I didn't think this was a controversial take, but I did get quite a bit of blowback when I last voiced this opinion on social media.
So for example,
Italian ≠ Italian-American ≠ American vaguely descended from Italians
While Italian-American culture was obviously born of Italian immigrants, it's become a distinct culture over time. And vaguely being able to trace your lineage back to Italians, but having no real interaction with even Italian-Americans or their culture means you aren't really even part of that culture either.
I'm operating under the framework that culture doesn't follow from genetics, because obviously. It's both asinine and straight up xenophobic to claim that culture is genetic. If someone's genetic background correlates to East Asia, and they were adopted and raised by Italian parents their whole lives, they're inherently more Italian than someone in Canada who takes a DNA test and finds out for the first time that day that their genetic background correlates to the Italian Peninsula.
I'm an immigrant myself, and I've found that people here in North America often get really upset by this idea.
u/Gyerfry, your post does fit the subreddit!
Yes, but.
Being born into a country does not automatically make you part of that same culture.
Take, for example, the Amish. Born on American soil. Birthright citizens. Could be President. You could be descended from Mayflower Pilgrims and the First People they converted, and have no other culture stretching back two hundred years and beyond.
But your culture would have almost nothing in common with the folks an hour's buggy ride away in the town. Because you were not raised in the same way with the same values, same manner of speaking, same religious beliefs, same cuisine.
Likewise, being born to the children of immigrants, you can be (not neccessarily "are always", but "can be") raised with raised in a different way with different values, different manner of speaking, different religious beliefs, and different cuisine, as informed by your parent's culture. And this usually (not "always", "usually") results in a hybrid culture. Not Italian or American but Italian-American.
Italian ≠ Italian-American ≠ American.
If your great-great-great-great-grandfather was Cherokee and all your other relations were White, you probably can't profess to be Native American. If your great-great-grandmother came over from the Old Country back in the Great Depression, you are probably not Polish.
But if your parents came from Pakistan, and you fly out every year to see your nonny, and your parents call you "beta", and you cook a mean nihari, and you can fumble along in Urdu well enough to speak with your weird aunt who won't learn English… I don't think you can claim that you are completely divorced from Pakistani culture. It doesn't mean you aren't American (or British or where-ever). It just means you have a hybrid culture and are of Pakistani descent with American citizenship.
Likewise, if you are only 1/64 Cherokee, but self-identify as Cherokee, are active in Cherokee Nation, and speak fluent Tsalagi, then maybe you can call yourself Native American, even you are 63/64 White. Whereas if you work a desk job at Target, have never even met a member of the tribe, and only speak English then you probably shouldn't.
Culture is learned and practiced. It describes what you do and how you behave. It's not an innate Fundemental Force that dictates how you behave. Much of our culture is taken for granted and/or informs our subconsious biases. But there's no "American Gene" or "Italian Gene" that dictates how we must behave. If someone who's Amish goes out on Rumspringa and decides he doesn't want to be Amish anymore, they can leave that culture behind and adopt a new one.
So, yes, it's a bit silly when someone who has never set foot in Italy claims to be "Italian". But if this person speaks Italian, and cooks Italian cuisine, and is a practicing Catholic, and wants his friends to be more amnesiac about his benevolence… that's a distinct culture from "American", too. Italian-American.
excellent insight and comment all around
Great comment, very nuanced and thoughtful.
And there's the problem of course. It's so much easier to just slap a label on someone and not consider them as an individual or in relation to the circumstances.
Yeah this. And often that culture is deeply important to people, many of whom have ancestors who immigrated not because they thought America would be a grand old time and they hated their culture but because their current existence was so bad that leaving was their only shot at something better. They still carried treasured traditions with them and often kept them going because they didn't want to lose home entirely.
And dismissing that as "you're just American; you're not Irish-American!" just fundamentally misunderstands what people are doing when they hang onto their ancestral culture.
Also, I dare anyone to march into a Chinatown in any city in America, stand on a street corner, and loudly tell everyone that they're not Chinese. That should go well and you should be very popular.
Have you ever considered that the REAL Italians live in New Jersey & the ones in “Italy” are just delusional cosplayers?
You know, there’s actually a funny thing that sometimes occurs with diaspora cultures. Sometimes the diasporas will hold onto old traditions longer than the people in the native country do. A family who came from Italy in the late 1800s may hold onto the traditions of the Italy that they remember because that’s all they know of Italy, while Italians in Italy on. That’s not to say that the diaspora is more “real” but it’s pretty interesting.
This happened with the Quebecois and how their french was developed before the language was re-standardized in the 19th century, so they speak a more rustic French
is that like how Dutch people think Afrikaners sound stupid
Maybe, could also be that the Dutch just wanted someone to finally linguistically punch down at.
They already had the Flemish.
All they had to do for that is make fun of the welsh
My Dutch friend said Afrikaners sound like rednecks. It doesn't help that Afrikaans does not conjugate verbs, and that is one of our main stereotypes of how rednecks talk. I is, you is, we is, etc.
well the reason for that is that the Dutch people who went to establish south Africa to start farms were rednecks
Just imagine what Martian English would sound like if all the early colonists were from Mississippi.
True, but also afrikaans is essentially Dutch which has clashed hard with other languages, and inherently when languages clash they tend to become much simpler (this is part of the reason English has lost some of the germanic grammar and conjugations for example).
In that sense, Afrikaans isn't a "fossilised" form of old-fashioned Dutch in the way Qebecois sort of is with French (or even Belgian Dutch is in a way cf. standard Dutch), it's almost more like a creole.
This is a simplification of what happened (Don't think that was your intention btw, but this topic has a lot of misinformation abt it!):
Quebecers don't speak 'French from the 1800s', they speak their own version of french that has some innovations, but also some different holdovers.
Same as how many dialects of English in America happen to preserve some features from older varieties of English that got lost in England, which /= "Americans speak like Shakespeare"
Yea forsure, I oversimplified because I was being lazy about not typing out the whole situation. Appreciate you for adding more context :)
You mean forsooth!
See also: Indian English
Food is an excellent example of this.
Most 'chinese' restaurants in my city/country outside of the migrant hotspots served the usual 'western pallet' chinese menu.
My ex was Chinese (from a city near Beijing) and introduced me to alot of migrant run restuants so I could experience 'proper' chinese food. She explained that most western pallet menus were stuck in the 70s/80s with Cantonese dishes, and didn't reflect modern chinese cuisine.
I had no counter arguement, so would just ask if we could please not have sichuan again as I liked being able to feel my mouth at the end of the evening.
Similarly, even though lutefisk has largely fallen out of favor in Norway, Norwegian-Americans continue to eat the stuff...presumably in the same spirit in which Vikings who fell into the hands of their enemies welcomed death by blood-eagle to show how badass they were.
My grandpa (Norwegian-American) loved lutefisk and I’ve been wondering whether Norwegians in Norway still eat it. Cause like, that shit’s nasty.
The Wisconsin State law on disclosure of hazardous materials in the workplace has an exemption just for lutefisk. Tells you all you need to know, really.
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Sichaun cuisine is basically 'how many ways can we serve different versionsnof chilli peopers'.
Her workplace decided to take everyone to a Sichaun restaurant for Moon Festival one year, and while I impressed by holding and using chopsticks like their grandparents always wanted of them, my mostly Anglo-Italian diet growing up had not prepared me for the miasma of chili oil that was walki g into a Sichaun resturaunt.
Migrants tend to hold onto the version of their country as it was when they left. They missed out on decades of progress, change, modernisation, cultural and societal shifts. I remember going back to my birth country expecting to find the same markets I loved to buy a particular ice-cream from...but the market and that ice-cream were long gone; replaced by supermarkets and imported produce. It happens everywhere but it was pretty jarring to find that the place of your memories was well and truly gone.
yeah Diaspora stuck in whatever year the left meanwhile people in the old country have moved on and there is a significant divergence and culture shock 😳 when they visit the “home” country
My idea of Norway is stuck in the 1890s and that’s exactly how I want to keep it!
Your comment immediately brings to mind the Circassian diaspora. They are the culture.
I remember a story my mom told me about a Taiwanese-American girl who could only speak Taiwanese because her family immigrated to the US before or soon after the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan and forced everyone to learn Mandarin. When the girl moved to Taiwan herself, she could not speak Mandarin and could only communicate with others in Taiwanese. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other similar stories from other Chinese ethnicities where the family moved before the effects of making everyone speak Mandarin really took place.
At least Taiwanese is still a fairly prevalent language in Taiwan! Although she probably had more luck with older people than younger.
My grandmother left Belgium to marry a Londoner in the 30s. A few decades later they started teaching Dutch in the schools. In the 90s, people in the shops asked me in English if I could translate Oude Vlaams to modern.
Other Tantes could still understand her, but not the young uns.
I was in Naples a few years ago, I speak Italian at an upper-elementary / lower intermediate level, enough for a basic conversation and reading detective novels, but nothing more than this. People would speak to me in a Neapolitan-accented standard Italian, which was fine, but an old Italian-American lady who had migrated to Italy (no idea if she was first or second generation, she was on her late seventies-early eighties in 2014) only spoke Neapolitan, so we had to resort to English as she was basically speaking a different language. As far as I've heard, this is a relatively common phenomenon with Italian-Americans, who travel to Italy speaking the "Italian" they learnt from their parents and young people can't understand them at all, because they are speaking regional languages that are no longer that common.
At a less extreme level, two friends of my mum migrated to the States about 30 years ago and have two children in their mid-twenties. It's pretty jarring to hear two guys under 30 speak a version of Catalan that sounds like news anchors from the early nineties with a helping of very local, very old-fashioned vocabulary, all adorned with a bit of an American accent.
I'd you don't like Quibecois French, how'd you like Louisiana French?
Colonial lag
well yeah the emigrants weren't so important we all just decided to live our lives in stasis from the moment they left
I never suggested that that would or should be the case. I just bring it up because it kind of throws a wrench into defining “traditional” and “authentic” culture.
People are describing reality, not judging it.
Where's da gabagool in Italy??
Har har har.
"You know, the Jews, when they come to Italy, they pretend to be Italians."
Yes! Why do the left—behinds get to dictate the culture?
So, just like Taiwan? Taiwan represents traditional Chinese culture, the ccp destroyed real Chinese culture via its cultural revolutions.
Most of them aren't even really claiming to be Italians.
They're claiming to be part of the "Italians-american" community, that has its own distinct culture.
My last name is Italian, I can speak enough to get my basic idea / point across . Yes I've been to Italy ( the old country) and visited the family winery which was in a very dismal state . For some reason they thought I was a Rich American cousin that was going to invest into it - OH NO NO NO !!! If anyone ask , I tell them I'm an American of Italian Descent.
And yet will often call “Italian American” simply “Italian”, having never even seen Italy lol
That's just an issue of language and common usage. They're expecting you to understand they don't mean they're Italian citizens because it's been used that way commonly their whole life and everyone around understood.
Sometimes, others truly believe that someone born in Long Island is just as Italian as someone born in Italy.
Who could possibly give a shit. Italy is so overrated.
This is how North American culture works. In Europe, you can say, I'm Swiss, I'm Italian, I'm German. Where you are "from" is the country and culture you're from. In the US, everyone within 5 hours driving is American, so it makes no sense to ask someone "Where are you from?" because everyone is American. So when an American says I'm Irish, I'm Italian, I'm German they're not talking about the country. They're talking about the Americanized version of that culture.
In the US, everyone within a 5 hour drive are never going to all be American.
The city I live in, not even everybody on my block is American.
So there's a distinct difference between, say, Cambodian and Cambodian-American. And when you extend it to 5 hours, we're looking at Cambodian-Canadians as well.
We all know we're American, that's a given. If I say I'm Italian I mean I'm Italian-American. If my friend Sean says he's Irish, he means he's Irish-American. We Americans speak that way amongst ourselves, we all understand what is being said, and no one had a problem with it until the explosion of the internet and social media.
Now, though, Europeans can't stop talking about how we use language wrong and how our cheese isn't actually cheese. All the qhile never having the slightest bit of self-reflection to understand that they maybe don't understand American culture enough for their pop criticisms to be valid.
On top of all that, I actually know the village in Italy my grandparents were born in. I have cousins there still. I grew up in the same household with those immigrant grandparents, and near their immigrant friends and family. It's not like "real" Italian culture isn't a part of myself, either. But when I travel to Europe or anywhere else in the world I am American. It's only when I am speaking with another American that I would say I'm Italian because, again, the -American part is implied.
You really shouldn’t speak for all Americans as a whole, you’ll never be correct.
Except some countries recognize descendants and sometimes offer expedited paths to citizenship..so….the country itself gets to decide…
Citizenship isn't culture. You've missed the point entirely. I have dual citizenship. When I go to Ireland to visit family I am nothing like them, I am American in culture. A passport doesn't make me who I am bor does a country.
I don't understand why someone would spend more than .00000000000000000000000000001 seconds worrying about whether some guy named Anthony on Long Island calls himself Italian because his great grandparents emigrated here. Bro can call himself whatever. Who cares.
Italians probably care. Italian-Americans probably also care. It's not a huge issue that would consume their whole lives, but it's something they can have a conversation about.
As an italian I don't care, but I will laugh a lot and stop taking you seriously. And for the first time in my life I can say that I'm speaking for the 98% of Italians, nobody consider italian-american italians
Candidly, this is one of the worst possible uses of your time and energy.
Who are you to adjudicate someone who find a sense of belonging in their literal parents culture.
Stop being exhausting, I sentence you to 3 conversations with real humans.
he’s not using any energy at all in being objectively correct lol
Who counts as real humans now, Italians or Italian-Americans? I'm confused.
Right? At this point OP is almost obliged to list their heritage and how obsolete it is for them as an example but apparently that notion didn’t seem relevant?
Truly.
The OP should ask any European who shows disdain for Italian/Irish/German Americans about their thoughts on Romani who have been living in their countries for centuries.
Exactly…
And the appeal has been denied. Sentence upheld
You can find all the belonging you want in black American culture, as an eu man, but when time comes and you call someone an n word, you will be mauled.
Op is right. Sense of belonging isn't enough. Reality matters.
You've concocted a scenario that this is really not touching on.
A person whose parents are black can very validly find belonging in black culture.
Nothing that ive said even remotely applies to this, unless a black family moves to Europe and even then im pretty sure what you're saying here doesnt really apply.
So being genetically black is your precursor argument and you still don't see how it completely crushes what you were saying before right? Sometimes you just have to let them talk and they refute their own claims. Beautiful
You probably don't have the experience of being different, and then seeing people think you are suddenly cool and try to take the thing they used to exclude you for as their own. It's infuriating. Pretending to be something you have no connection to for the status is objectively crappy.
You probably have to make up a backstory for everybody who questions your twisted world view so you dont have to bathe in cognitive dissonance.
This has gone so far that youre gatekeeping people from their parents culture.
Your experience is not special, everybody watches their culture get bastardized for profit or social points at some point in their life. Most people can see the difference between that and kids learning about their culture from their parents.
I'm gatekeeping? Culture is behavior. If you don't do the behaviors of a culture, you are not part of it. If you don't do the cultural behaviors your parents hand down, you are not a part of that culture anymore. If you do, you are. Simple as that. You have now confirmed that you think it's okay to pretend to be something you aren't.
Yes genuinely? Most children are learning behaviors from their parents, therefore most children pick up their parents culture. Its pretty fucking simple, I cannot believe that this is a complex concept for you.
Then that is their culture. If none of that happens to be Italian, it doesn't matter what your genetics are, you aren't Italian.
Thats what ive been arguing the whole time, but you are simply illiterate and weponize it to make the world a worse place.
life long Goth probs
its trendy now
was not when i was bullied fornit.
my culture not ur costume
He is correct. Direct parents from another culture? OK. That's a bit of a grey area.
But that's not what happens normally. In my experience as a Scottish person, it's usually Americans claiming to be Scottish because their great great-grandmother got pumped by a Highlander or because they did a 23 and Me test..
They think culture is passed down through the genes. It's fucking cringe and quite alien to how most of Europe views identity.
No Brad. Your fiery temperature and alcoholism aren't because of your "Scottish genes." You're American. Be American.
Roma people lived in Europe since 11th century. Yet in every European country they continue to be identified as separate to locals people, instead of disappearing and becoming just your ordinary Italian, German, Pole or Hungarian.
So what culture are you a part of?
Pretty much.
My parents are from Guatemala.
But I hardly speak Spanish, and I don't really partake in the culture.
But at the same time, I don't really fit the general "American" look or culture either.
So I'm in this weird spot where I don't feel like I belong in either one, and if I tried to embrace one or the other I'm just a poser.
I get this. Both your parents are from the same place so it would be strange if that didn’t form a big part of your identity. I just think it’s fucked when someone who is 1/64th Scottish is trying to Make Tartans Great Again
I have nothing intelligent to offer the conversation. I'm American and am very annoyed at the tribal idiocy here. Noone is proud to be American but they love to claim their Ancestry DNA bullshit and live in some alternate fantasy. If I hear one more person say they're a descendant of Ragnar....
I'll go you one better: Race is merely physical. Being born into a race doesn't dictate your cultural choices.
It's not even that.
Caucasians - the peoples of the caucus mountains. You can still find them there, this very day.
I’ll go even farther: race is not physical at all. Yes, people have different skin colors, facial features, etc., but the concept of race defies clear definition and is ultimately nothing more than a sociological concept.
And I won't fight you on that. I only said it was because visible physical differences are the delineation that race is based upon.
Like, do spaniels have "No Terrier" spaces?
Race is more about vibes atp than genetics too. Most important part of being white is loving being white ahaha
race is a social construct
Exactly
so then what did you mean by race is merely physical?
Appearances, basically.
Define 'race' lead to a whole other coversation. Early 20th century and the term 'race' was most commonly used for what we now use the term 'ethnicity' to describe.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree. With the slight caveat that, for example, some Mexican-Americans are very much Mexican culturally as well as American (rather than only being the amalgamation Mexican-American, which just as you said of Italian-American, is its own thing). This I mostly see in people who immigrated during childhood or who are first gen and their parents raised them in their original culture (as much as possible). But I don't think what you posted goes against what I just said in any way either, so I guess we just fully agree.
i'm legally an Italian citizen. i have an Italian last name. Yet I am neither ethnically nor culturally Italian. Not even Italian-Anything. I don't speak Italian, I've never been to Italy, and neither have my parents, lol. How could I ever call myself Italian?
Oh great arbiter of cultures. What culture am I allowed to associate with? Please let me know!
Actual Irish person, can confirm Irish Americans are just Americans and we don't think of you as anything else unless you've come to live here or have living relatives that are from here (like 1st cousins or parents).
We like you but literally die inside when we hear some American who came here for a 2 week holiday named Chad Doyle tell us that Ireland's culture is under attack from immigrants. We hate anyone who gets up in our shit uninvited, so far historically only the Brits have done so, you don't want to make it onto that same list.
Or also when they’re like “I’m an alcoholic and my parents food was shit because of being Irish lol” like read the fucking room, it’s so obnoxious. We joke about alcoholism issues too but we tend to make it actually funny lol.
Exactly, sure my dad is an alcoholic and his cooking is fucking incredible
Same bud lol
Counter point, also Irish in Ireland, I do consider Irish Americans for a large part to be Irish. While they are not citizens of the Irish state, they are members of the Irish nation and find them annoying or not they are still our ethnic brothers/sisters/weird-distant-cousins.
Like a large part of my dads family live in America now, and there’s no real clear delineation where they stop being Irish that I can find. It’s definitely more of a spectrum of Irishness to Americanness than a black and white is/isn’t.
I’m older and when I talk to younger people they often bring up how their grandparents or parents were from this or that place, as though mine weren’t because I’m just older and have been here longer so therefore I’ve always been here. I’m told sometimes you don’t know the immigrant experience, but the experience they describe is almost exactly the same as what I went through when young. Both my mom’s and dad’s parents were refugees from being killed. My dad’s dad never had 2 nickels. My mom’s grandfather collected scrap metal on the streets. They were discriminated against here as well, though it was a lot better than being killed.
Example is a guy I ‘knew’ who told me my opinion on the Ukraine war didn’t count because I’m Jewish. My family only spent hundreds of years there, longer than the US has existed, but that’s how people think. I never spoke to that guy again.
An example is the father of one my kids’ high school friends was called Ollie. That’s because he spent 10 years in Texas. So Ali became Ollie. His culture would be mixed Turkish and Texan. What does that mean? It largely meant you could call him Ollie.
I think it’s weird when people push it on you. My dad’s Greek. My daughter is in a different country. She doesn’t know traditions or languages etc. I didn’t grow up with it either and then I married to a different culture. I speak the language but I definitely only think of myself as Canadian. My own daughter being raised in the Netherlands also has a completely different experience
Fucks diasporas I guess lmao
That's not what he said roflmaololol
That's not what they said
Ah idk. My great grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine/Hungary and came here to escape communism. When I was a kid we used to decorate Ukrainian Easter eggs, make pierogies from scratch, eat my aunties borscht soup, ect.
My family came here poor and almost froze and starved to death in the Canadian winters and I'm proud of my heritage because of that.
Culture is a set of behaviors. If one doesn't engage in those behaviors, they are not of that culture.
I would argue it's also a set of beliefs and perspectives, which are often deeper ingrained than behaviors.
There's an observation often made that people who leave a religion, for instance, discard the practices but tend to keep certain perspectives, even if their behavior is different. I.e. if their religion emphasized total dedication, they will often become overly dedicated to whatever they find important in life. If their religion emphasized purity of doctrine, they'll often adopt completely new beliefs but become very rigid about them. (You see this often with Christians who become atheists. They'll be exactly as insistent about the correctness and one-true-way-ness of atheism as they were about Christianity.)
I guess you could also argue that behaviors are just acted-out beliefs and perspectives, though. So maybe I'm just adding nuance.
it's been my experience that many Americans are so desperate for a sense of belonging that they will cling to any identity available to them. so, yes, they might be four generations off the boat and not Italian in any way other than genetically, but their Italianess will nevertheless be very important to them because its feels better than being nothing.
Agree. I find it a weird paradox because it’s like being ‘American’ isn’t special enough, despite many thinking it’s the greatest country on earth. I find it especially amusing when Americans attribute a quirk of theirs to a culture they descended from five generations ago, despite not speaking the language and never having been there.
i went to a Scottish fair thing in Florida and got to watch a lot of people of nominal Scottish descent trying to claim that they were somehow a member of this or that clan...
That’s classic 😂
this is 100% an U.S. thing. people talk about it on r/shitamericanssay and r/usdefaultism all the time. noone else thinks this.
it does mean it depends on where you ask though.
Most Americans understand that they're Americans.
Sure, they just don’t agree on who else should be considered ‘real’ Americans.
No, Europeans sure as shit treat immigrants in their country like immigrants, they understand it when it's non white people. They only get mad when their ancestors in the US claim European heritage but aren't considering Arabs, Africans, Asians in Europe to be actual Europeans. Weird huh.
It's also a thing in any country in the Americas, plenty of people claims Irish, Scottish, and French ancestry in Canada for example. It's more you only focus on the US doing it while conveniently ignoring that it happens on every immigrant based country. Weird huh.
I think that's just regular racism. Whatever Americans are doing is like treating heritage as some kind of horoscope or something; something that affects their personality. Like if they're distantly Irish American that means that they are naturally loud and prone to alcoholism or some such weird pseudo-science (not a direct quote because I can't remember the stuff I've seen Americans say). The first is a serious, universal problem and the latter is just obnoxious but mostly harmless social phenomenon.
This is just dumb shit Europeans misunderstand and think they know about Americans. When someone says they are Irish or Italian in the US it’s because that is where their ancestors are from. It is their cultural heritage. Europeans don’t realize just how young the US is much of the time or just don’t think about it. Ol’ Gerald down in West Sheeptown in England doesn’t really think about that because his family has lived in the same village for the last 600 years. Immigrants think about it though because it’s important to understand your own family’s history.
Exactly. It is UNDERSTOOD that they mean through genetics and cultural heritage and not that they actually lived there.
maybe the guys in new jersey take it a bit too far, but most people in the US view it as "oh i have X heritage and a few family recipies from when they immigrated to stay connected to our roots."
Like... do turkish diasporas in germany or algerians in france (who now have intermarried into the white population and thier grand children look more french than not) not do something like that?
why do u feel the need to tell other people their view of their own identity is wrong?
Exactly.
Yea a few weeks ago someone asked me where my family was from and I said Alabama and they got all upset saying everyone is from somewhere, as if no one can be just American. I’m 14 generation American, Alabama is my heritage
As another immigrant, people are comforted by having a sense of identity. If they have ever felt insecure over their heritage or felt they don’t fit in, they might overcompensate and identify with their parents’ homeland even harder. In contrast, most non-immigrants, unless they’re a conservative nationalist, are incredibly unconcerned with their own culture (because they’re so used to being the majority, and their culture just feels like the norm to them instead of something to identify with). I know I speak from a place of privilege of having been able to grow up very well connected to my culture and had never felt insecure about it, so I’m at the place where I am comfortable enough to honestly say that someone of a non-Taiwanese ethnicity but raised in Taiwan is in fact more Taiwanese than me.
Truth is, most of the world agrees with you on this but Americans are very obsessed with identity labels and they are the odd case were they think that way and get offended if you imply they are not whatever culture they decide to label themselves with
I absolutely hate it when people act like culture is inherited genetically like that's not how it works lol
Tbh I couldn’t agree more.
I would just add, that culture is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s dynamic, changing, and actually more personal than any monolithic.
I guess that’s what I got from anthropology university course.
yeah my ex would joke around with his italian-american friend, they’d call each other bogtrotter and guido. as soon as i called him a bogtrotter jokingly he got super pissed because he said it was on the same level as calling me a spic (im first gen), which he clearly cannot do. he didn’t give two shits about being irish until he saw how it made a real impact on my life, and feels that it’s the same level of struggle.
Also to add: It's pretty understood in American that when you say you're "Italian", you're talking about your ancestry. Very few people would misunderstand what that person is actually saying, unless they had an obvious accent that implied otherwise. I think in this examples, the "Italians" are very much deliberately misunderstanding Americans, for a variety of dumb reasons.
Oh my god. Who. The hell. Cares????
So you're an immigrant... were your kids born in the US? If so, according to your weird logic, they aren't allowed to call themselves your nationality? Or maybe their kids aren't.
Where do you draw the line?
If someone is in the US third or fourth generation, but have been raised with a lot of the traditions that their immigrant ancestors have been raised, are they allowed to call themselves that nationality, in your book?
Your take is all kinds of dumb. Because who give AF.
God I hate having to explain this so much.
No American who isn’t a first, MAYBE second generation immigrant actually thinks they are part of their grandparents, great grandparents, etc’s culture.
When an American says “I’m Italian,” theyre not literally suggesting that they have anything to do with Italian culture, aside from maybe some recipes and stuff passing down. They’re saying that’s where their lineage immigrated from, because most Americans, unlike Europeans, are descended from immigrants and it’s interesting to share/hear about other’s family history.
Ah hard disagree.
You speak to a lot of second or even third generation Americans and they'll tell you they have some personality trait that is xx. Which isn't some genetic marker, but some stereotype which they've willingly assigned themselves, based on what they perceive to be an attribute of xx people.
Also hard disagree, many Americans go to Ireland declaring their “Irish” because one of their great grandfathers was Irish. On the plus side very funny seeing Irish People completely dispel this illusion
Exactly.
I mean, there are people from the US claiming these things in the comments tho and getting very offended by OP. I think what you're saying would be a super logical conclusion but I think you're giving people the benefit of the doubt when they don't really deserve it.
And I can confirm that a lot of these people claim some random thing about them is because if X genetic heritage (always white European tho lol just noticing...). People are legit weird about it.
I’m not saying there aren’t dumbass people who say dumbass things but how many Americans that say “I’m italian” do stuff like that? I’ve only ever heard people suggest things like that outside the internet a couple times in my life. I don’t think that’s at all a common thing Americans believe
I don't know how common it is among Americans, but as a European I've been approached by these types (online and irl) a few times so I think this is where our reception comes from.
I agree I was born in America I’m American full stop me having a black grandfather a Japanese grandmother another grandfather that’s French and another grandmother that’s Canadian I’m American 100% if more people forge real connections with the actual land the were born in instead of romanticizing some exotic local they have no true connection with America would be much better off
What the children and grandchildren of those immigrants don't understand is that the culture your parents or grandparents taught you about doesn't exist. They are teaching you about a flawed memory of what their culture was when they left, not what it actually is today.
I am an immigrant. I left the US 20 years ago and have only gone back to visit a handful of times. If you ask me about the US, I can't tell you what it's like right now. I don't live there. I can tell you that mobile phones were just starting to get popular, but we didn't have smartphones at all and my rent in downtown Seattle was $750 a month. None of that is a true or realistic picture of what America is like right now.
So if your grandma was Scottish, don't presume that you know more about Scotland than I do, because I have no Scottish "roots." I have lived here for 20 years. Your grandma left 50+ years ago or whatever. The Scotland she lived in is long gone.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding that many outsiders have when looking at the new world.
Us: “sweet, this food reminds me of my grandma, I grew up eating and making it, because my parents grew up eating and making this food, so of course I make it now, but that’s not all I eat.”
You: “aah why are you so obsessed with us! You can’t say you like that food for any specific reason! You have to pretend you shop at the Indian grocery and make Indian food completely at random and it’s not related to you being visibly of Indian descent!”
You guys seem to be overestimating your importance in our lives, if we visit the town where our grandparents were born and still follow their religion and make food from that region, that’s just one tiny part of our lives and personalities. We view our grandparents’ nationalities as one tiny factor in our experience as Americans, for instance.
No this is someone being upset with Americans for doing something that Europeans have been doing for a long time.
In Europe it isn’t uncommon to have a diaspora ( minority group) who settled in some country long time ago. When this happens it isn’t uncommon for locals to continue identifying this group as distinctly different. And members of such group continue to identify themselves as different than locals. Sometimes they keep some of the old traditions, but not always.
Volga Germans, Roma, Jewish people are examples of such ethic groups who settled outside of their traditional territory long time ago and continue to be identified as different from locals.
Those are well known examples but there are many more because European ethnic groups have been moving within Europe for a long time and a lot of times they remained memory that they are different from locals.
Great grand parents immigrated to NYC . Passed the speech, stories, humor, traditions from Ireland onto their kids. Who passed it onto theirs. I don’t see what is so hard to grasp about this.
I don’t consider myself Irish, however. Nor part of Irish culture. Or any. Culture for that matter.
Genealogy and culture are 2 different things. My wife tells people she is Italian, although she doesn’t speak Italian, could not find Italy on a map, and is a shitty cook.
I am of Germal/English descent. I don’t speak German, because culturally I am just American 🇺🇸
Your wife couldn’t find Italy on a map…?
I'm descended from Scottish, Welsh, and English, but my family came to Canada 9 generations ago. Other than the transplanted English colonial culture that is the basis for anglo Canadian, I don't have much in the way of ties to the UK.
Agreed. My POS BIL claims “Italian” and it’s like, shut up you human thumb, you’re just a white American 😒
Italians were not considered “White” for a while.
I get a kick out of the Montreal Italian-Canadians with the fake New Jersey accents they’ve picked up from the Sopranos.
Go talk to the Satmar in Brooklyn if you want to see a group that has kept the old country culture the same as it was 100 years ago.
They are more Hungarian more Jewish more 18th century than even their great grandparents were back in the shtetl.
Language barrier. Most Americans don't mean "I'm part of their culture/we immigrated recently" they mean "this is where my family was before they came here" because family history can be cool and full of stories. They KNOW they are American and most of us are tired of non-Americans acting like the concept is so mind boggling to understand so that's probably why you get blowback.
My family originally came over on one of the original ships, since then my family line has had several reintroductions of other European genetics.
So while I am American, and you can track my genes back to the start of "it", I also have very recent lineage and cultural practices from my grandma and great grandparents.
To me, an American, I just think of it as my way of life. If you were to compare me to my living detached family members in various European countries you might notice a few similarities but you'll also notice I am not them.
Yet my whole life other Americans have constantly asked me if I'm from somewhere else, and now I've met and interacted deeply with many Europeans and they've also pointed out that culturally I act more like them than our other American friends. Which I still think sounds more like an insult than a compliment but over the years I believe I've slowly started to understand what they mean.
I assume there are other Americans with a similar experience out there, Americans who are almost assigned as "not as American" despite having very well defined family roots all because their family remembers they come from immigrants and has been so open and accepting (like we thought everyone else was) that recent additions are almost a given expectation.
So trying to connect with people via heritage can help ease the mental strain and confusion of why your own countrymen think you're not as American as them. But also our federal/state/local government have been purposefully dismantling public education for decades in some areas... So there probably are Americans who don't understand the unspoken "my heritage is____" in "I'm from______" and trying to yell or big brain them out of improper communication will do nothing but cause you stress and alienate people who-as frustrating as it is- have minimal ability to understand the concepts needed to explain genetic lineage vs cultural heritage and it's not really their fault. It's annoying and frustrating but they can't miraculously create those neural pathways so we need to practice patience and guidance.. not shame and anger.
One huge problem with American culture is that nobody has a historical identity. There's nothing in the country older than three hundred years, and a lot of people have no idea of their ancestry beyond their great grandparents. That's why Ancestry.com and similar sites have been so successful.
Black people have it the hardest, in many ways. Brought over against their will, their culture was erased, and so everything has to invented "from scratch." If a Black person does Ancestry.com, they get something like Igbo 67% Yoruba 15%. OK, so now what? They have to learn about Igbo culture and adopt it as their own without ever having spoken to an actual Igbo? Or, maybe they make this random mix of stuff they find cool about Igbo culture, and their own traditions, and they just make it up as they go along? That's how you get stuff like Kwanzaa and African American naming traditions (Laticia, Tyrone, Jeremiah, Sharnetta, etc).
White people's instant reaction is to label such culture as "fake" which is another way of saying it is illegitimate. Unless a culture can trace its origins back to a Roman Emperor, it's complete nonsense. Unless a name is associated with a Christian saint, Muslim caliph, or Hebrew king, you might as well call your baby Meatloaf.
These people either don't know or don't care that tomatoes and potatoes, which every European culture deems essential to their diet, are in fact New World crops which were unknown to Jesus. Traditions that seem eternal, like Santa Claus, pizza, and Mother's Day, are in fact just as made up and recent as Kwanzaa and Festivus.
The fact is that everything about everyone's language and culture is "made up" and most of it within the last two hundred years. So chill the fuck out about who is "inherently more Italian" than someone else, or who is a "real" Scotsman or whatever. A person's real, legitimate culture is whatever culture they happen to honestly identify with.
THANK YOU
Diaspora would disagree with you, while natives to their country would agree
Are you sure? I am an immigrant in US but I am originally from Europe. And in every European country I’ve been to locals would consider Roma people to be different instead of considering them indistinguishable from “regular” Italians or “regular” Croatians.
Roma is an easy example to illustrate my point but Europe is full of ethnic minorities who moved to another European country long time ago ( or recently) and locals continue to see them as “different” / non the same as locals.
Yes I agree, maybe I didn’t write it correctly. I mean locals of the country emigrated from don’t see diaspora as belonging to the country they emigrated from.
I know what you mean and this is what I was talking about.
For example: if Croatians believe that Croatian diaspora in US completely lost any traces of their roots and should be considered as “average” Americans … then they should had used the same logic to Roma people living in Croatia (or any other diaspora currently in Croatia)
The fact that Croatians continue to see Roma people as different from Croatians means Croatian should understand that Croatian diaspora in US can be viewed as “different” in US.
I used Croatians/Roma as a random example.
The same logic applies to any European country. They all have diasporas in their own countries. Those diasporas in European countries remained their distinct identities.
In addition I don’t think immigrants are accepted because of xenophobia
I think it’s because of how unlike the Roma people, European heritages have all been blended together and fallen under this banner of “white American” in the US. The governments made sure this would happen to have a united block to keep black people a underclass but nonetheless this is what happened, whereas the likes of Roma are still seen as “the other”. You even have this example in America where African Americans, many of whom have no idea of their roots due to slavery have crested the majority of culture in America and are seen as an other by so many that African American and White American are seen as two large distinct groups in the country.
Well unless your adopted your culture will be handed down the way it always has. If it has an immigrant aspect, so be it
True
Ethnicity and culture is not the same thing. Weird to me that the people around you seem to not understand this. I wonder, what do you think about culture appropriation? I’ve seen videos of people from other countries enjoying when people from other cultures celebrate theirs, however in the states it’s seen as racist or something.
I reject your claim. If we return home and re-enter our culture, there is nothing to seperate us from them. What a privilege they had to not need to leave their home and go to an unfamiliar land and have their culture taken away from them. It's chauvinism to say that we will never come home.
My wife got so mad at me when I told her she wasn't Irish because she had never been to Ireland. She has lived in the same US state her entire life. I don't call myself German. Because I'm not.
OK, but there's also a whole lot of Europeans, for example, who claim that if you were born and grew up in their country, but your parents are from a different ancestry (specifically if you're a different complexion)... you're also not "one of them". See also: Japan. It's just equally shitty people complaining about the same bullshit. Both sides need to mind their own business.
I feel the blowback came from where you asked, rather than a common view.
Facebook isnt a place to get a common view.
I think most people would agree. When I went to Scotland... I didnt feel Scottish...I very much felt like a tourist.
I dont believe your gonna be a 10th dentist here. Unless you find a group that dont feel they have a national identity.
As a canadian recent events have propelled a hard national identity, if I was american and living through... all that... I may be more inclined to align with my Scottish roots vs American.
Id say it may be more of a marker on how your audience is viewing themselves and how they align with the current politics, or just the need to be 'more', i dont know. But I feel its a fringe opinion.
My mother's family is scott/Irish...My father's is german/native...None of us identify say ..I'm Irish, Scottish, German or Native..... but ...
Like every other American we trace our Ancestry as far back as we can..."back to the old country"...because that is part of our family's stories. How they traveled here , settled and survived. Both sides came here in the 1700s...
We pass these stories and traditions down...
I dont think the average European is going to be able to understand...
I think non-north Americans are the ones who are too precious about this, not the other way around.
If some random guy in Canada start calling himself Italian because of a genetic test, what happens? Does he get some kind of benefit to it? Will his meals at Italian restaurants suddenly be free? Will he appreciate the Godfather more? If he talks about it too much people may get annoyed, but then again talking about anything too much is annoying.
Are you one of the people who believe that humans used to be apes? I don't believe that but I think you're behaving like your ancestors.