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’m baffled—not really—by all the surprise on this thread that Americans have a different way of thinking and talking about their national identity, their ethnic identity, or their family identity to that offered by an idealized British person. I mean: of course Americans who emigrated from other countries, and who were absorbed into American society at different rates depending on ever changing laws defining desirable and undesirable, white and non white, citizen and non citizen, might have a different way of thinking about family, culture, identity, and homeland than the mumsnetters who have their panties in a twist over Biden identifying as Irish culturally.

American hyphenated identities reflect the painful experience of immigrants who were first asked to assimilate and forget their culture and languages, often punished for their differences, and then sometimes fought back to resurrect or craft novel, hybrid, or fantasy versions of these identities. In the UK this happens too with various sub state nationalisms sometimes valorized (cornish, welsh, scots) and sometimes squelched. The victorian manufacturer of romanticized scots identity also comes to mind.

All this moaning about how other people choose to understand themselves and their personal family histories? The yardstick for measuring what is normal, or silly, or presumptuous doesn’t lie in the UK like Greenwich Mean Time or a universal measure. It is specific to each country and the history of the communities in that country.

The US has quite a complex history because of race based immigration snd marriage laws that, for example, defined Sikh male immigrants as non white and left them free to marry only non white women. This produced a hybrid Sikh-Mexican community that was not accepted as truly South Asian by later immigrants from the subcontinent. My point here is that what this thread sees as bumptious/presumptuous or hyperbolic American style is really just an interesting American historically derived way some communities have chosen to understand the complex forces that brought them to the US, got them citizenship, and nurtured or repressed them.

I don't sneer. I make a lot of money out of Americans who want to explore their roots in the UK.

Most of us in the UK know where we're from. We know our ancestors and their ancestors grew up on these islands, or if people are from other parts of the world they will have a strong sense of their own ethnicity and history.

Many Americans don't have that. They know that as a white American their ancestors originally probably came from somewhere in Europe, and as a black American, that their story probably involves people who were enslaved. So they look into where their grandparents or great grandparents or great great grand parents sailed to the US from.

Sure, they like the tartan and the kitsch and the shamrocks and so on. They are PROUD of being 1/16th Irish or Welsh or whatever. And good on them. The heritage tourism sector is growing rapidly. Next week I am meeting up with a client from Ohio whose great grandmother grew up in Glasgow in the early 20th century and emigrated about 1921. She wants to see where she lived, went to church, went to school, local parks and landmarks. And is paying me handsomely to show her round. If her visit involves some buying tartan scarves and eating haggis I have zero issue with that.

Nobody is being insular and arrogant. Using words the way they are used around you is how language works. A quick conversation between any halfway sane individuals tends to clear up any nuances.

If I say I'm Irish, do I mean I was born there? Have the passport? Qualify for the passport? Have Irish parents? Who knows, but if it matters, it can be explained.

im old enough that I have experienced people treating me differently because of my surname. I’ve tried explaining to my dd who shares that surname just how odd it was for people to treat me differently because they perceived me as coming from an ethnic group that at one point faced distinct discrimination in U.S. history. It didn’t help that I had the surname via adoption and my appearance does not match people’s expectations.

it helped me as a child that there was some celebration of my heritage group because of the negative feedback I got for belonging to that group.

the groups people mention in particular like Irish and Italian both at one point were blatantly discriminated against in U.S. history. Forming a strong sense of cultural identity helped with that.

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

No, because we generally say we're Welsh, Scottish, Irish or English. We don't say we're French, because we had Huegenot ancestors. Or that we're German, because we're the Royal family.

So what makes you English as opposed to Welsh, for example?

I am Canadian with Irish and Russian ancestry. I grew up with traditions and culture from both of those cultures along with the Canadian "melting pot". My household was culturally very different than my friend's who has English and German ancestry, yet we were raised in the same neighbourhood by Canadians.

Ancestry is very relevant in a place where there are so many cultures meshed together.

As a side note, nobody would bat an eye at an American acknowledging and celebrating their Indian, Chinese, Jamaican, Mexican, or Nigerian heritage. But for those with white European ancestry, it's apparently tacky.

I'm not sure it's sneering, but with Biden it's been embarrassing. Tbf it's not the only thing he does to embarrass himself but I have cringed hard watching the various news reports of his mini tour.

Being born in England. Living in England. Having English parents. One or all of these.

Facebook ancestry groups are choc full of Americans claiming to be Vikings, or to more more Scottish than the people living in Scotland.

Those "ancestry groups" tend to attract some odd personalities, tbh. It's one thing to be curious about your ancestry and another to become some kind of weird cultural zealot.

Trump's mother was born and raised in the Outer Hebrides and emigrated to the US as a young woman. Trump would have qualified to play football for the Scottish national side.

Nobody is being insular and arrogant. Using words the way they are used around you is how language works. A quick conversation between any halfway sane individuals tends to clear up any nuances.

This. It’s like they can’t fathom different countries speak and use their language in a different way.

And would any one or more of these things stop you from being Welsh?

Identifying..... you mean knowing their family history? No objections whatsoever.

History however is all it is especially if it's trotted out for political or social purposes. The whole Irish-american (for example) thing especially when its so many generations ago is just excruciating.

I veer between finding it quite endearing to finding it a bit eye-rolly.

It's obviously a cultural thing. A lot of Americans like to look back and be defined, in the present, by (quite often) distant ancestry. New world preoccupation. We all want to feel we belong but it always surprises me that that belonging is rarely to America for Americans.

It only gets annoying if they start to school you about 'their' culture 🙄 - when that culture is one you are considerably more familiar with. I lived in the States for a while and whilst it certainly wasn't everybody acting like that, it was common enough. I used to experience quite a bit of grief from Irish Americans for being British when I lived in Boston. These interactions rarely came from a place of knowledge.

I think this fascination with historical ties and an American education system and a media that can't see beyond its own borders (partly for practical reasons) probably compounds the issue.

The US has never been much of a melting pot, it's more a casserole dish. A fascinating, interesting casserole nonetheless!

Yes, not being Welsh stops me from being Welsh.

Through force and colonisation.....

I thought I'd add to my previous comments about being Mexican-American.

I am married to an Englishman and we have two English-born children but mainly raised in the US.

They call themselves Americans in England but English-American or Anglo-American in the US. I suppose the oldest does because he speaks with an accent that Americans recognize as English/British. My daughter speaks like a Texan. Like me, they don't fit in with Americans because their cultural references are more English but English people in England and the US do not accept them as English because they're seen as too American. Then they speak a bit of Spanish and it's more of a confusion.

Biden also has 10 out of 16 great grandparents who were Irish. He's more Irish than he is anything else.

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-04-11/is-joe-biden-the-most-irish-us-president-in-history

Biden managed to mix up the Black & Tans with the All Blacks ruby team. He’s about as Irish as the Great Wall of fecking China though he does seem to be enjoying his family spring break trip to the homeland.

All I know is that I saw a tiktok about an Irish woman who worked in a pub popular with American tourists who insisted she wasn't Irish because she was black 🫣. Nothing she or her colleagues would convince them otherwise.

I wonder why Americans never seem to go around claiming "I'm Chinese", "I'm Nigerian"? It turns out that not all nationalities and cultures are fair game for people to claim. They'll say "I'm part Chinese" or "I have Nigerian heritage" like the rest of the English speaking world. The wholesale hijack of European identities is somewhere between cringe and plain rude.

What civil war did we have in checks calendar 2013??

That wasn't the question, though.