this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 80 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

I worked with a French guy in Amsterdam. His parents were Portuguese, but he was born and raised in France. As far as he was concerned, he was French.

Contrariwise, I worked with an American woman in Virginia. Her grandparents were Irish, and she considered herself Irish, in spite of having been born and raised in America, and both of her parents having been born and raised in America.

It is a kind of fetish in America to hyphenate yourself. Irish-American. Cuban-American. And so on.

My own theory is that this is because America has no culture going back many generations, so people try to find one.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 49 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's even more strange when I see 3rd or 4th generation children from immigrants call themselves "Greek" or "Italian" and many times they've never even stepped inside those countries nor speak the language

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 26 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Or even worse, they think that they do some typical Italian food when in fact, if you gave that food to Italians, they would be disgusted.

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You’ve got me thinking of the episode of the Sopranos when they go to Italy to seal a deal with an old mob family and none of Tony’s guys want to eat the real Italian food

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 7 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly. Damn, The Sopranos were a good series.

[–] r4venw@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

Vice versa as well! I've tried to share some chocolate salami with "italian-americans" in the past and they've basically run away screaming every time! For some reason theyre not able to comprehend that its not actually meat...

[–] makyo@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean you've basically hit the nail on the head except you're misunderstanding one important thing. They aren't 'trying to find one' they have one. Their culture IS that Irish or Cuban heritage and it wasn't retconned from 23andme or ancestry.com - it comes from the story they were told about their identity by their parents from an early age.

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My aunts' grandparents came from Poland. Their parents spoke Polish in the house. They were raised with a whole close-knit gaggle of cousins, also with Polish grandparents and parents. The old country wasn't that long ago for them. They've visited.

Me, eh. My dad married someone from Appalachia and I grew up away from his family. I haven't heard Polish spoken outside of my great-grandaunt'a funeral. I like pierogi, kielbasa, and sauerkraut because they remind me of my dad. He'd cook them when he was feeling nostalgic.

I have looked into claiming Polish citizenship through descent (mostly because an EU passport would be comforting what with USA politics), but my folks came over too early for that.

[–] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Same for me. My dad, while being born in Australia, is fluent in Polish and has visited the country many times

Yet I'd never call myself Polish, I barely know the language

[–] ellen_musk_0x@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But they're not Irish or Cuban or Italian.

They're Americans.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] ellen_musk_0x@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago

I guess both 'identity' and 'heritage' are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

And I know this is mostly pedantry, but there're terms that actually do fit better. Like immigrants, settlers, etc.

My great grandad was from Sicily. I'm from Minnesota. I don't have any heritage or identity that has much to do with Sicily. I do have heritage as the progeny of immigrants from Sicily. But not Sicily.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I worked with a French guy in Amsterdam. His parents were Portuguese, but he was born and raised in France. As far as he was concerned, he was French.

As I understand it, that's a French thing specifically, not just a non-USian thing. Like, if you're a citizen of France, you're expected to be French and assimilate into that culture, no matter whether you're a native Parisian, you moved there from Algeria in the '60s, or you're from some random other place and got citizenship via the French Foreign Legion. It's a specific sort of national ideology that's different from the American "melting pot" one.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

I've generally heard the opposite. You can immigrate to France, get citizenship, and be as French as possible, but you will never be French.

[–] Pips@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's actually kjnd of the opposite: America has the dominant culture going back generations. It's just that culture is very materialistic, so people try to find something deeper. That's my theory anyway. Besides, most of us are immigrants and I think a lot of Americans want some connection to their place of origin.

[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

Hm, maybe. I know that de Tocqueville found Americans to be obsessed with money in the 1830's. Nothing seems to have changed in the past 200 years in that regard. 🤔

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

My own theory is racism. Other countries in the Americas are not obsessed with ancestry. But bigotry against Scots, Irish, Italians, Africans, Chinese, Polish, etc. ran / run rampant.

Jeez, are there people the English didn’t hate? I wonder if the overall disdain for other people the English had in the 1800s wasn’t what was carried over to the new world and festered into this.

[–] M137@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

It's also very much part of the 'murican narcissism culture, everyone has to be special in some way, no matter how shallow, made up or objectively irrelevant that is. I've known a few Americans IRL (I'm Swedish) at different periods of my life and no one else has ever come close to the level of mental gymnastics they do to feel special, cool, different etc. This really mirrors a lot of other things about the US, the classic image of early American towns with houses that have decorated facades but that's all it is, paper-thin lies to mask both nothingness and shittyness. And man do they hate it when you try to push your finger through those shallow shields they build for themselves.