KCRag Forum

mean wrote: Well, neither Africa nor Asia are countries...

*whoosh*

(that's the sound of this going over my head)

chrizow wrote: my last name is irish.

Ow is Irish?

Charlize Theron was born in Africa.  If she becomes an American citizen, would that make her an African-American?  Discuss.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000234/

I think she would be South African-American,

I'm Terrestrial-American; my ancestry can be best described as a statistical average. One study a few years back indicated that Mohammed himself was one of my (and everyone else's) great, great,.... granddads.

If I had to be more specific, I'd say I'm Scotch with a shot of Bourbon.

3/4 mexican american

1/4 irish

the irish name in my family is felton. my dads mom's maiden name.

whoa! what a combo.

Korean-German American

35% Irish
35% German
15% Welsh
15% Dutch

But I can get a tan.

50% Polish
50% German/Irish/Scottish/Welsh

I was looking at this map and I've seen demographics for cities in the south and a good majority claim American as ancestry. I was just wondering why do mainly Southerners claim American as its Ancestry? I'm sure this has risen much more since this 2000 map but it just seems odd, is it an education thing? Do these people not understand what Ancestry means? Seems kind of odd but that the entire south is American but the true ancestry is probably more like English, Scottish, German, etc. I have never ever thought of claiming American as my Ancestry and I would never do it in my life. Seems super dumb in my opinion.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... County.jpg

The primary European ancestry in the upland South (and the places those folks then migrated to) is from the British Isles, but due to poor/lost documentation compared to places further north and many of the people in the "Scots-Irish" ethnicity group only living in Ireland for a few generations before emigrating, having a good handle on where exactly one's ancestors came from for many people is harder to come by.

So if all you can reliably document is those ancestors who were born here, well...declaring your ancestry as "American" makes a certain amount of sense.

Maybe it's the new era of Provincial Nationalism, to reject ancestry. OTOH, some simply can't tag their ancestry or have unfortunately lost that identity. We are likely all ultimately from Africa so what does ancestry really mean. Perhaps ancestry is only as important as to which era you _want_ to identify with. But it is sad that many just don't care even it can be found out via DNA test.

BTW, I took an anonymous DNA test and it correctly nailed the exact eastern euro country/region both sets of grandparents are from and claimed back to 30K years for that area. Also showed a genetic path back to Sudan area of Africa. Genetic migration is a fascinating think to look into, is rather convincing we all come from Africa.

I was thinking it was more about Provincial Nationalism and rejecting ancestry but I didn't think about the lost documentation and possibly people not caring. I mean there is probably a cutoff when we start rejecting ancestry all together maybe 200-300 years but less than 100 years ago most Immigrants from Europe were still speaking in their native tongues. I also view the USA as a huge melting pot where we all came from somewhere else so identifying as American seems odd to me.

brewcrew1000 wrote:I have never ever thought of claiming American as my Ancestry and I would never do it in my life. Seems super dumb in my opinion.

Seems fairly ignorant to write off a group of people’s cultural identity as “super dumb” just because you personally wouldn’t do it that way, and that’s not an opinion.

You can also attribute it to some immigrants who wanted their children to 'be American', by not teaching them the Old World ways or language. After a couple generations the identity could become lost. But would suspect many who call themselves American as their ancestry is about Provincial Nationalism, an outright rejection if maybe even a belief in American Superiority.

earthling wrote:You can also attribute it to some immigrants who wanted their children to 'be American', by not teaching them the Old World ways or language. After a couple generations the identity could become lost. But would suspect many who call themselves American as their ancestry is about Provincial Nationalism, an outright rejection if maybe even a belief in American Superiority.

I suspect your suspicion is based on stereotypes and prejudice.

Genetic genealogy is an interest of mine and there are a lot of folks of colonial American ancestry who go all in on it - the tl;dr version is that the consumer-level autosomal tests (Ancestry, 23andMe, etc.) have a very hard time reliably distinguishing NW European ethnicities apart, as (surprise!) they're all *very* similar to each other.

Y-chromosomal tests can be more informative on deep ancestry, but that's only one line of ancestry.

chingon wrote:

brewcrew1000 wrote:I have never ever thought of claiming American as my Ancestry and I would never do it in my life. Seems super dumb in my opinion.

Seems fairly ignorant to write off a group of people’s cultural identity as “super dumb” just because you personally wouldn’t do it that way, and that’s not an opinion.

No I think its super dumb that "American" is even an option as your ancestry to begin with but then you have African American and Native American as other categories, shouldn't those just be grouped in with American also or the American category be called European American.

chingon wrote:

earthling wrote:You can also attribute it to some immigrants who wanted their children to 'be American', by not teaching them the Old World ways or language. After a couple generations the identity could become lost. But would suspect many who call themselves American as their ancestry is about Provincial Nationalism, an outright rejection if maybe even a belief in American Superiority.

I suspect your suspicion is based on stereotypes and prejudice.

It's pretty hard to loosely discuss segments of people/behavior and escape stereotyping, so yes, I could be considered guilty of stereotyping in this case. But suspect it's still the case. Loosely calling someone OCD because they show those behaviors could also be considered stereotyping.

earthling wrote:You can also blame some immigrants who wanted their children to 'be American', by not teaching them the Old World ways or language because they wanted their children to identify as American. After a couple generations the identity could become lost. But would suspect many who call themselves American as their ancestry is about Provincial Nationalism, an outright rejection if maybe even a belief in American Superiority.

My great grandfather went as far as to change the family's name to fit in. Jokes on him, I was given the old-world spelling 70 years later.

Actually, its funny this topic came up now, I'm seeing an increase in younger (white) people with names that are much more European in spelling. My best friend just had a baby and I had no idea how to pronounce the name, it was his great-great grandfathers name from Norway. I've heard that the non-Western names given to African American kids are a way to re-connect back to a heritage that was stolen from them and to give them an identity with that heritage. I wonder if a similar thing (but for very different reasons, of course) is happening with people with a European-American background? We've become so homogenized that we need to re-connect with the past and what gives us some uniqueness?