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by JuniperMesos 195 days ago
> When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"?

No, because of the ties to a foreign country through your stepmother.

> Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".

No, although if it's only one great-grandmother among 8 I'm not super worried about your mom being more loyal to Norway than the US. Also realistically Norway today has many of the same issues with culturally-foreign immigrants that the US does, so maybe that wouldn't amount to all that much in the unlikely case that your mom did strongly identify with Norwegian cultural norms.

1 comments

lol you just reinvented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule … but even nastier!