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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh god, people who are hung up on their Irish ancestry are the most annoying ethnic group in America. A typical conversation with them:

Them: “I’m Irish.”
Me: “oh, cool. You don’t have an accent. When did you come over?”

Them: “I was born here.”
Me: “oh. When did your parents emigrate?”

Them: “well, actually they were born here, too.”
Me: “oh. So, your grandparents came over from Ireland?”

Them: “….no.”
Me: “ah.”[/quote]

My Irish friend visited here and rolled his eyes at all the policemen with their Irish insignia. [/quote]

Sure they did.[/quote]

The Irish don’t consider Irish-Americans to be Irish. They consider them to be Americans. Which they are.[/quote]

Interesting. I guess if you are born and raised here you are American only. Nobody can be a hyphenated American because people from the old country don’t accept you. Does this go for everyone or only European descendants?[/quote]

American identity can be nuanced. People who are Irish American might be a little different culturally than people who are Italian American.  Similiar, both American, but different. Americans appreciate nuance identities, but those nuances are going to be lost on people from Europe or Africa or Asia. Americans are Americans to them. They don't know enough about Americans to appreciate the nuances.  It's kind of like Americans being able to distinguish all the English accents that exist.  We don't know enough to hear the nuances. [/quote]

Most national identities are probably nuanced in ways outsiders don’t understand (eg Sicilian vs Piedmontese, Swiss German vs Swiss French). There are often cultural and linguistic differences within a country’s borders. In reality, most nations did not exist at the time people’s ancestors immigrated.

Ethnicity is kind of a clumsy term. It can be defined in different ways so people aren’t always talking about the same thing. In the US, it seems for many people it only refers to descent but not to any cultural connection to another country. I guess Chinese is seen as an ethnicity here but might only be seen as a nationality in China itself given the multitude of languages, religions, etc? Similarly, we might say someone is ethnically Russian but that might not mean anything to someone from its south eastern regions who is Muslim and had an Asiatic appearance. [/quote]

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