Okay let’s play a game. Let’s pretend you’re Italian, you said Italian, we’ll go with that. You speak Italian, you’re used to traditional Italian food, you believe in traditional Italian values. Things are done a certain way in Italy, and you’re used to it that way. Then one day, for whatever reason be it economic prospects, famine, war, whatever, you decide to leave Italy forever and board a ship bound for America. New Life in the New World and all that jazz.
What do you do when you step off the boat at Ellis Island? Do you:
A. Continue to speak your native language at least at home, become part of a community of fellow Italian emigrants, continue to cook and eat your traditional dishes…as best as you can with the ingredients available in this new hemisphere at any rate, do things the way you’re used to doing them, retaining your traditional values…or
B. Delete all that tedious “back in the old country” nonsense and instantly become an English speakin’ cheeseburger eatin’ stetson wearin’ rootin’ tootin’ howdy y’all.
Going with option A, huh? How original. We’ve run this experiment on real hardware literally hundreds of millions of times over the last 250 years and not a single immigrant has gone with Option B.
Okay so…now you’re an American. You’re still an Italian though. It’s who and what you are. You get married and have children. How do you raise those children? Do you…
A. Speak Italian to them at home, take them to the same church you were raised in, feed them the foods you were raised eating, teach them the same values you believe in, tell them the tales of your home country’s folklore as bedtime stories…or
B. Speak to them only in English, send them to the First Baptist Church, feed them apple sauce and happy meals, and raise them on Sesame Street and Marvel comics.
Going with option A again? Daring today, aren’t we? Your children are required to go to American public school. They’re formally taught to read, write, speak and understand English, and invariably put in the role of translating for their parents during doctors visits and the like. They’re taught American legends like the first thanksgiving with the pilgrims and Indians, of George Washington and that cherry tree. They grow up eating the food their parents invented out of necessity, like spaghetti and meatballs, or chicken parmesan.
One day, well into their adulthood, someone asks your children a question. It might be “Where are you from?” or some similar phraseology. How do your bilingual spaghetti-eating children answer this question?
“We’re Italian.”
Now that we’ve been on that journey, I want you to imagine logging onto the internet to find some dumb fuck who never left the Old Country, who has never been to a place where “What is your current nationality” and “What is your personal heritage” are different questions with different answers and thus has no grasp at all on the concept of diaspora says “No you’re not.”
Stereotypically, the Americans doing this are way further removed from their ancestry than the second-generation immigrants you describe (in fact it’s completely normal and accepted for second-gen immigrants to identify as their parent’s nationality as well in Europe);
“I’m Italian” and “I have Italian ancestry” are NOT the same sentence. You seem to realize that, but many Americans don’t, and the comment you replied to complained about the former, and the difference is fundamental;
Europeans are generally not on board with the whole “ethnic identity” stuff that Americans do, for a variety of reasons that one could simplify down to “last time we did that, nazism happened”. The mainstream progressive view is humanist and intentionally colorblind, and it is therefore profoundly shocking to see Americans derive a sense of self-worth from their blood, because these are the talking points we normally only hear in documentaries about Mussolini…
Now I have spent enough time reading about how American view their complicated relationship to race, ethnicity, and ancestry, to understand where you’re coming from, but this is fundamentally at odds to the humanist approach of “we’re all the same and who your great-grandparents were does not define who you are in any way”. (Which is obviously idealist, and does tend to “whitewash” some struggles, but it is nonetheless the prevailing approach).
I don’t think I’ve met any Americans that use their ancestry as a sense of “self worth” in any meaningful amount. For the vast majority of people it’s just a interesting quirk people like to share about their ancestry. Taking that and criticizing it because “last time we did it, nazism happened” is quite a stretch.
As long as you speak the language, it’s fine by me. Once you stop speaking Italian at home (in this example) it’s over, you can’t call yourself Italian anymore.
You joke but that’s what I’m been told by Italians from Italy. If your name is Angela Spaghetti but you cannot speak a single word in Italian, you’re not considered Italian, maybe Italian American at best (which just means you’re American to Italian eyes).
When your country is so young, nearly everybody is an immigrant. So it’s hard to take pride in a family lineage that is at most 4 generations of being American. Plus, we don’t really have a unified national identity. “American” could literally mean every type of person.
funny that you say that, not all Europeans are stuck in the same nationality for 10 or 30 generations back, maybe not even majority.
My great-grandmother was German, never learned the language of what is now my nationality. My grandmother and her child (my parent) didn’t speak German and have never subscribed to German nationality, neither do I (but I speak a little bit German though becouse of school not because of family). Maybe it’s because the identity of the place I live in is as strong as Germany’s so it’s a simple choice. But for a country, whose entire schtick is “'Murica fokk yea” I am sometimes baffled how much this ancestral identity matters among people who are supposed to benefit from the whole thing (white middle/upper classes).
No, this is an American thing. Other countries in the American continent have the same immigrant thing going on and we don’t call ourselves Italian or whatever. We are all from the country where we were born.
Ummm… The US was built on immigrants, what other American country is? Look at early era NY, I don’t know any other country in America built off a huge influx of diversity like that. It was how the US grew, through immigration. But I’m open to being wrong if you could show me any.
For example, South/Central American countries all have their own deep, rich, and most importantly, long history of culture and heritage. The US does not, outside Native Americans that is.
What the hell? All countries in the continent are about the same age. Europeans after the wars fled to lots of different countries. Sao Paulo, Brazil, for example, has the largest number of Japanese immigrants in the world. My ancestors came from Italy, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal.
Maradona, the great Argentine football player, descended from native American, Spanish, Italian and Croatian ancestors. Another Argentine footballer, Lionel Messi, descended from Italian and Spanish immigrants. Bolsonaro, shitty ex-president of Brazil, has an Italian surname. He won the previous election against Fernando Haddad, who has a Turkish surname.
It’s not about age. The US is a blend of cultures without a real single identity. It is very different than say Brazilian history, which is much older than the US.
Brazil was originally settled by stone-age tribes. In 1500, Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral arrived in Brazil with 1,200 adventurers. Cabral claimed Brazil as a colony of Portugal. The first settlement was founded in 1532. Which is a few hundred years sooner than the US and not established with multiple peoples she cultures.
Culture persists in some way for generations, you know. An immigrant’s grandchildren probably won’t fit in in their home country, but they’re still distinct from mainstream American culture.
They will say of themselves as being Irish/Italian/other-european-nationality because their great-grandfather or great-grandmother came from there.
Okay let’s play a game. Let’s pretend you’re Italian, you said Italian, we’ll go with that. You speak Italian, you’re used to traditional Italian food, you believe in traditional Italian values. Things are done a certain way in Italy, and you’re used to it that way. Then one day, for whatever reason be it economic prospects, famine, war, whatever, you decide to leave Italy forever and board a ship bound for America. New Life in the New World and all that jazz.
What do you do when you step off the boat at Ellis Island? Do you:
A. Continue to speak your native language at least at home, become part of a community of fellow Italian emigrants, continue to cook and eat your traditional dishes…as best as you can with the ingredients available in this new hemisphere at any rate, do things the way you’re used to doing them, retaining your traditional values…or
B. Delete all that tedious “back in the old country” nonsense and instantly become an English speakin’ cheeseburger eatin’ stetson wearin’ rootin’ tootin’ howdy y’all.
Going with option A, huh? How original. We’ve run this experiment on real hardware literally hundreds of millions of times over the last 250 years and not a single immigrant has gone with Option B.
Okay so…now you’re an American. You’re still an Italian though. It’s who and what you are. You get married and have children. How do you raise those children? Do you…
A. Speak Italian to them at home, take them to the same church you were raised in, feed them the foods you were raised eating, teach them the same values you believe in, tell them the tales of your home country’s folklore as bedtime stories…or
B. Speak to them only in English, send them to the First Baptist Church, feed them apple sauce and happy meals, and raise them on Sesame Street and Marvel comics.
Going with option A again? Daring today, aren’t we? Your children are required to go to American public school. They’re formally taught to read, write, speak and understand English, and invariably put in the role of translating for their parents during doctors visits and the like. They’re taught American legends like the first thanksgiving with the pilgrims and Indians, of George Washington and that cherry tree. They grow up eating the food their parents invented out of necessity, like spaghetti and meatballs, or chicken parmesan.
One day, well into their adulthood, someone asks your children a question. It might be “Where are you from?” or some similar phraseology. How do your bilingual spaghetti-eating children answer this question?
“We’re Italian.”
Now that we’ve been on that journey, I want you to imagine logging onto the internet to find some dumb fuck who never left the Old Country, who has never been to a place where “What is your current nationality” and “What is your personal heritage” are different questions with different answers and thus has no grasp at all on the concept of diaspora says “No you’re not.”
There are several problems there:
Now I have spent enough time reading about how American view their complicated relationship to race, ethnicity, and ancestry, to understand where you’re coming from, but this is fundamentally at odds to the humanist approach of “we’re all the same and who your great-grandparents were does not define who you are in any way”. (Which is obviously idealist, and does tend to “whitewash” some struggles, but it is nonetheless the prevailing approach).
I don’t agree with your third point at all.
I don’t think I’ve met any Americans that use their ancestry as a sense of “self worth” in any meaningful amount. For the vast majority of people it’s just a interesting quirk people like to share about their ancestry. Taking that and criticizing it because “last time we did it, nazism happened” is quite a stretch.
As long as you speak the language, it’s fine by me. Once you stop speaking Italian at home (in this example) it’s over, you can’t call yourself Italian anymore.
According to the Codex Wiesonius.
TIL most people born in Ireland are not Irish.
You joke but that’s what I’m been told by Italians from Italy. If your name is Angela Spaghetti but you cannot speak a single word in Italian, you’re not considered Italian, maybe Italian American at best (which just means you’re American to Italian eyes).
I’m also meaning it sincerely. It is a sensible distinction since “Italian” is not a blood line, but a culture.
When your country is so young, nearly everybody is an immigrant. So it’s hard to take pride in a family lineage that is at most 4 generations of being American. Plus, we don’t really have a unified national identity. “American” could literally mean every type of person.
funny that you say that, not all Europeans are stuck in the same nationality for 10 or 30 generations back, maybe not even majority.
My great-grandmother was German, never learned the language of what is now my nationality. My grandmother and her child (my parent) didn’t speak German and have never subscribed to German nationality, neither do I (but I speak a little bit German though becouse of school not because of family). Maybe it’s because the identity of the place I live in is as strong as Germany’s so it’s a simple choice. But for a country, whose entire schtick is “'Murica fokk yea” I am sometimes baffled how much this ancestral identity matters among people who are supposed to benefit from the whole thing (white middle/upper classes).
No, this is an American thing. Other countries in the American continent have the same immigrant thing going on and we don’t call ourselves Italian or whatever. We are all from the country where we were born.
This is a miss on one of the best parts of America.
This is a country of immigration and everyone has a story and a different background.
Ummm… The US was built on immigrants, what other American country is? Look at early era NY, I don’t know any other country in America built off a huge influx of diversity like that. It was how the US grew, through immigration. But I’m open to being wrong if you could show me any.
For example, South/Central American countries all have their own deep, rich, and most importantly, long history of culture and heritage. The US does not, outside Native Americans that is.
What the hell? All countries in the continent are about the same age. Europeans after the wars fled to lots of different countries. Sao Paulo, Brazil, for example, has the largest number of Japanese immigrants in the world. My ancestors came from Italy, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal.
Maradona, the great Argentine football player, descended from native American, Spanish, Italian and Croatian ancestors. Another Argentine footballer, Lionel Messi, descended from Italian and Spanish immigrants. Bolsonaro, shitty ex-president of Brazil, has an Italian surname. He won the previous election against Fernando Haddad, who has a Turkish surname.
It’s not about age. The US is a blend of cultures without a real single identity. It is very different than say Brazilian history, which is much older than the US.
Brazil was originally settled by stone-age tribes. In 1500, Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral arrived in Brazil with 1,200 adventurers. Cabral claimed Brazil as a colony of Portugal. The first settlement was founded in 1532. Which is a few hundred years sooner than the US and not established with multiple peoples she cultures.
are they claiming nationality or ethnic heritage?
Culture persists in some way for generations, you know. An immigrant’s grandchildren probably won’t fit in in their home country, but they’re still distinct from mainstream American culture.