Question About Ethnic Identity

[Micah]

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1293024081' post='2193942']
Yeah, I feel people are quite loyal to states, but then...I had the experience of growing up on the Mason Dixon line. I lived on one side....and went to school on the other. Even elementary school. So, I felt loyal to my 'home' state even though all my classmates were from the neighboring state and I had to learn that state's history, etc. I was very reluctant to transfer residency, but I've lived and worked in the neighboring state ever since college. It's still not 'mine' though, even though they issued me my birth certificate.
[/quote]

cool, there's a lot of rich history in that part of the U.S.. I am very similar in that British Columbia is a very distinct region in Canada, separated by climate and it's British predominance, so I relate very much with your state loyalty.

[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"][size="4"][quote]I identify myself as an American. Mostly because both sides of my family immigrated pre-revolutionary war.

I guess at some point there is some later immigrant blood in there at some fraction - but the family name comes from prior to the war, and thats where the family history is.

BTW - we came over with Lord Baltimore[/quote][/size][/font][/color]
[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"] [/font][/color]
[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"][size="4"]That's exciting! Well at least for people interested in history haha. Were your ancestors Catholic or protestant? Maryland was founded as a religiously tolerant colony if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, the Catholics got quickly overwhelmed by Protestant immigration. 17th and 18th century American history is one of my favourite subjects (I probably shouldn't have watched Mel Gibson's [i]The Patriot[/i] as a kid.) [/size][/font][/color]

[Hinter dem Horizont]

I was born in Kilkenny Ireland. The standard for us is to go by what our parents are and where we're from. We usually say it doesn't count when you go back to 4 generations. Since I was born in Ireland I am 100 % Irish. However, if you're born in Canada you're Canadian not Irish. So, if your parents are from there then you're half Irish but by birth you're Canadian so you can only say you're half Irish . If your grandparents are from there then that's going back too far for us. You must call yourself Canadian with some Irish ancestry. Irish people become angry when people start saying they're "half Irish, half Polish, half German". That's not possible. What you should call yourself is where you're born. And what your parents are. Nothing more.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Hinter dem Horizont

[rkwright]

[quote name='Micah' timestamp='1293029753' post='2193954']
[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"][size="4"][/size][/font][/color]
[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"] [/font][/color]
[color="#595959"][font="arial, verdana, sans-serif"][size="4"]That's exciting! Well at least for people interested in history haha. Were your ancestors Catholic or protestant? Maryland was founded as a religiously tolerant colony if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, the Catholics got quickly overwhelmed by Protestant immigration. 17th and 18th century American history is one of my favourite subjects (I probably shouldn't have watched Mel Gibson's [i]The Patriot[/i] as a kid.) [/size][/font][/color]
[/quote]

As far as I know Catholic - always have been.

I need to check when I get to my parents house for the holidays. We have a distant relative who is a nun somewhere... who compiled the complete genealogy maybe 10 years ago. Its a huge book that traces the entire family tree, so I can look in there. It is interesting looking through it, I know Alexander Hamilton is in there (and so would be related in some way...)

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='Hinter dem Horizont' timestamp='1293030231' post='2193958']
I was born in Kilkenny Ireland. The standard for us is to go by what our parents are and where we're from. We usually say it doesn't count when you go back to 4 generations. Since I was born in Ireland I am 100 % Irish. However, if you're born in Canada you're Canadian not Irish. So, if your parents are from there then you're half Irish but by birth you're Canadian so you can only say you're half Irish . If your grandparents are from there then that's going back too far for us. You must call yourself Canadian with some Irish ancestry. Irish people become angry when people start saying they're "half Irish, half Polish, half German". That's not possible. What you should call yourself is where you're born. And what your parents are. Nothing more.
[/quote]
So someone who is purely one ethnic group by blood, group up in that ethnic community, had career choices in his parents view based on certain expectations of that ethnic culture, spoke some of the language and only not fluently because language was not his strength and his parents learned english well, works in an organization that involves this particular ethnic community of immigrants and offspring, and who even volunteered in that ethnicity's native country with his mom one summer, can never call himself ethnic _Irish/Canadian/American/whatever because his grandparents or great grandparents came to this country?

Half, half, and half is an illogical distribution of 1/2s.


My dad's family came to America easily into the 1800s or farther back. I tell you, he still lives up to the Scottish reputation of how they handle money.

Edited December 23, 2010 by Light and Truth

[MithLuin]

If people ask for my ethnic background, I'm going to say I'm mostly Irish and a little German. My family immigrated to the US a little over a century ago, and all my grandparents (and possibly all my great-grandparents?) were born here. I have a coworker who was born in Ireland and whose family immigrated to England and then he came to the US. I am under no illusion that I am Irish in the same way he's Irish, but then....what am I supposed to say I am? People don't want to hear 'white' or 'American' - they know that already. They want to know what my background is, and that is almost all Irish (though the German is a very strong influence, considering it's only 1/8 or so).

Canada and the US (and other places, like Australia) are nations of immigrants. Very few people are 'from' here, and most know enough of their background to maintain some connection (however tenuous) to the homeland.

Mostly, I allow people to self-identify, with the caveat that not everyone will be completely accepted by the other members of the group they identify with. If you feel like you are being a 'poser', then back off.

[Maximilianus]

My ethinicity is made up of other ethinicities which in turn have been made up of other ethnicities which in turn have been made up of other ethnicities....

[MithLuin]

Hahaha, Max, true enough. If you trace us back...we all end up in the Garden of Eden, right? (Or the Rift Valley of Africa)

During the lead up to WWII, JRR Tolkien had the opportunity to have his book [i]The Hobbit[/i] translated into German. So, his publisher started talks with the German publisher...who demanded that Tolkien present 'evidence' that he wasn't Jewish. As you can imagine, he took great affront at that, and told the publisher to refuse. The German translation of the Hobbit didn't come out until after WWII. But to leave it up to the publisher, he wrote two letters. The one that was sent did not give any indication of his race, but the 'back up' one did:

[quote]"Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries? ... Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any [i]Bestatigung[/i] (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine."

...

"I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by [i]arisch.[/i] I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware noone of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."

From the Letters to his (English) publisher and the (unsent) letter to the potential German publisher. (July 1938) [/quote]

Just a reminder that getting too hung up on such things isn't entirely healthy....

[4588686]

[quote name='Hinter dem Horizont' timestamp='1293030231' post='2193958']
I was born in Kilkenny Ireland. The standard for us is to go by what our parents are and where we're from. We usually say it doesn't count when you go back to 4 generations. Since I was born in Ireland I am 100 % Irish. However, if you're born in Canada you're Canadian not Irish. So, if your parents are from there then you're half Irish but by birth you're Canadian so you can only say you're half Irish . If your grandparents are from there then that's going back too far for us. You must call yourself Canadian with some Irish ancestry. Irish people become angry when people start saying they're "half Irish, half Polish, half German". That's not possible. What you should call yourself is where you're born. And what your parents are. Nothing more.
[/quote]

Calling yourself 'what you are ans where you are from' probably works well in the Irish context. I don't know much about Ireland but as far as I know, aside from sectarian divides, Ireland is pretty ethnically homogeneous and hasn't historically experienced a lot of immigration into Ireland.

As I'm sure you know America has a very different background. There are areas of Brooklyn where you can find people who only speak Yiddish and (modern) Hebrew. America is a relatively new state and the vast majority of it's population are descendants of immigrants, many of whom held onto their national language and customs to various degrees for generations.

The closest thing to a single ethnic identity in America would probably be WASP culture. That's the culture of America's historical elite and the dominate ethnic presence in America since our funding. I have a pretty diverse family and I can tell you from my experience growing up that any ethnic designation that lumps Americans from a New England WASPS background with Americans from Central and Eastern European Catholics and Jews is a pretty useless designation.

Ireland's clear cut understanding of ethnicity just doesn't work in a country like America or Russia or China (particularly with the last two).

Ethnicity is often multilayered. I have relatives who have Germanic last names, lived in what was then the Russian Empire, and were religious Jewish. What is their ethnicity? For whatever reason modern Western society seems to take Jewishness as a super ethnicity that trumps all others and would probably call them "Jews". That itself is a somewhat artificial ethnicity as it's hard to justify claiming that Ashkenazi Jews belong to the same ethnicity as Mizrahi Jews unless Bosnian Muslims belong to the same ethnicity as Turkish Muslims because they have a common faith tradition. Would they be Russians? Well, they were born in Russia and spoke Russian but there would be pretty obvious cultural differences between them and their Orthodox Slavic compatriots.

I don't know. My point is that ethnicity is always artificial and contrived to some degree and it becomes particularly ambiguous in the American context. I would not consider myself central or eastern European. If you dropped me there I'd be pretty lost. On the other hand I'd be more comfortable than my friends who were raised in WASP homes. I grew up with German and Yiddish words mixed in with English, German customs, and was raised in a German-Catholic faith tradition.

On the other hand I was also raised in the American south and part of my family has lived here for 300+ years. I understand the norms and mores of American Southern culture a lot better than other cultures in the US. I tend to find Americans from New York obnoxious.

To the OP: Ethnic identity is amorphous. You probably don't have any basis for claiming to be a Lebanese American. I don't know about your background but from what you said that would be like me claiming to be a French American because my ancestors briefly lived in France while they were trying to make it to America.

I don't see any benefit to getting too worked up about finding some particular ethnicity. My Grandmother would be considered German by Ireland's standards. Should she call herself German? I don't think so. If she went to Germany she would not fit in. The Germany she hails from no longer exists. The German culture that existed in her home and the German neighborhood she grew up in up in Philadelphia was a German culture than had not experienced Nazism, the utter destruction of WWII, the feeling of being a occupied and divided people. A lot of the most seminal parts of the modern German experience are totally foreign to her. That's true of most nations. The Armenia your family comes from no longer exists and hasn't for some time. My great grandfather was fluent in German and from Germany. He died in my youth. Had he returned to Germany he would have felt as alienated as I would for the reasons I mentioned. Those weren't his people any more. They were a people who had accumulated a collective guilt for the most horrific genocide of all time, had been defeated, humiliated and occupied. It would be like if you could time travel to America in 70 years. You'd feel alienated and distinct. The culture would be different. You aren't an Armenian but an Armenian culture is in some sense a part of you and informs who you are.

[4588686]

[quote name='Maximilianus' timestamp='1293066890' post='2194037']
My ethinicity is made up of other ethinicities which in turn have been made up of other ethnicities which in turn have been made up of other ethnicities....


[/quote]

Exactly.

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='Lilllabettt' timestamp='1237667576' post='1813383']
Yes. My uncle and all that side of the family immigrated in the 1950s via Austria. They are from Romania, actually, but they are very insistent that they are not Slavs.

So they say "we are German." Although none of them are really from Germany, the country.
[/quote]
I thought that Romanians were Dracians and maybe some other bits of Romans. They speak a Romance language, not a slavic one. Do they actually have slav in their blood?