Reply to Should white Americans be called "Indigenous Europeans?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What if you're Persian, for instance?[/quote]

Persia does not exist. How can you be Persian? [/quote]

It did exist and carries enough historic importance that it is still used today as a descriptor [/quote]

Prussia existed, too, but people don't say they are Prussian. Or Ottoman. Or Soviet. Cmon. Say Iranian. Persian is not a place any longer. 
How long ago did it exist? Seriously. [/quote]

Well, my family is originally from a country that doesn't exist anymore, and if asked about our heritage, we refer to the country.  People referred to themselves as Polish even when Poland didn't exist as a country.  Ditto for Lithuania.

Also, Persian is both a descriptor of a group of people and a language.  Persian people are an Iranian people who speak Persian or a related dialect.  There are about 90 million Persians, and they live in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and elsewhere.   [/quote]

THIS.  Persian is an ethnicity.  That doesn't cease to exist just because the country has a new name.  Similarly, Burmese was still an ethnicity when the country was called Myanmar.

I think Americans really struggle with the difference between nationality, citizenship, and ethnicity, to be honest.  I don't really know why, because lots of Americans identify as Polish, or Irish, or whatever.  But the idea that someone's ethnic identity might be different than what is denoted by their passport seems really hard for many USians to accept. [/quote]

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