[sverige]

It's funny because I have been ridiculed for calling myself Swedish or Swedish-American instead of white. Somehow some people have even thought that's racist.

But it is a strong identity in my family, and, for example, I really don't want to be lumped in with the people of Bavarian descent who made up about half of the town I grew up in. I'm nothing like them culturally.

Honestly, "white" isn't an ethnicity and it is borderline insulting to think others can know all about me by my skin color, but I've given up on the idea that my opinion on this will make a difference. It is nice to say it out loud for the first time in years, though.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

With all due respect, if you were born in the US and grew up speaking English, you have a lot more common with those "Bavarians" than you do with Swedish people in Sweden.

[umanwizard]

I was going to leave a similar comment, but decided not to. Anyway, I mostly agree with you -- I never refer to myself as "X-American" where X is some European country, because first of all I don't care much about it, and second I know how ridiculous it sounds to people who were born and raised in country X.

On the other hand, I also think the Swedish-American OP has an understandable point. Cultural group identification is a natural, strong human urge, and it can be a bit arbitrary and not objectively correspond to actual observable culture or to ancestry.

I wouldn't tell someone living in Serbia who identifies as a Croat that that's nonsense because from an outsider's perspective their culture is 99% indistinguishable from that of a Serb. They have their own reasons for identifying as part of that group, and it's important to them. And similarly I don't really think it's illegitimate for Nth generation white Americans to feel that they are "Swedish" or "Irish" in some way that means something to them. (With the understanding that, yes, they are culturally quite different from someone actually raised in Stockholm or Cork).

[zaroth]

I get a kick out of people asking me what I am. Umm, American?

But what is you’re ancestry, they will persist. “From America”.

Honestly my parents have told me X generations ago where someone immigrated from, but I can never remember? For some reason the factoid just won’t stay in my brain, and it has zero relevance to me.

For some people the roots of their identity is intensely personal. For others mostly irrelevant. My inclination is that it’s a place of privilege to not know (or particularly care) where your ancestors came from, and perhaps some people would even find that offensive, I’m not really sure. I certainly don’t fault someone for identifying strongly with their own heritage or being proud or even protective of it.

[gingabriska]

23andme will you about ancestors if you want to know.

[umanwizard]

Not always with country-level granularity. It'll tell you "Britain or Ireland", but not "England", for example.

[sverige]

Probably true in some ways, yes, though I grew up with relatives who came here from Sweden. And I definitely identify more as American than Swedish.

At the same time, though, should we then say that all English-speaking Americans have more in common than whatever ethnic stock they came from in another country, whether Mexicans or Asians or whatever group? Or do you say that just because the Bavarians are "white"?

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Broadly speaking, yes. Social class is probably more relevant than race: my own kids are mixed-race, with parents from different cultures who are both first-gen immigrants, and they identify much more with the country they were born in and have lived all their life than either of us.

[umanwizard]

> should we then say that all English-speaking Americans have more in common than whatever ethnic stock they came from in another country, whether Mexicans or Asians or whatever group?

I’d say it depends on the extent to which they have maintained a meaningfully separate culture within the US, but largely, yes. I think in most cases, a kid born in the US to Chinese parents has more in common with white American kids than they do with kids brought up in Shanghai.

Just my opinion; I don’t have any quantitative way to back this up.