Comment on "Sad thing to be, nonsensical thing to want to be" 💔🥀💔🥀

y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• MBech@feddit.dk ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s just a very foreign thing for us eurooeans. If we’re born in Italy, but some grandparent was born in Germany, we don’t consider ourself to be german in any way. We’d consider ourself italian and nothing else. It just seems so incredibly odd to even consider oneself to be german if you didn’t spend time growing up in Germany.

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  • ViperActual@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think the reason it’s so prevalent here in the US is because the vast majority of the population ended up here at least in part due to immigration. So identifying as ethnically originating from elsewhere is a part of that self identity.

    The disparity however, is knowing that while traveling through Europe, this style of self identification falls flat because simply being ethnically from a place doesn’t mean you can claim to be born and raised from there. And that meaning is what’s different between the US and Europe.

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    • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I wonder if some of it doesn’t come from the people who came to America through forced immigration (I.e. the slave trade).

      I think it makes sense for people brought unwillingly to America to hold on to that ethnic heritage and culture pork hard to instill it in their children, even if they were born in America.

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      • zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Very unlikely, the people who claim to have some european origin are generally not the descendants of slaves. Descendants of slaves generally have very little knowledge about the origin of their ancestors. Slaves in America came mostly from Africa, most likely even displaced within Africa. Very little records were kept of individual slaves origins, because why would anyone do that, they’re slaves. These people identify as “just” African Americans.

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  • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I guess that makes sense. We have our “heritage” pushed on us from a very young age, or at least we did when I was a child. In the 4th grade we did an entire reenactment of immigrating through Ellis Island, NY in which we had to research our countries of origin, then draw from a hat to see if we died on the journey, got small pox, or any other number of things all before being “accepted into the wonderful cultural melting-pot that is the United States”.

    Then we grew up and learned that all immigrants are evil and must all be deported. /s?

    Regardless, my family immigrated from Ireland after having lived in County Cork for a very long time. This whole post just seems like shitting on people just to shit on people.

    Sad thing to be, nonsensical thing to want to be

    Well, thanks for calling me sad for a thing I’m mostly indifferent about and have no choice in, OP.

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    • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      What if you knew your family came over before Ellis island was open.

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      • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Didn’t matter. Unless you were indigenous, for the lessons sake, you came through ellis island lol

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  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Ethnicity vs nationality.

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    • MBech@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Sure, but are they really ethnically irish because their great grandfather was from Ireland? At what point do we consider americans to be their own thing?

      It’s not like the irish, italians or the danish are ethnically pure. Some bloke on my fathers side came to Denmark from Germany in the 1800s, and before that, one of his ancestors came from france, and before that from Rome. Same shit on my mothers side.

      My point is, it’s not like european countries are monoethnic. So why don’t we view someone from Texas, as ethnically texan, when their ancestry probably dates back to 1700s Texas?

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      • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I think you touched on why. Ethnic identity is somewhat arbitrary, and tied up with national / cultural identity. In the US, despite our xenophobic phases most of us culturally identify as a nation of immigrants. So in terms of ethnicity, we’re more concerned with where our lineage existed before arriving in the United States, rather than how long it’s existed in the United States. There’s a bit of a hierarchy of “who’s family has existed in the US the longest”, but all of those claims are still anchored by which nations their ancestors came from.

        There’s also the fact that American genetics haven’t been sedentary long enough - And probably never will be - For us to mix evenly enough to develop a unified physical appearance. Ethnicity is of course not just skin deep, but ethnic identity and identification often uses it as shorthand, and there is as far as I know no stereotypical American ethnic appearance.

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      • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Because qe generally aee ethnic groups as stretching back very far, like pre history far. At some in the future will people be talking about the American erhnic group? Maybe but it take a veey long time or a massive change in what we think of as ethnic groups for American ethnogenesis

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