"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.

I've always thought it strange that people adopt their distant roots as their identity, having not been brought up in a country or often ever been there, and neither have their parents or grandparents.

I am British but have recently found out that I am 20% Jewish. I do my family tree as a hobby and am interested in understanding where my Jewish dna comes from and about who my ancestors were and their story, but I'm not suddenly gong to bowl about saying I'm Jewish like it's part of my identity because it isn't (even though it's part of my dna), I was born and raised in England to a non-Jewish parent.

I also have some Scottish ancestry but again not going to start saying I am Scottish either.

I just don't understand people who do that. Very odd behaviour.

@iamtheoneandonlyyy

I think pride in heritage is lovely

Why?

Half English half Welsh Brit married to an Irish/Italian American here. I'm apparently known as a WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
My FIL (Irish American) did tell me to be wary of the Italian temperament, referring to both DH and MIL. I think it's less national identity than personality traits

Celebrating diversity is all a cunning convenient plot by government in my opinion. Remember the saying "divide and conquer"

Imagine if every person in America declared themselves American first and that comes before anything else. You would have a United population. A very dangerous situation for any ruling party.

Same with the constant push in the uk to support every preference as being diverse. It's divide and conquer again. Put the commoners against each other and they are too busy fighting each other over which pro noun to use to notice the governments doing what they want without any protest.

I'm apparently of Irish decent too. Relatives made the trip from Dublin to the fens in the 1850s during a potato famine. I guess with thousands of others too. I was excited about it for about 10 seconds but I'd never consider to tell anyone I have Irish ancestry. If I could go back tens of thousands of years I'd probably find I have African ancestry.

@RavingAnnie you did some delving into your ancestry and made a few interesting discoveries. That's vastly different from a person who has grown up with a sense of identity which has been handed down for generations. People generally don't declare themselves Irish American after a quick internet search. Also, it's not everything about who they are, but rather a part, albeit an important part. I think your comments are rather dismissive and it's a shame you 'just don't understand people who do that'. Maybe read the thread and discover that your position is not the default.

@RavingAnnie because pride in one’s heritage in countries like the US, Australia, Canada or other countries with populations where the overwhelming majority are the result of immigration in the last few centuries is very closely tied to pride in their communities and their countries.

Being part of the Italian or Greek or Maltese community in different parts of Australia, for example, confers a strong sense of belonging and pride for a lot of people.

There is an odd refusal on this thread to recognise that there is a sense of community and identity resulting from immigrant heritage in these countries that just doesn’t exist in, say, the UK or other countries whose history isn’t so hugely tied up with immigration, where not just one of your great-grandparents came from somewhere else but all of them did.

It also ignores, in a really tin-eared and ignorant way, the impact that immigrant communities had on the development of those countries. Some English people seem to think that immigration in those countries was about people arriving and then assimilating - completely ignoring how those immigrant communities shaped the development of their towns, cities, regions and even their country, which also confers a sense of pride in what their ancestors achieved (as well as pride in those people for what they did and overcame.)

@RavingAnnie

I've always thought it strange that people adopt their distant roots as their identity, having not been brought up in a country or often ever been there, and neither have their parents or grandparents.

I am British but have recently found out that I am 20% Jewish. I do my family tree as a hobby and am interested in understanding where my Jewish dna comes from and about who my ancestors were and their story, but I'm not suddenly gong to bowl about saying I'm Jewish like it's part of my identity because it isn't (even though it's part of my dna), I was born and raised in England to a non-Jewish parent.

I also have some Scottish ancestry but again not going to start saying I am Scottish either.

I just don't understand people who do that. Very odd behaviour.

It's only 'odd' because it's different from you. Why can't you respect other people and cultures approach their ancestry differently than you do?

Did a bit of reading /watching videos on YT about German-Americans ,
There are loads of small towns in the Midwest with German settlers , they’ve kept many traditions alive, some of the things used in apple fermenting that their Ancestors brought from Germany in the 1800s are still in use
some even do understand and speak a bit of Rhinelandic ? Dialect , it’s quite remarkable and not Odd at all.

It's only 'odd' because it's different from you. Why can't you respect other people and cultures approach their ancestry differently than you do?

American and Australian culture is considered fair game to be belittled and sneered at by a fair proportion of the UK.

Canadians and New Zealanders less so. It’s quite peculiar.

We have a German American friend from Wisconsin. His wife is Japanese American.
He was in Europe at a conference when the Ash Cloud hit, and was able to go and stay with a distant cousin in Bonn. Id be delighted to meet my distant cousins who live in America, Australia, Canada and South Africa.
There was recently a thread on how close people are to cousins. We live as far away from our home place as is possible in Ireland, but I still have contact with my cousins and my adult kids meet up with their cousins. You never know when a cousin might come in useful!

@eggandonion

We have a German American friend from Wisconsin. His wife is Japanese American. He was in Europe at a conference when the Ash Cloud hit, and was able to go and stay with a distant cousin in Bonn. Id be delighted to meet my distant cousins who live in America, Australia, Canada and South Africa. There was recently a thread on how close people are to cousins. We live as far away from our home place as is possible in Ireland, but I still have contact with my cousins and my adult kids meet up with their cousins. You never know when a cousin might come in useful!

Definitely. My grandfather's brother went to Australia as a young man. His children, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren have all come to Ireland and stayed with/met up with various family members. Traffic has gone the opposite direction 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.

I've worked for a couple of US companies - a lot of workers in them didn't even try to hide their hatred of the English, possibly because they didn't even know any English people worked there.

I also (more amusingly) sat next an Englsih employee of Apple who said he'd made a presentation once in the US and at the end a colleague said to him "would you mind going over that again but in English this time" without any sense of shame or irony.

There is no shortage of ignorance on any side.

For balance - I have of course worked with some fabulous US colleagues too.

@JassyRadlett

It's only 'odd' because it's different from you. Why can't you respect other people and cultures approach their ancestry differently than you do?

American and Australian culture is considered fair game to be belittled and sneered at by a fair proportion of the UK.

Canadians and New Zealanders less so. It’s quite peculiar.

If you have spent any time in the US or AUS you'll know there's no shortage of sneering at the English.

@Muttly

We also have a museum in Dublin celebrating the hows and whys these people had to leave Ireland. It is called the EPIC museum and it probably would help you understand how people who left in less than ideal circumstances loved to carry that part of their identity forward. The Irish, as a non colonial country, are exceptionally proud of their diaspora too.

I think this is the bit a lot of people miss. Many many of the Irish immigrants to America didn’t go simply because they wanted to. If they could have they’d have preferred to stay with their family and live in Ireland, but economics made people move.

No-one would, I hope, be dismissive of the children or grandchildren of current economic migrants or refugees still feeling at least partly Pakistani/Kenyan/Syrian/Chinese. It’s basically the same thing, just more years down the line.

EPIC Museum is really well worth a visit if you're in Dublin. It's Ireland's Emigration Museum and has won Europe's Leading Visitor Attraction for the past 3 years in a row. It's brilliantly done. It does go a long way to show how and why the Irish diaspora are as far reaching and active as they are.

If you have spent any time in the US or AUS you'll know there's no shortage of sneering at the English.

I mean I am Australian and have spent a fair amount of time there. And I wouldn’t defend Australians making fun of or sneering at other nationalities, including the English, either.

Though I think it’s a mixed bag in Australia… just as much Anglophilia and certainly a sense of affinity with the UK as there is negativity. My own take is that the negativity is partly borne out of the way British people, and particularly the English, have spoken to and about Australians for generations. I still get referred to as a ‘colonial’ and told that my country is ‘cultureless’ by people who would never dream of describing any other place (except maybe the US) like that.

But it’s an explanation not at excuse. Mocking other nationalities is shitty behaviour.

Interesting response though. So because not all Americans and Australians are nice about the English, it’s ok to sneer at, mock and denigrate their culture? Cool.

I do have to say though, Joe Bidens comments to the Pope about him being the only Irish man the pope will have met who has never drank made me roll my eyes all the way back in my head....... I'm sure he doesn't represent all Irish Americans though!

@UniBallEye

I think PPs have it right, certainly from the Irish American many generations back perspective. It would have been unusual for many of the million of Irish people who emigrated to USA in the 19th / early 20th centuries to have done so entirely willingly.

It was a last resort life-line and undertaken with huge grief that they would likely never see home or family again. That is a profound grief carried by such huge numbers of people, coupled with the fact that their language, culture and religion was outlawed in their own country for so long it is unsurprising that keeping it alive in the new world was a priority. They lived in close knit communities and married other Irish immigrants etc. These stories and histories and values were passed down through the generations and were at the heart of their family life.

I am Irish, living in Ireland now again and I really feel no animosity for any American who identifies as Irish American. I can't honesty see why I should. It could have been me...my branch of the family were lucky to survive all that befell them and I am here as a result of that.

I have also spent time in Australia which to me is a totally different and more challenging heritage situation, especially for Irish people historically (not recent immigrants). Under British law in Ireland many thousands of Irish people were banished to Australia and Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) to work in the colonies as prisoners. Many were political prisoners who were seeking an independent Ireland and many many were desperate starving poor who stole food to feed families.

Under the Earl Grey Scheme 4,000 Irish girls aged 14 - 18 from post-famine workhouses across Ireland were sent to Australia to provide wives for the colonies and it is estimated 20% of the current population of Australia can be traced to this event. the girls were known as 'breeders' and on average had 8 children. They were sent by the colonial government to prevent the men finding Aboriginal wives which would have been a nightmare for the colony formed only 16 years at that stage. They were sent with a bowl and a spoon and a petticoat.

Known as the Founding Grandmothers these girls were never expected to return to Ireland, most never did, through their decendents have done and still do come to trace roots.

Australia, due to the origins of it colonisation has an uneasy relationship with heritage as lots came from prisoner stock, or prison guards or 'free settlers' who were very unlawful and found this remote new colony far away from other places to settle. For many years there was a reluctance to delve too deeply into your family heritage but that's all changing now and that's also a good thing.

I think unless you come from a place where these are issues that face you or your people it's very hard to understand and easy to pass judgement.

There has been an unpleasant feel to this thread at times which is not nice to read.

This is a fascinating post. Thank you. I had no idea about the young girls sent to Australia. This thread has made me realise how little I know.

Downpatrick museum has a good display about young women who were deported for what we'd consider petty crimes. Im sure local museums in gb have similar.
And of course there were a lot of children who went out postwar from homes for a 'better life'.
And a lot of Irish babies were adopted in America, with various levels of legality.
My grandfather was Welsh, sadly his home town was in the news for a tragic event at the weekend. I did notice that more, than had it been a random town.

With regard to Joe Biden it should also be remembered that he lived with his Grandparents for a time. Their parents were the ones who had to make the move to the USA so he would have heard more of the stories and the likes than a grandchild who didn’t live with them.

I was brought up from 7 by my grandparents and I know more about their parents and heritage than my older siblings (they were 13, 15 & 16 when we moved in with them) and vastly more than my cousins. Just because of proximity.

It also ignores, in a really tin-eared and ignorant way, the impact that immigrant communities had on the development of those countries.

Just as one small example of this, I was on a thread on MN some years back when a poster was decrying British people using the term "high school" to refer to secondary school, as an objectionable Americanism. "High School" is certainly the default for secondary school in the US, but we didn't make it up out of thin air. It comes directly from the first school to call itself a "high school," the Royal High School in Edinburgh. There are quite a few other borrowings from Scottish education that are fairly widespread in the US, harking back to the prevalence of Scottish schoolmasters in colonial times as well as Scottish immigration in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Also I think that the significance of religion in American life plays a large role in keeping sensibility to national origin alive. My Scottish-American family is still heavily Presbyterian. Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans are heavily Catholic. There is a large Greek-American community in the city I lived in for years, and the Greek Orthodox churches there are centers of cultural, as well as religions, life. The Episcopal Church centers its English origins and cultural connections to a large extent.

My Scottish-American family is still heavily Presbyterian. Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans are heavily Catholic.

I come from a part of Australia that had significant Scottish immigration in the nineteenth century in particular. The names of places and properties (ie farms) are often based on Scottish place names; locally people still use the occasional Scottish-English word particularly in more static rural communities (albeit Scottish words mostly from the mid to late 19th century!); I went to a Presbyterian school and sang from the Presbyterian hymn book; we were very clear that it was people of Scottish heritage (or those fresh from Scotland) who had founded and shaped our school.

The politics of Presbyterianism in Australia are particularly fascinating (and not without bitterness….)

and sorry, I meant to finish by saying that you’re totally right about how religion plays a major role in keeping the idea of immigrant and national origin heritage alive and current in people’s lives.

I think this is the bit a lot of people miss. Many many of the Irish immigrants to America didn’t go simply because they wanted to. If they could have they’d have preferred to stay with their family and live in Ireland, but economics made people move.

No-one would, I hope, be dismissive of the children or grandchildren of current economic migrants or refugees still feeling at least partly Pakistani/Kenyan/Syrian/Chinese. It’s basically the same thing, just more years down the line.

And this isn't a historic thing, it's very much been happening in my lifetime, and I'm in my 40s. The 1970s and 80s were periods of huge recession, political corruption and mass unemployment in Ireland the 80s in particular were one of the bleakest periods in its recent history, with a succession of weak, unstable and short-lived governments, an overinflated currency, massive governmental borrowing by the late 80s, the national debt was something like 130% of GNP. There was high unemployment, falling standards of living, huge emigration.

I started university in 1990, and my generation of school leavers knew that we would have to leave Ireland to find work. Traditionally Ireland had transported its unskilled and lowskilled workforce -- in the 80s, that now included the highly-skilled and educated.

When I went to the US first myself, before I got a visa in the Morrison visa lottery, I stayed with older friends who were among the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Irish -- they both worked but were often on the breadline, and had no health insurance or safety net if anything went wrong. When I was staying with them, D was walking to his construction job along the hard shoulder of a major road because his van broke down and they didn't have the spare cash to repair it. When A fell down stairs and broke her leg around the same time, she was driven around in an ambulance to several hospitals before one would admit someone with no health insurance, and they couldn't come home for family funerals or emergencies because they couldn't risk not getting back in.

It was a frightening and precarious way to live, and I think clinging to the cooperation and shared interests of the Irish communities were a psychological lifeline (and a source of actual help when needed). And the saddest bit was that eventually, they decided to return to Ireland when D had a nervous breakdown, and only lasted a couple of years -- they'd been away too long, and it wasn't as they remembered. They went back, this time documented, and have had children.

That's very interesting Jassy. Presbyterian churches all over the US often have festivals or special days that celebrate Scottish heritage. And there are a lot of Scottish place names everywhere, especially in North Carolina. There is even a Scotland County there.