To wonder when Americans lose their roots

[categorychaos]

Curious to know (especially from US Mumsnetters) but when do Americans stop referring to themselves as having heritage from where their forefathers came from?

Whenever I read a bio on someone famous reference is often made to their roots - so for example German, French, Scots, Irish, French, etc..

Along with a fair number of people I have heritage stretching back to different cultures/places but after a few generations I would not refer to myself as Irish or French and it wouldn't tend to crop up anywhere outside of genealogy

Is there a reason they do it so much in the USA or am I mistaken in that assumption?

This is curious my American mother came over to the uk to be with my British father. But i didn't really hear much about heritage just one side of the family several generations ago hopped the fence from Mexico and someone several generations back was native American. That's it i don't really know anything all my family on my mothers side in the states so i have hardly seen or spent time with them.

Since my mother passed we dont even celebrate thanksgiving anymore me and my sister are just British .

Because the American part isn't the salient part of the identity (until the Olympics roll around). The whole point is that Americans can celebrate their heritage, and that means the part that sets them apart from their neighbours the McTeagues and the Muellers and the Changs and the Tomczaks.

American Italian doesn't really make the same sense. American African or American Native make even less sense.

Just a thought: could it partly be ingrained racism? By simply being ’American’ they could be Native American and they can’t have anyone making that assumption.

I did find it bizarre to go to a Highland Games in America. Definitely a cosplay feeling about it.

Ny mum’s the opposite. If anyone asks she’s Anglo-Saxon, through and through. Yet her recent ancestors were from Ireland and Wales and Dutch Jews, all of which she knew.

No, it's not racism, and in particular nobody would care at all about being mistaken for a native American.

Highland Games are well understood to be a dress up event, a fun day out that might make the local evening news with a subtext of "in other wacky news..."

However, there's an active Gaelic games community functioning under the aegis of the (Irish) Gaelic Athletic Association in many large cities, with pitches, officials, clubhouses, and leagues. The GAA centres function as Irish and Irish American community hubs. There's also an insanely intense Irish dancing community. There's no cosplay involved in any of that.

Soccer (Association Football) used to look and feel like cosplay in the US, and perhaps still does to some extent. It's a very middle class sport that is highly organised and quite expensive to pursue.

@mathanxiety In recent years, soccer has exploded in the US, hasn’t it. My DH (53) didn’t have the option to play it when he was growing up, it was all football and baseball. Now, however, so many kids start playing on rec leagues at four years old and some go into the expensive “club” soccer. High school soccer teams are competitive too, loads of kids at DS’s school don’t make it onto the teams. All of them know the basics though, whereas DH’s generation didn’t.

Sorry, getting sidetracked, but it’s such a noticeable change.

We also have BBC British born Caribbean, I think most people know what the means.

It’s bonkers. I remember Joe Biden telling a reporter he was Irish! I’m more Irish than he is and I don’t qualify for an Irish passport (yes I’ve looked into it)

Soccer (Association Football) used to look and feel like cosplay in the US, and perhaps still does to some extent. It's a very middle class sport that is highly organised and quite expensive to pursue.

That's so different from the rest of the world. FA football in the UK is the only sport where the social background of the players reflects the wider community, every other sport here is more middle class at the elite level because it requires such a lot of parental input of time and money. The FA puts a lot of money into the grassroots of the sport, and the clubs are scouting talent and getting them into the academies very young.

@Abitofalark

“And I am curious to know why you didn't include English in your list (It's not as if genealogy isn't a thing in England or Britain.) It also remarkably quickly devolved to Irish. Very odd. Telling, perhaps.
A couple of other 'curious' questions occur, such as why Americans' sense of themselves concerns you to the point of implying they should stop referring to their ancestry and questioning why they aren't like you. Do you expect everyone to be like you or is it just Americans?
I don't understand this preoccupation that keeps cropping up here, like an itch that demands to be scratched every so often.”

I’m sorry but you’ve baffled me.

This wasn’t an exam question and so the wording was vague and in the spirit of AIBU.

No particular reason why I didn’t mention “English” in my examples - I also didn’t mention Greek, Spanish, Polish, Welsh - it would have been a rather long list if I had referred to every nationality that had at some point emigrated to the USA.

My question was posted as I am genuinely curious and I think most posters have engaged with that. Implying that I am anti-American or English is way off the mark.

I find a lot of US culture and reference points fascinating and enjoy learning more - that’s what being curious means.

Insinuating that I am acting in bad faith by asking the question is very unfair.

I have never suggested people be “more like me”. I have asked why something still persists (and got some really helpful answers) not indicated that it should stop.

Edited to include quote from

This is certainly the case with the MAGA-leaning side of my OH’s family. They’re very vocal about their Northern European ancestors, but expunge any other forebears completely.

I think it is interesting the way groups of people identify themselves.

In Patagonia there are bilingual Welsh / Spanish schools. There are Welsh tea shops and Eisteddfods are held.

But these people consider themselves Argentinian, not Argentinian-Welsh even though Welsh culture is thriving there.

I don't think it is necessarily wrong. IME having extended family in the US they still remain very patriotic Americans even if they like self-identifying as "Scottish highlander" Americans (this is a true story btw, i have a cousin who does this). It's like an accessory of sorts.

If anything, people are more likely to emphasize their Native American heritage IME. It's not something people hide at all.

DNA is current, it’s the genetic material of currently living people. But the dna of current native Americans matches very closely dna from the most ancient skeletons found in the US and connects in the very ancient last to Siberia and E.Asia.

Interesting, knew there was a strong Anglo-Argentine culture but didn't know about Welsh.

Argentina is a good example of a very mixed country where people hold onto their heritage. As the saying goes, 'An Argentine is someone who is Italian, speaks Spanish & thinks they're English.' But it's still different from how Americans express their cultural heritage.

Correct, and that last bit is the part that is really only of interest to archeologists.

Pierogi are a year round staple where I live. You can buy several brands with many fillings, sweet and savoury, in the frozen sections of all the regional supermarkets and even in Target and Walmart (huge Polish population stretching back well over a hundred years, with a big influx since the fall of the iron curtain). You can also buy them in smaller Polish grocery stores, and in local small supermarket chains that have a large immigrant customer base. Some are made in-house.

A true seasonal Polish delicacy is paczki, available on Shrove Tuesday.

For starters, your Irish or Swedish ancestors may all have married Irish or Swedish people for several generations. There may not be a huge mixture of ancestors from all over. America hasn't historically been the melting pot some assume it was.

There may also be a particularly heavy influencer in a certain direction in recent generations - a parent or grandparent. Even if people were aware of ancestry going back to a certain European country, people also died younger than they do, or they just left home and never returned; widowed spouses remarried, knowledge of even known ancestral lines could easily be lost.

People also lost contact with their relatives from the old country in the era of mail that took months, assuming the emigrant ancestors could read and write, or that they lived long enough in one place to receive answering mail, or that they lived in a place with a functioning mail service. People lost connections to their own siblings and parents even within the US.

As I mentioned upthread, there wasn't any such thing as 'German' identity until it was foisted on widely varying individuals and communities by the pressure of war - Germany became a loosely organised unitary state only in 1871 and long after that it remained more of an idea than a reality as far as national identity was concerned. Prussians and Bavarians didn't have a lot in common even if they ended up farming in the same county in Minnesota - the Prussians were probably protestant and the Bavarians likely Catholics for starters, with a lot more cultural, linguistic, and culinary differences on top of that. They would not have considered themselves German, and many actively suppressed that element of their ancestry when WW1 broke out.

There's a popular programme on PBS called Finding Your Roots, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, where famous people learn of ancestors and ethnic heritage they never suspected they had. Some had ancestors who had made documented contributions to the American Revolution of the Civil War.

Another thing to consider when it comes to puzzlement at people telling you they are Irish or Scottish Americans in particular is that those are the people you are most like to encounter in the UK or Ireland, and also that British people or Irish people are the ethnic group they are most likely to encounter on their travels in the islands off the NW coast of Europe. These American tourists may well move on to Scandinavia and introduce themselves as Swedish Americans to their compatriots several generations and thousands of miles removed. All these people are trying to do is break the ice or find some common ground in friendly fashion. That is exactly what the parents of friends of one of my DD's did. They knew they had ancestors from England, Wales, and Sweden.

Italian Americans visit Italy in droves - you don't see them exploring their heritage in out of the way parts of the UK, therefore, and they're not likely to introduce themselves as proud Italian Americans as a means of finding some commonality with the British people they meet in the Lake District or wandering around St. Paul's.

I had a holiday there, for my last week I rented a flat. The owner had an English name and he said when he was growing up his mother and her friends used to have afternoon teas.

I think what you’re saying is that you’re not interested in it yourself, and that’s fine. But it’s of far greater and wider interest than simply to archeologists - that betrays a limited understanding of its general interest.

I think the British are also have their roots, on one side I'm Yorkshire and the other Scottish, Yorkshire is totally different from Southern England as is Scotland. (All the George flag stuff annoys me) I'm British not English and my roots are specific parts of Britain just the same as if they were different parts of Europe.

Culturally different, genetically super similar..

There’s not significant genetic differences between Scots, Irish and English as one might think there would be.

I know a couple of people born in a different country (parents were in the forces) who declare themselves to be "from" that country as soon as England is out of the world cup .

American here. I simply identify as “American “ in part because my ancestors came from so many different countries. Germany, England, Wales, Ireland, the Netherlands, plus possibly France. Try hyphenating that!

I do that.

It’s a joke, but it gets people laughing.