So, perhaps that connection with the ancestral homeland benefited people in the long run.

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
No it's not.
I don't think I've noticed posts Irish pp's writing it bugs them.
It makes me proud our little country and cultures are well thought of in other countries.

@jewel1968

It's worth remembering too the impact Irish Americans had on the Good Friday Agreement. Project Children was set up by a retired NYPD Irish American and was designed to give Catholic and Protestant children some respite from the bombing. The children stayed with Irish American families.

It has been suggested that some of those families were prominent political families that saw up close the situation in Ireland. They put pressure on Clinton to get involved. His involvement is thought to have been important. So, perhaps that connection with the ancestral homeland benefited people in the long run.

Well said. The Irish American influence on the GFA was huge.

The Irish American influence also has a big impact on the access Ireland has to the US political ear generally.

I sometimes look at the houses in the West of Ireland and wonder how many families living in them received 'money from America' which emigrants sent home. And it is sad how many emigrated to England in the fifties and had very tough lives.
I think in Ireland the 'Yanks' who come here with 'big talk' are met with a sort of kindly amusement.

This thread makes very uncomfortable reading.

It wasn't just families in the West of Ireland who received money from America being sent home, it was all over I'd say.

The lost Irish in England is another incredibly sad group of mainly older men who left Ireland due to huge economic hardship & worked as manual labourers on building sites, railways, roads & in fields till their bodies gave up. They sent money back to Ireland but rarely returned themselves. So many of them ended up alone & destitute. I saw a documetary about it some years ago & it has stuck in my heart ever since. Sad, broken hearted lonely broken old men dying alone. There was a charity that brought them home to Ireland to visit but in most cases all their family had long since died & homesteads & towns were unrecognizable.

I then read an incredible book - I could read the sky by Dermot Bulger based on these old men. I cried my way through it & even now just thinking about it can bring a lump to my throat.

The book is actually by Timothy O'Grady

John McGahern has often written about the same group of men, and Edna O’Brien has a good story about them, ‘Shovel Kings.’ And the Christmas dinner scene in Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn was populated by their New York equivalents (cheered up slightly in the film version by one of them being played by Iarla ‘Voice of God’ O’Lionáird. )

My own uncle went to Manchester in the 50s as a popular, sporty youth who’d served his time as a carpenter but couldn’t get work at home, gradually stopped writing and coming home in the summer and couldn’t be found at any address he’d given when his brother went looking for him. When he was ‘found’ decades later, by a priest who tried to repatriate people with any living family, he was a wreck of a man, prematurely aged, with serious MH issues. He was never able to talk about what had happened to him, but we think he may have been enslaved, and then discarded when he could no longer work — we don’t know. His life was incredibly sad.

Oh @bathtoy that's incredibly sad about your uncle. I'm sorry to read that.

I was also thinking of John McGahern That They May Face The Rising Sun too. An immensely moving book & he is such a wonderful writer. I met him once.

Dancing at Lughnasa also touched on it when Rose & the other sister went to London & were never heard from again

My friend saw an old man thumbing a life outside Limerick one late after noon a few years back & something compelled him to stop. Turns out the man had spent his life working as a labourer in America & had left Enistymon when he was in his v early 20s & had never made it back till then. Some charity bought him a ticket but he was trying to find his way home. My friend gave him a lift right to the village & they chatted all the way. He was concerned for him as he was old & not certain of his own memories. They found his old family home which was now a shop & he stood on the street & wept in sadness. He had no where to go & no one left who knew him & he'd no plan. My friend brought him to the church & they found the priest who then took over & said he'd help him connect with some elderly townspeople who may have known his family.

I often wonder what ever happened to him And so many more like him.

I think a few themes are being cross referenced here re ‘identity’. Australia and Canada are full of people who identity as Monarchists, and want their head of state to be a British monarch. I find that mindset far harder to comprehend than someone living in the USA, who knows that in 1850 the great grandparents left Italy, Ireland, Russia etc and sought a new life in America. Most humans want to know ‘who am I?’ which is another way of saying ‘this is where my people are from’. Why shouldn’t the great grandchildren or grandchildren of immigrants take great pride in their heritage. After all, almost every other popular telly programme is about people desperate to better understand their own family history or some OTT biography of the Royal Family focusing upon their slavish devotion to Queen Victoria’s contrariness circa 1820-1901…. Claiming Irish heritage seems to get under the skin of some people. We have a RF who have for over a century adopted a completely contrived Sir Walter Scott fantasy, without the slightest bit of irony. Their ancestors destroyed the Gaelic speaking peoples living in the Highlands. Often the people who express annoyance at Irish Americans discussing Irish affairs (they should keep their noses out) are themselves woefully and deliberately ignorant about Irish history. Didn't Dominic Raab have to be reminded that the UKs closest land border with the EU was ….er The Republic of Ireland…and who can forget that the Secretary of State for NI, Karen Brady didn’t know the voting patters of the unionist or nationalist population! It came as an awful surprise to know that the 12th July is rather different to St Patrick’s Day.
23 Presidents of the USA have Irish heritage. Many American institutions claim Irish connections from ‘The Fighting 69th’, Notre Dame College and the Democratic Party. Being Irish in America (save for the old WASP bigotry) is not the handicap that is it in British society. And frankly when seeking an Irish or Italian or German passport to offset the worst effects of Brexit, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon the applicant to acquaint themselves with their background and heritage? I don’t find it strange that people called Murphy or Kelly living in Pittsburg or St Louis, have a fondness for Ireland, and feel a kinship for the country. I do find it odd that people called Kelly living in say Yorkshire and applying for an Irish passport via the parent/grandparent rule in 2021, have zero interest in their heritage.

My biggest surprise is the obsession that the USA has with the UK royal family.
I could understand if I was living in Oz or Canada.
But the US actually fought a war to remove the royals so why does my mainstream news channel have a blinking Diana series currently.
Why do I have to know everything about the queen's health? Royal kids going to school etc, etc?

My biggest surprise is the obsession that the USA has with the UK royal family.

Obsession? My guess is that the vast majority of Americans have very little interest in the British RF. I have a strong interest, based on my interest in British history, and quite a bit of knowledge, but I am far from obsessed.