Map of ancestry in the U.S.
According to some compiled data from the 2000 U.S. census, there are only a few states that have an ancestry where the largest group is defined as "American"--basically Franco-British Euro-mutts.
My dad was born in Arkansas, one of the red "American" states, so I guess that makes me a mixture of ancestries so convoluted that I can actually call myself an American of genuine American ancestry--and a native American at that, having been born and had my ancestors here for hundreds of years.
Makes you wonder at what point your ancestors have to be in the melting pot before you can all call yourself an American and drop the qualifying ancestry prefix, as in Italian-American, African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American, ad nauseam.
My dad was born in Arkansas, one of the red "American" states, so I guess that makes me a mixture of ancestries so convoluted that I can actually call myself an American of genuine American ancestry--and a native American at that, having been born and had my ancestors here for hundreds of years.
Makes you wonder at what point your ancestors have to be in the melting pot before you can all call yourself an American and drop the qualifying ancestry prefix, as in Italian-American, African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American, ad nauseam.
Labels: American ancestry, Euro-mutt, map
posted by shane at 2:29 PM
1 Comments:
I was just wondering/talking about this! I find it so strange that when we Americans are asked about where we are from, we do not respond with American, but this weird hodge-podge list of places our distant ancestors are from! My friend Tracey from Northern Ireland says that it annoys her, actually, to ask an American about where they're from, they rattle out this long list of percentages when, to her, they're not 1/4 Dutch, 1/4 Australian, 1/8 Italian and the like - they're American!
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