Are you 'American' or 'Irish'?

[bwana devil]

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Sorta like Calvin Murphy?

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hmmm im not sure of the reference.

[metrognome7]

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When I say "I'm Italian" to another American it's understood that I was born here but that a few generations back my family came over from Italy. If I was talking to someone from another country I would describe myself as "American, from Italian descent"

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Nice clarification. To further the example, when I lived in England I was "American." While here, I'm "a Gaelic/Celtic mutt with some German mixed in." I was raised in southern Illinois but still have close family all over Europe.

My fiancee's really bizarre in relation to the topic: she was born in Israel to a Persian father and a half-Irish/half-German mother, then raised in America from the age of two.

Drunk,
Adam

[ilya]

I was born in Russia and moved to the US in '92, when I was 12. I guess if I had to choose I would call myself American rather than Russian, but I don't really feel strongly either way...these descriptions are so broad that they don't seem meaningful to me.

[whiskeytown]

Funny - actually - I would consider myself a Montanan first, then a mutt if Irish and English and so forth.

I always tell everyone I'm from Montana but I've lived in MN the past 15 years - I am very proud of the state I came from - my grandparents knew how to pick a beautiful place to live.

RB

[Dominic]

I usually say I'm Italian. Three generations removed.

But what you fail to realize is that EVERYONE in America (except Native Americans, obviously) can trace their ancestry back to another country fairly easily. And since we are a melting pot, we tend to put a lot of stock in our respective heritages...for good or bad.

[jstnrgrs]

I'm sure you have noticed by now, but here in America, lots of people like to know what their ancestry is. In fact when I was in fifth grade, we were assigned a project in which we had to research our ancestry, and do a report on a country that our ancestors had come from.

For me it was somewaht dificult because my parents didn't know much about their ancestry. IIRC it turns out that my mother is mostly Irish and Scottish with a touch of Dutch and Cherokee. I never did find out what my father is.

[kem]

Somewhat unrelated perhaps, but it reminds me of something that always kills me... when people refer to black people from other countries as being "African-American."

[HotPants]

I was born in America, but my whole family for generations has been born in Australia. I live in Australia now.

On top of that, Most of my ancestors are Irish, wtf does that make me?

[cjmewett]

I don't understand all the percentages, like "I'm 50% Irish, 25% Swedish, and 25% German. But my family has lived here for 200 years." So what the [censored] percentage American are you?

My dad was born and raised in South Wales to Welsh parents and Anglo-Welsh grandparents. My mom was born and raised in Manitoba, and her grandparents were Irish and Scottish immigrants. I was born in California and have lived in Texas since I was less than a year old.

I'm American. When I was a kid, I used to consider myself "British" because it made me different, and that was cool. As an adult, I understand that my life is defined by America, not the place that my parents came from. I suppose I could say I was "raised British" in the sense that my family has something of a unique culture compared to those of my other Dallas-suburbanite friends growing up, but I'm definitely American. When I'm in Wales, no one considers me Welsh because my dad's Welsh and I've spent summers there. When I lived in Poland, no one cared that my father was Welsh and my mother Canadian.

I'm 100% American.

[HotPants]

Ditto for me, my parents are Australian so I did the same thing while growing up in America. Eventually I realized I was American, but now that I've been living in Australia for a while I think I'm a little different