Why is there so much sneering at Americans with European ancestry?

[BrBa]

I don’t understand! I identify with all my ancestors whether they came as religious refugees or early colonisers, were already indigenous to the region or brought in as slaves.

Yours
Swiss, German, Native American North, Central and South, Sephardic, Irish, South East African, Scottish, Acadian/French, and English

I travel a lot in America - I am Irish, born in Ireland, live in Ireland. American People tell me they too are Irish all the time. I just find that a bit odd. One fellow Irish man complemented me on my English language skills😂. He clearly knew nothing about Ireland despite claiming to be Irish!!

i Know it is an Americanism. They fact that they announce they are Irish or Italian or German despite being born in America just marks out that they are very culturally different to Irish, Italians and Germans.

a close friend of mine is Irish - she was born in Ireland. But her parents were born in india. She would never describe herself as Indian - her identity is Irish.

Slightly different but my DH and I are British, have lived in Aus for 15 years and both children born there. My eldest says he feels quite “British”, loves history, British stuff and culture in general. My younger son says he feels more Australian, because his interests lie more in the Aussie way of life.
We’re currently living in the U.K. and older son says he feels more protective of his Aussie culture now he’s away from it.
So my answer is, I don’t think there is a “one size fits all”. Some people will hold on tight to one culture and heritage, others less so. I have lots of friends from China and it’s the same there - some hold on tight to their cultural heritage, others embrace everything Australian.
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way of doing it.

I find heritage and identity fascinating. Seldom come to any solid conclusions though.

Irishness in England-Scotland-Wales is interesting (and of course had a historic status of prejudice and ceilings to advancement in many spheres). Surveys of how many people in ESW have Irish heritage (as in 'pure' or partial descent) often come out as one in four. If we take that as one in five and then round down a bit we still get to perhaps 15 million people with Irish descent. The population of all Ireland is heading towards 7 million.

Americans coming here should do the small amount of research it takes to discover that the phrase "I'm Irish" or "I'm Scottish" is taken. It already means someone who's born and bred in the country.

It's like going to the US and announcing that you're a faucet or a diaper when those words have pre existing meanings. Of course you'd find people sneering and giggling at you. It's human nature.

Interestingly, I don't think that African American Americans tend to abbreviate it to just "African", do they?

I'd regard and refer to them as British or American. Wouldn't matter whether they were first, second or whatever generation.

I think because they can sometimes claim to be Irish as if that equates to the citizens of contemporary Ireland, and also construct Ireland as a romanticised old worldly space rather than a real 21st century country.

He's more British than Irish

Because Americans never accept they're American despite being several generations into being an American. It's just strange.

Ermm, yes they do? That is why they identify as African American, or Irish American?

@Ozgirl75 we are kiwis and DH has British parents. He feels more British when he was there then now. I think it was simply that he’s different from his peers with British parents. Now we are living her in the UK, he felt he is 100% Kiwi. This sounds similar to your eldest.

This is what’s odd with Americans. They don’t have Irish parents that make them different from their all American friends. When meeting a real Irish or in Ireland, they surely know they don’t sound the same and are culturally different?

For Americans born to immigrants it can be a practical matter. Growing up if I was bringing a friend home for the first time I'd probably say "Oh, by the way we're Polish", just as a heads up as my Grandparents were Polish speaking.

Nobody would take that to mean I was literally born in Poland.

FWIW, I refer to myself as American. No faux bewilderment necessary.

I think it's great when people know what their ancestry is, lots of Americans seem to have researched their ethnicity & country of origin part of their ancestry back to their great grandparents at least which I find really interesting.

I don't know what ethnicity all of my ancestors were & my Ancestry DNA test wasnt especially helpful, to be honest I find the results quite difficult to understand.

I recently learnt from a cousin that one set of my great grandparents were darker skinned with a 'foreign sounding' name and suffered abuse in the street & had their shop windows smashed in England pre ww1 so had to move but the cousin who told me that didn't know their ethnicity either.

I know one great grandfather was definitely highland Scottish but Scots didn't show on the Ancestry DNA test. Bizarre.

Thank you x @Ozgirl75 @TreesAtSea

It can be quite confusing. Some would even say it depends on the country they're (or their parents) are from.

...He's more British than Irish

Well yes but, by descent. Imagine an Englishman, Frenchman and Irishman walks into a joint sitting of a Parliament. Or three. This is a bit Trinitarian. In the first they say 'we are in Westminster Hall because you don't get to be in the Commons, but Special Relationship and all that. It is special isn't it?' In the second they mutter something about Huguenots and try not to mention expelling the ancestors. In the third they say 'welcome home'.

My point was, you can't just latch onto one great xx grandparent out of many and decide that's what you are. You can say "I'm a quarter, eighth, half Irish", but that means you're also three quarters, seven eighths, a half something else. But the Americans ignore the something else, even if it's bigger than the Irish bit

Irish-Americans know whether they are Irish citizens or not! They're entitled to use the word Irish as they use it. There's no confusion - I haven't noticed any chaos at Dublin airport: they arrive with their visas like anybody else.

America's motto is e pluribus unum. So one nation made up of many peoples. They were obviously very far from living up to this standard, but the idea was that no one ethnicity made you American.

Hence (and a few other good historic reasons) being an (xxxxx-)American.

I don't understand why people sneer at other people's terms to express their identities. You can usually explain terms in widespread usage, like Irish-American, with a look at the history behind them.

My maternal grandparents grew up, got married and had most of their children in Ireland, then had to move to England to find work. They then had more children, one of whom was my mum. The whole family identified as Irish. My mum had children, and considered them also Irish as she had been growing up. We spent our childhoods talking to our grandparents about their time in Ireland, they longed for home. They consumed anything Irish just to try and feel that connection again, meaning that the grandchildren felt too the connection.

Now some of the grandchildren live in Ireland, with English accents, and are very much not considered Irish in any way at all. It's a bit of a bump to have that part of your identity pulled away from you. You didnt fit in growing up because you were told you were Irish, now you dont fit it in Ireland because you're told you're English.

In reality I am both. Possibly slightly more English by blood, but I feel more Irish after decades of living here and struggle to feel connection when I travel back to England. So I end up feeling a bit lost and left out, and like I never really fit in anywhere

So I can completely empathise with Americans who so desperately want to identify as a certain nationality, especially if they were brought up in a family that has tried to cling on to their roots through generation after generation

There’s something about Ireland though isn’t there? My DH mum is Irish and when my children found out they were kind of thrilled about having the “Irish connection” even though she’s lived in England since her 20s and doesn’t even visit very often, in fact, as my DH was in the British army, she had to cut ties with quite a few relatives in any event!
I don’t know where it comes from but they were both going “we’re almost from Ireland”. Obviously something desirably romantic about being Irish!

Probably cause it's a load of pretentious twaddle. I'm all for people researching their heritage but just becuase you've a distant relative of X origin doesn't make you also X.

I mean you've signed off with a hodge podge of at least 11 different things at the end.

Swiss, German, Irish, Scottish, French, and English are all nationalities.

Sephardic and Acadian are ethnicities.

And Navtive American North, Central, South and South East African are just meaningless. South East African is an undefined region and Native America North, Central, South literally covers two entire continents.

And there you have it. If Americans don't even realise, it's because they can be insular and arrogant. The rest of the world is not America.

I do refer to myself as "Chicana" which means I'm Mexican-American. My father was born and raised in Mexico and all four of my grandparents were as well. Obviously my mother was a first generation American. I hold a US and Mexican passport.

It's important for me to mention my hyphenated identification because although I was born in the US, I don't always fit in with American people on the whole. Culturally, I am different. I didn't grow up speaking English in the home as a child, I didn't grow up eating Mac and cheese but tacos and burritos, and my name is very Spanish and I can't tell you how many times I've been asked in the US (and the UK) where I'm "really from" when I say I'm American. Then I travel to visit my extended family in Mexico and they make fun of my American accented Spanish, I have no cultural references because I didn't grow up in Mexico and I'm constantly reminded that I can never really be Mexican.

I am too Mexican to be American and too American to be Mexican. That's why I mention my hyphen. There are plenty of people who are just like me in the US and we have our own identity and culture.

This isn't directed to you but anyone that may be interested but my hometown is on the Mexico/US border and many people like me are "mestizo" (mixed indigenous/ European people). We aren't immigrants exactly as many of our ancestors were already here. In my hometown, we didn't cross the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande; the river crossed us.

I don't sneer, but I was confused when my American boss said her and her husband's parents were Polish. I asked which part of Poland they came from and it turned out they'd never been to Poland but their great-grandparents or something similarly far back emigrated from Poland to the USA.

Americans just mean something different to the rest of the world when they say they're x. They're claiming a national identity, not a nationality. And sometimes it's quite funny, like when they're more stereotypically Irish than the actual Irish but only on St Patrick's Day but know nothing about modern-day Ireland. On other occasions, like the American IRA fundraisers, not so much.

This is reminding me of that compilation video of dozens of clips of Lady Gaga saying she's Italian. All very well when being interviewed by Americans, but when she did it in Italy, the interviewer started asking her questions in Italian and she was like a rabbit in headlights.

Facebook ancestry groups are choc full of Americans claiming to be Vikings, or to more more Scottish than the people living in Scotland. It's often tinged with more than a pinch of racism... they can't believe that people who live in Scotland but whose parents are from Pakistan or Poland could be considered Scottish by those of us who live here.

Depends on your accent and the location. By looks, possibly seen as a Black American but once you speak, it would be noticed.

I’ve been in the UK 10+ years and my accent is naturally soft. I get Canadian, but am from the States. Being here, I have gotten “ where are you from” (I give them the state) and then “where are you really from” (Give them the nearest large city and where that is) and then they ask the question again and are confused when I keep giving them the same city over and over (ancestors have been in the States for centuries). Even happens when giving medical information and me telling staff to just put Mixed Background since that’s the best choice they have (I’m not African and I’m not from the Caribbean) and staff looking sheepish saying “they’re not sure why they have to take down such questions” or “not trying to be racist”. Always find that a bit odd.

Yes, you can!

Unless we are introducing blood purity laws, you can be an Irish citizen with a "minority" of Irish DNA, never mind embracing the heritage.

Citizenship doesn't map on to ancestry. Heritage still less. Pretty much everyone has mixed ancestry but identifies with one primary culture - or more than one. This is normal human behaviour.

Do British people go around counting ancestors and accusing each other of being more Welsh than English, more French than Scottish, more Yorkshire than Cornwall? Because that would be pretty weird.