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?

If your ancestors from the 1700s are roughly about 8 to 10 generations back, on average you would inherit a very small percentage of their DNA typically less than 1% from any one ancestor that far back.

This is because with each generation, the DNA you inherit halves from each ancestor. For example, you get about 50% from each parent, 25% from each grandparent, 12.5% from great-grandparents, and so on, decreasing roughly by half each generation.

By the time you reach ancestors from the 1700s, the share of DNA you carry from any one of them is usually quite tiny due to the random way DNA is shuffled and inherited over generations.

I wasn’t meaning to be rude I was just surprised.

is Scottish American not the same as Scottish and American? A Scottish American?

Romanticism

Not Scottish, but Scottish - American

😂

A Scottish-American is an American whose ancestors were Scottish immigrants. Because emigrants came in groups they brought their cultural with them, and came at a particular time in America’s evolution. They split from Scotland about 300 years ago and developed along a separate track with their own unique culture. So very different from today’s Scotts.

Scottish Americans are pretty cool. They were frontiersmen who landed in a new world while it was pretty wild, they settled the west, fought at the Alamo, pushed onto California and then went to the moon. They are known to be independent, self reliant, principled, up for a drink and up for a fight. I suspect a lot of them would idolise their distant cousins in Scotland and be bemused once they met them!

Scottish American is not the same as Scottish and American. My nationality and citizenship is American. My national origin (a term of art in the US and a legally protected status) makes me Scottish-American.

The point that a poster made about church affiliation is also important. Cultural identity is often reinforced in the US by religious affiliation.

This is intriguing.

Both of my parents are Scottish and I don’t consider myself Scottish.

In fact, they take the piss out of me for being English.

The entire Irish tourist industry depends on this obsession so as an Irish person I'd say long may it last!

I agree @XWKD the Irish American thing is bizarre at first. Then I realised they are their own sub culture and my bewilderment at their strong identity is no different to bewilderment towards any other culture. I recently met up with a distant cousin in the US, our parents were close friends, she couldn't fathom that I didn't know her other cousins (same side so same relationship) who live less than 2 hours from me. I tried to explain that we basically didn't give a shit!! She couldn't believe it.

I'm Scottish of predominantly Irish ancestry, at home I identify somewhat as Irish-Scots and Irish Catholic but when I go to Ireland I realise I am really a Scot now and that Ireland doesn't really feel like home to me in some mystical way! I do like it but I prefer Scotland.

My mum's uncle moved to America from Ireland in the 1920's. I remember chatting with her cousin when we visited and her being so pleased that she had married an Irish man and her children had also married Irish-Americans. They wanted their kids to marry Irish too.

It annoyed me when Joe Biden refused to speak to the BBC because he “was Irish”. I have the same number of Irish ancestors he does, plus the freckles, blue eyes, Catholicism and Irish surname and I’d never, ever describe myself as Irish. He’s just a plastic paddy and having an axe to grind with the British whilst in a position of power was petty and irresponsible.

@CarolinaInTheMorningmy actual great granddad is from a Central American country. I don’t claim to be that plus British. It’s a hell of a reach to claim you are Scottish.

I have never said that I am Scottish. Why don't you take a closer read of my posts?

Genuinely can’t tell if this is serious?! Surely not.

Genuinely can’t tell if this is serious?! Surely not.

I quite like like you still feel a connection with your ancestors and where they came from. Scottish settlers influenced a lot of language and culture in certain regions, the history of it all is so interesting.

May I ask how it was for you when you stayed in Scotland, did you feel a connection of sorts?

Yes I’ve always found that to be particularly strange with Americans. Especially as they often tend to know very little about the country that they are claiming to have ancestry from, and it’s unlikely that they’ve ever been there.

I live in New Zealand where obviously the majority of the population has heritage from somewhere else, and in many cases only going back a couple of generations … but people don’t go on about it the way Americans do.

I think it’s really unique to the UK and our weirdness that we don’t know how to suggest who is from what constituent nation and where we “belong” so it comes down to accent or where you live. My mother is Scottish and I was born in Scotland but grew up in England, and likewise I would never ever claim to be Scottish because I never lived there and I haven’t got a Scottish accent. But it’s funny…this is why when they did the Indyref they couldn’t specify in any way who would be “Scottish enough” to vote so it came down to residence.

My great-grandparents emigrated from Norway and Denmark to the US. We know what towns most of them came from, have photos from the 1880s of some of the people who came over, and a few who stayed, and some of us have gone back to visit over the years. Even though this is now at least 120 years since these wave of late 19th century post-Civil War immigrants came to the Midwest and Pacific Coast, it's still a whole thing to keep the idea of their roots alive. We have food, stores, celebrations, festivals, associations, churches, etc. that still celebrate this heritage. We fly the Norwegian flag on Syttende Mai. The Norwegian crown prince just visited one of our sister cities in the US this last week. My grandma's wedding and baptism were conducted in Danish. I have clippings from Danish-language and Norwegian-language newspapers in the US that family members kept. Scandinavian language camps in my city are always overbooked.

For fun, we did 23andme and it accurately noted that 80% of my heritage came from the exact places my ancestors told us they came from. The rest came from 'general Northern European'. I was hoping for some interesting, unknown background might pop up, but nobody was lying, I'm ethnically Scandinavian.

My parents were very liberal in the 1970s/80s and told us we could marry anyone of any background/race. But I fell in love with a man whose entire family came from Norway, so our kids joke that they are more Norwegian than the Norwegian Royal Family.

I lived in the US for the best part of 10yrs. As soon as they realised I wasn’t American I got their full story. Dear God, they all bang in about it, lol

People go on about it here now though

It didn't used to be so bad

But now I find heritage and skin colour or a virtual obsession. I was out this evening and had it again. Being asked questions about a country I've never been to. Annoying.

I've done quite a lot of work over in the US and I feel as if it's the same there in the sense that I didn't find people talking a lot about heritage 20 years ago.

I'm obviously just talking about my own experience, I'm one person but that's what I see.

They don't lose their roots. I've been to Mull when there was a very large group staying on th island from a same surname association. The surname was McLean, as Mull is the home of the clan. all the people were from America, Australia and New Zealand, yet their surname was the only link . It had been a couple of hundred years since their ancestors had lived there.

Not sure this is true, there are entire genres of film and tv based around heritage and cultural affiliations with ethnic groups - the Sopranos comes to mind (despite the stereotypes of Italian Americans being in the mafia), it accurately depicted Italian American culture in NJ and was over 20 years ago. I don’t really understand the big deal, people are proud of their ancestors and family traditions, food, celebrations are often shaped by these roots. It’s a huge country to ancestry often brings people closer together as communities. Recent events have shown to me that Americans should be proud of their roots and celebrate immigrant culture. Forgetting that has given rise to some scary things. American means many things even if our wonderful President seems to think it doesn’t include people who are US Citizens by birth who speak Spanish as a first language

@CarolinaInTheMorning

May I ask, how do you feel about non Americans finding it slightly bizarre that you identify with your Scottish heritage in any way? Do you care? Or does it frustrate you because of the refusal to accept something that’s clearly quite important to you?

And also, if you don’t mind, did you disclose your Scottish heritage when you lived there? Did anyone tell you that you weren’t Scottish in any respect? If not, did you feel that they weren’t bothered by you identifying as a Scottish American? Or did you feel that there was an element of humouring you?

It’s not something I really understand. My family are either all from the south east of England, going back centuries, or Ireland, going back a couple of generations. My mum’s name is very Irish. The idea that I would have any connection to Ireland is totally alien to me. I’ve never even been there and I’d expect to be either laughed at or be firmly put in my place if I attempted to claim any connection. I’m wondering if it’s different for Americans as you all seem very firm in your convictions that you’re ‘from’ a particular place, even if that place doesn’t recognise you as such. I hope these questions don’t appear as rudely as I suspect they might; there’s genuinely no malice intended.

I did feel a connection, but then again I was looking for it. I was studying history, including history of Scotland, in a Scottish University.