[chis]

It is an interesting divide. "German" is both an ethnicity and a citizenship, and it's possible to become one but not the other. "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship, and so it is possible to become an American after immigrating.

[Exoristos]

> "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship ...

This may be how you perceive or feel about it, and of course you're not alone, but many other Americans feel differently. Those of us with Colonial ancestors maintained much the same culture and mores for generations; it's evident in the manners and the literature; it's something distinct that we certainly feel as close to an ethnicity. Granted, we comprise multiple European heritages, but those heritages did not define any of us after a few generations. The concept I am trying to outline her is also a very old one: e.g., first Speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg, referring to some of his own constituents, said, "The faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."

[annzabelle]

There has always been some concept of a process by which people can become American and join in that culture through assimilation and integration.

I've had ancestors in North America since 1650, including a vice president and a union admiral, but I also have friends whose parents arrived from Somalia or Vietnam in the eighties and nineties who grew up in largely the same cultural soup I did, speak with the same accent, have the same humor, drink the same beer and eat the same food. Some have served in the US military. In my eyes, they're just as American as I am.

[seydor]

there were english dutch spanish french colonials. five ethnicities at least

[dghlsakjg]

If German is an ethnicity, I don't see why the US, which is older than the German Confederation (let alone the subsequent countries that have existed since then on that same land) has a distinct culture and set of shared values, cannot be.

[rayiner]

The word you’re looking for is ethnogenisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis. There is no “American” ethnicity, though “white people” might come close to being considered a synthetic ethnicity resulting from the immigration restriction and birth rate boom from 1921-1965.

But even that is too broad. It might be more accurate to get even more granular. For example, you might identify someone like Tim Walz as belonging to a synthetic Scandinavian-Midwestern ethnicity: although he has no actual Scandinavian ancestry, he grew up in Minnesota in what’s a recognizably distinct ethnocultural subgroup.

A far more useful analogy might be that “American” is a college football team.

[Amezarak]

The US did undergo ethnogenesis; particularly in the southeast, there have long been large numbers of people that identify their ethnicity as "American." The process was largely disrupted/reversed in the northeast with the Ellis Islander waves and then near-totally nationwide in recent decades. (The west was too new and too churny to have undergone anything like that.)

"African Americans" certainly also separately underwent ethnogenesis, although the preferred nomenclature there has changed, and there wasn't really any disruption there. But I think it's certainly fair to count them as a distinctly and uniquely US ethnicity.

[wincy]

It was done on purpose, and the people who did it were on board with it, thought it was best for their children. My grandmother speaks basically no Italian despite both of her parents being from Italy. They always insisted on speaking English and it largely worked. My grandmother is considered by anyone who meets her “American” despite that part of my lineage being less than 90 years distant from Italy.

[Hardwired8976]

Native Americans would be a ethnicity but the US was taken over my European settlers.

Europe the Germanic people have existed way before , a country is not tied to the ethnicity.

[jandrewrogers]

Native American is not an ethnicity. The tribes that occupied North America prior to the Europeans are notable for their very high cultural and linguistic diversity. Many of the pre-European languages are unrelated to each other.

[mr_toad]

It’s amusing that the word German is an Anglicisation of a Roman word for a variety of tribes that the Roman Empire couldn’t be bothered to distinguish between.

[bluGill]

Native American is not an ethnicity unless you reduce to absurd levels. There are many different ethnicities across the continent.

[dghlsakjg]

A country is not tied to ethnicity but this thread is about how German is an ethnicity.

I’ve heard plenty of arguments about the German Volk as a distinct entity.

The argument was pretty decisively lost according to my grandfather.

Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…

[kuschku]

> Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…

That's a good point, and personally one of the reasons I disagree with the ethnic definition of "nation".

The other reason are of course the frisian, danish, sorbian, etc and many other similar minorities that have historically lived in the region of modern Germany.

I think the french definition (which defines the nation almost entirely around the language, not ethnicity or origin) is a much more interesting and useful one. Language determines who you can talk to, and what media you can read or watch.

[rayiner]

The United States is a distinct legal entity, not a label for an area of land. Native Americans have never been the dominant ethnicity of the United States.

[bluGill]

There are shared values in the US, but not many. Love of the US, and 'freedom' is about all, for the later we don't agree in what freedom means.

There are many different distinct cultures in the US. Cowboys from north Dakota and Texas are both cowboys but have little cultural connection, and the hill billies Tennessee are very different from each.

[dghlsakjg]

The same can be said about Germany.

[bluGill]

Very true, but Germany has a much smaller country, both in population and geography. This also has a lot less influence by people from different continents that immigrated not very far back in history.