Reply to If you're of Irish Protestant ancestry, do you consider yourself Irish American?

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[quote=Anonymous]What’s problematic is that — still — part of the Irish (Catholic) identity is the experience of oppression by the British.  It may be stronger for Irish-Americans than Irish because so many of our ancestors were driven out by the British. And Scots-Irish are seen as on the other side of that.

My great grandfather was burned in Ireland — his wife was born here but her parents were Irish.  When my grandmother married, it was sort of a big deal that she married a man of Scottish extraction (only after he converted).  Interestingly he always told everyone his family was Scottish.  When I researched, they were actually Scots-Irish … but I think that would have been viewed poorly in their Irish community so they identified as Scottish Presbyterians.  
Even though I am part Scots-Irish by heritage, I don’t really consider them “real Irish.”  But they didn’t really consider themselves that either.  I think in much of the world people identified more by religion ethnicity than nations/geography until at least the First World War.   My husband’s family is Jewish and they didn’t even know which country their family came from.  And I think that’s also true of Greeks from Asia Minor or Albanians from Serbia, etc,.—the religion and ethnicity mattered more than the national borders until sometime in the 20th century.[/quote]

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