And then you have Asian Americans, who just want to be considered Americans. Probably every American born Asian has been asked at least once in their life “Where are you from?” and has their [location in the US] answer rejected with “No where are you really from?”, as if it’s impossible for an Asian to be American born - they must be foreign born and an immigrant. Asking about ethnic origin, ancestry, or even family are more semantically accurate terms that won’t make the person questioned feel like they don’t belong.
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sykaster@feddit.nl 1 week agoI always find this kind of silly. You were born and raised in the USA, so you’re American, whether you like it or not. There’s people saying they’re Irish American despite 3 generations having passed, so when does it end? Am I Dutch-Norwegian because my great grandmother was Norwegian and came to The Netherlands?
No, I’m Dutch, I was born and raised here without influence of the Norwegian culture.
dirthawker0@lemmy.world 1 week ago
jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I know this is difficult for people in Europe to understand. And they hate it when a US tourist goes to visit x country and says “I’m x”.
We never really had a unifying cultural identity as pretty much everyone was immigrants. (Except of course for Native Americans, but their culture was basically eliminated.)
This is why we have terms like African American or Asian American or Irish American. When a black person moves from Africa to England, they don’t call themselves “African English”, they just call themselves English. A lot of this has to do with the power structure which separates us and the underlying racial hierarchy imposed by the ruling class for two centuries. Most European countries do not have this same level of diversity. And whatever diversity they have, the reasons for it are very different.
HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I call BS.
I’m Canadian and my parents immigrated here from England before I was born. I have a UK passport as well as a Canadian passport.
I’m not English-Canadian, I’m just Canadian. No one hyphenates in Canada, and you cannot say that Canada has any more unifying cultural heritage than the USA.
sykaster@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I understand the different cultural groups, though factually it’s incorrect. The main issue is Americans coming to their respective country of descent, and portraying themselves as, for example, Dutch. They’re not Dutch whatsoever, their language, customs, culture, and nationality are different. It’s incorrect and frankly pathetic.
I believe the USA would be better off if people would just drop the grouping and start being Americans.
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 week ago
I’m a French-german-dutch-viking-celt-englishman.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I am a Meat Popsicle.
BrowseMan@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I… I actually understood that reference.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Racism, that’s the word you’re looking for! So well implemented that the victims keep it going without any influence from the group that “has the right” to just call itself American without any prefix.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
It’s like being an eighth native American and claiming heritage without being a member of a tribe.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah my kids are 1/8 and I encouraged them to learn about that part of their heritage but no, they’re just American.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I was born and raised by my dad whether I liked it or not but I disowned him too.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 week ago
My family is so full of wankery about being Irish and I fucking hate it. If you can’t move back to Ireland and regain citizenship based upon ancestry you aren’t fucking Irish.
I think it’s a way for people to separate themselves from any last shred of responsibility for the country they reside in. You really are simply a piece of American shit just like me and many others. Maybe we could form a coalition and try to fix anything so maybe it wasn’t as embarrassing to be one? Nah? Great.
loaf@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
No, I’m Dutch, I was born and raised here without influence of the Norwegian culture.
Oh, I guess that’s where we differ. My family is from Leipzig, and the “German culture” (which is largely different from that of Americans in my particular state) was something engrained in me since birth.
I also spent 1/3 of my life visiting family in Germany.
But more importantly, my comment was mostly a remark about the idiocy of American politics, and how I’d like to distance myself from the notion of “Americanism” as much as possible, even on a genetic level.
It’s not that serious 😅
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 1 week ago
But in the US it is a cultural thing. Like Italian-Americans have a different culture from other Americans and from current day Italians.
sykaster@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Your comparison between “European vs Dutch” and “American vs Irish-American” is fundamentally flawed.
Nationality vs ancestry are different concepts. Dutch is my current nationality, defined by citizenship, language, culture, and shared social experience. Being “Dutch-Norwegian” would mean I hold dual citizenship or were raised in both cultural contexts simultaneously. Most Americans claiming to be “Irish-American” have no citizenship, language fluency, or authentic cultural immersion in Ireland.
The cultural disconnect is stark. What Americans call “Italian-American culture” has diverged dramatically from actual Italian culture over generations. It’s become a distinctly American phenomenon with superficial cultural markers rather than authentic representation. When Irish-Americans visit Ireland, locals often view them as simply American tourists because the cultural gap is so evident.
With each generation, the cultural connection weakens substantially. By the third or fourth generation, what remains is often reduced to stereotypical elements like celebrating St. Patrick’s Day or eating pasta on Sundays. This selective cultural picking isn’t equivalent to genuine cultural identity.
European identity framework differs fundamentally. In Europe, identity is primarily based on where you were born and raised, your language, and your lived experience – not distant ancestry.
Many Americans who claim hyphenated identities have minimal knowledge of their ancestral country’s modern culture, politics, or social realities. They cling to outdated or stereotypical notions that no longer reflect the actual country.
Comparing a continental identity (European) to a national one (Dutch) is not the same as comparing a national identity (American) to a hyphenated ancestral one (Irish-American). The Netherlands exists within Europe; “Irish-American” does not represent a legitimate political or cultural subset of America in the same way.
4am@lemm.ee 1 week ago
He literally said “American culture is different from its EU origins and therefore we call it out differently”
And then you said “nah since you’re American it’s all fake as fuck you’re just once large homogenous group”
Yeah ok and you chain-smoking bullfighters need to get your Lederhosen fitted at…wait, that doesn’t make sense? EU is different places with different cultures? No wayyyyyy 🤡
half_fiction@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
The level of authority that you’re speaking with about another country’s culture while clearly only having a surface-level understanding is actually wild. Maybe accept that the Americans who are telling you otherwise have more knowledge and understanding of their own culture.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Americans totally have more knowledge and understanding of their own culture.
Irish-Americans have very little knowledge and understanding of Irish culture
sykaster@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I understand the cultural grouping that happens when large migrant communities form. What I don’t understand is why Americans portray themselves as Dutch when coming to the Netherlands. Their customs, language, culture, and nationality are different. They’re not Dutch whatsoever.
Use it to identify yourselves within the USA, that makes sense. Don’t use it to claim being part of a culture that you know nothing about.
rishado@lemmy.world 1 week ago
They actually seem to be quite educated on the topic. Unlike yourself who seems to think that you’d have authority to speak on this issue because you have a certain passport? It’s really not that wild. I moved here as a first generation immigrant about 10 years ago & I pretty much concur what they are saying. Irish and American Italians in Boston and NJ respectively feel that they have more in common with their ‘home’ countrymen than fellow Americans, just one example. Personally I think there’s also an aspect of “oh I’m not just white, I’m actually 1/8 Irish”. Mind you that’s not what I think at all, why would I have a bias against you if you are white? But it’s almost like I’m asked to view them as more than “white American” when people tell me that stuff after I tell them where I’m from. You can imagine what their answers typically were when I asked about whether they often go back to visit family/home or foods they cook. It’s just ancestry, they have no actual ties to those lands.
One thing I will say though is that whenever I’d talk about this kind of thing is that people get weirdly defensive about it. Overall I learned just to let them say what they want to say, it’s not worth my energy trying to understand their mental gymnastics as to why they’re actually as Irish as I am Egyptian. They’re not ready or willing to have that conversation.
triptrapper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
OP wasn’t arguing that Italian-American culture necessarily resembles Italian culture. Of course they’re different. You’re implying that the concept of “Italian-American culture” is superficial or illegitimate because it differs from the way that Europeans talk about international or intergenerational identities, and that’s some prescriptivist bullshit. “Genuine cultural identity”? Get out of here.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Nah, that’s a load of bullshit, it’s just used as a way to divide people, there’s “real Americans” end then there’s the rest.
There’s a shit ton of black Americans that will never just be called Americans even though their family has lived on US soil much longer than the family of some of the white people who are just called Americans.
rishado@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Come on dude it’s a white centric thing to make them feel more ethnic. No one else does this, even in the US. What you’re describing is locality pride so someone should be proud to be from a certain state. Not claiming relation/influence from a European country. Immigrants in the US are the first to want to call themselves American while racists refuse to accept that whole saying they’re Irish or whatever the fuck.
metaldream@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
This is just bs. Immigrants from all over refer to themselves as hyphenated Americans. It is absolutely not just white people.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Lol melting pot
HK65@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Do they speak a different language, have their own celebrations or social groups?
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 1 week ago
yes. There are still people who speak an Italian dialect, there are even people in the US who speak a German dialect or even Chinese. And they have their own celebrations beside the American events. Like many Chinese-Americans families have been there for generations and still speak Chinese and celebrate Chinese holidays, should they stop calling themselves Chinese-American?
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That’s just being part of a minority no matter where you live. White Americans don’t all celebrate the same things and don’t all talk the same way, with some of them being nigh impossible to understand if you weren’t raised around people who speak like them, yet they’re just called Americans. Hell, if you were raised in the USA and have Danish parents no one will call you a Danish-American as long as you don’t have an accent, but if you are of Latino origins and your family has lived on US soil since before the USA was a thing you will be called a Latin-American. It’s just racism.
sykaster@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Speaking a heritage language or celebrating occasional holidays doesn’t justify claiming a nationality you don’t possess.
Most “hyphenated Americans” cherry-pick pleasant cultural elements while remaining disconnected from the contemporary realities of those countries. The vast majority don’t speak their ancestral languages or meaningfully participate in authentic cultural practices.
There’s a significant difference between recent immigrants maintaining strong cultural ties and 4th/5th generation Americans with minimal connection claiming the same identity. Americans also inconsistently apply this logic, often identifying with only one ancestral line while ignoring others.
When “Irish-Americans” visit Ireland, locals don’t recognize them as Irish in any meaningful sense—revealing the fundamental disconnect between claiming an identity and being accepted as authentic by actual members of that culture.
These hyphenated identities ultimately function as American cultural constructs rather than genuine connections to the nations they reference.
pfwood178@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Sometimes, yes, yes.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 6 days ago
In US. Grew up woth family speakibg itallian when I was young.
What yoy are saying just isn’t true. People want it to be, but it isn’t. If you go from your house to someone else’s, it is the same, maybe lunch is different. If you go from a British house to a French one, so much is different, exponentially moreso. That doesn’t even take into account the surrounding infrastructure.
The cold hard truth is that everyone who is actually Itallian is laughing at you for thinking otherwise.