General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do You Identify as American? [View all]Bucky
(54,094 posts)Nationality and race are two different things, which a lot of people are unaware of, because race is kind of a made-up thing, or at least an unscientific explanation before a minimal genetic variety.
In Europe, at least among the racially white, nationality is an entirely transferable quality. When Sarkozy was president of France, no one cared that his grandparents were from Hungary (or Bulgaria or whatever).
But 7 to 10 generations past the blight, and there's folks here still claiming they're Irish. There's a couple of redheads in my dad's family and I still have cousins who insist we're Irish, when the ancestry research goes back the 1700s before tracing back to England only. Americans are goofy that way, mostly because we swallowed uncritically the "nation of immigrants" rhetoric.
I mean, on the whole it's a good mythology cause it makes us more receptive to the immigrants that our national growth is dependent on and which continually renews our prosperity and vigor as a people. But the bottom line is: I don't care where you come from, as long as you're here, paying your taxes, and mowing your front lawn.