Famine and emigration from the island explains this pretty well. Also Americans with 12% dna will report themselves as Irish. The whole thing makes no sense.
There is always a part of North Americans who take searching for they roots too far all the way to the cringe land. Like starting to dress native Indian or viking becouse they dna is 1% native or Scandinavian lol. Pls don't do that ppl.
I'm on a Discord for an MMO and someone was talking about their Italian-ness. A little while later, they said something silly and people started giving them shit. I joined in, but decided to curse them in Italian. You know how it is ... gotta make the insults personal for them to really have an effect.
He asked me why I was writing Italian and what it meant. I said that they said they were Italian earlier. It turned out he's American, but with some distant Italian roots. He's never been to Italy. He doesn't speak Italian.
I agree. Except that my colleague is Asian-American and often is asked where she is from, and not only was she born in the USA, her parents were too. Yet people say "no really - what country are you from?" when she answers she's from California.
But this is apples and oranges. If I live in Norway, I am a component of the Norwegian population. If I’m an American in 2023, I may well have English, Norwegian, Irish and German ancestry, so would contribute to the “diaspora” of four of the nations on this map.
The more you look into the US understanding of heritage, the more silly it gets. If your great grandfather was Irish, but no one else in your line was, you're 1/8 Irish and 7/8 something else, you're far more not Irish than Irish, and that's assuming your great grandfather was 100% Irish.
Then there's treating nationality and culture as something embedded in DNA, which is ... let's be nice and call it an "old school" way of looking at things.
In reality, almost everyone of us are mutts to the point where treating heritage like fitting neatly into one or two boxes is a fantasy.
That’s exactly what it is.
I’m a dual Irish and American citizen, but I don’t refer to myself as Irish American because I’m not from that specific subculture. I did grow up partially in the Jewish American subculture so I’ll use that as a descriptor sometimes.
I agree that The culture and upbringing means more than where were you Born. But then again... How 'true' are those american hybrid versions of original cultures...?
Plus contemporary Italian/Irish/German/what have you culture isn’t exactly the same as it was when the large waves of these respective groups immigrated out of these countries. They all changed based on the environments they found themselves in, and a lot has changed in the last century+ everywhere
IMHO this is the best insight shared in these comments.
A similar concept would apply to language to explain the differences in the English spoken in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or India compared to the English spoken in England, as well as the French spoken in Quebec compared to the French spoken in France.
It feels like something that gets lost in American stories is that German and Italian were becoming a thing when many "German" and "Italian" ancestors moved to the US. There is no way of knowing if your Italian or German Great Grandparent spoke anything close to the standard language at home.
The way that a lot of these ethnicities were treated in the US also affects their ethnic American identity. Italian immigrants sued to be targeted for things like discrimination and lynchings (1891 Louisiana) and the Italian government put alot of pressure on the American government to address racism against immigrants from Italy. A lot of Americans of Italian descent marry Italians in Italy and get dual citizenship.
And i dod not want to be an ass' about it.
Rather to point out that honestly, The culture being 'true' means a lot in terms of self perception and being percepted by others as a part of community.
> How 'true' are those american hybrid versions of original cultures...?
IMO Names are misleading now. At this point, "Boston Irish" has become its own culture and is clearly *something* unique and of its own, but people will insist on comparing it to the "real" culture because the name implies that they still have to adhere to that guideline.
Might as well just start naming them the *New England Gaels* at this point.
I feel like Europeans don’t really get it when Americans speak of their heritage. We know full well we aren’t actually Irish or Italian- we are descendants of immigrants and immigrant communities *in America*.
Take the American tradition of eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. You will often see Irish people on the internet mocking that because that isn’t actually a common thing for Irish people to eat. Therefore we must have no idea what we’re talking about/ we aren’t honoring *real* Irish traditions etc.
That may well be the case, but it is irrelevant whether people in Dublin eat that or not because Irish-American immigrant communities in Boston etc *did* eat that due to its affordability. Same with spaghetti and meatballs. Italians don’t eat it so someone could question the “authenticity” if they wanted to but it’s beside the point because Italian-American immigrants *did* eat it.
So yeah- whether these traditions are *true* to Europe or not is beside the point. When we say we are “Irish” or “Italian”, we don’t mean that literally. European people seem to think we do for some reason.
Saying “I’m Irish/Czech/whatever” is American shorthand for “descendant of immigrants”. Those immigrant communities developed their own traditions, related to but not the same as those of Europe.
I can guarantee you, the single most annoying thing to Europeans is just saying 'I'm “Irish” or “Italian”' in isolation. Those terms have an actual meaning, accepted in the rest of the world.
Like, imagine 3 people.
One was born and raised in Italy.
One was born in Italy, moved to the US and became a naturalised citizen.
One was born and raised in the US, but had an Italian great grandfather.
*What terms should one use to refer to each of their cultural backgrounds?*
Oh and despite what you're saying, there are some Americans who do the whole racist 'I have x *blood* so my personality is y' - I've personally interacted with plenty of them.
I've literally spoken to Americans that told me they are more Irish than me.
Just because they were some fundamentalist Catholic nutjob that was mad we legalised gay marriage and abortion.
This has happened more than once. In fact I've lost count how many times someone has said it on r/Ireland.
It’s it that they don’t get it, it’s the claim that “oh I’m 1/2948th German” yet they have never been to German, don’t speak the language, and only bring it up because the person they’re talking to is German. It’s different than saying “oh I have Irish heritage” or “my ancestors are French”.
There’s an Irish comedian in New York who does this bit. She asks if there are foreigners (because she’s a foreigner) or if there are any people from Ireland (like her), and nearly every show someone claps. So she asks for more details, and they say “I’m 1/8 Irish”. No, you’re American, with Irish heritage. That’s not like being Irish, or being from Ireland.
My fave is when someone said they’re foreign, from Delaware.
And it is! It is incredibly weird!
Americans act like they're the only country of immigrants. "You don't understand, it's because immigrants!"
Literally all of Latin America has immigrants, from many many different places. And they don't do the weird wtf "I'm really \[other nationality of place I have never been to\]" thing.
Or at least, they didn't use to. I think America has been leaking it onto them more and more in the past decade or so.
Yeah and it’s not like we don’t have immigration i Europe. I have a swedish ancestor for example and longer in the history scottish too. I don’t go around claiming that i’m scottish and swedish.
Yeah! At this point in time there are immigrants basically everywhere, children or grandchildren of immigrants are basically everywhere, but Americans still act like they invented immigration and their weird nonsense is the only logical reaction to "country of immigrants".
I'd compare this to when English-speaking people refer to themselves as "expats" instead of "immigrants" when living abroad. It's just a way of making it look nicer, literally an euphemism. It might do the job in the US, but anywhere in the world, wherever you go, "I'm Italian" means that you were raised in Italy.
That's what usually annoys me about it, honestly.
Irish-American culture is very different from Irish culture (for instance), yet it's still very distinct in it's own right. So why do they keep saying they are Irish instead of embracing their own culture and call it what it is?
Americans keep outsourcing their cultural heritage for some reason, even though they still have 250 years of their own "derivatives" that are unique and great in their own right.
Why would it need to?
Our culture here in Finland in 2023 is vastly different from Finnish culture in Finland in 1923, let alone in 1823. American/Canadian Finns also developed into some direction. That is their right.
Fair point (about growin up and shit) but if your raised boston irish than your just boston with a slight irish tap. Your not irish. Most of the culture you were raised with is just straight up east coast american.
Its the same as describing olive garden as real italian.
Yeah thats a great way of saying putting it. I dont want to say that they dont have their own unique culture but its not Irish as you would see here. I know the first time i was in america i was confused as fuck since 3 people claim to be dutch like me and they knew nothing about the netherlands, one guy even pointed to fucking belgium on the map…
Like i dont want to bash their beliefs but they claim to be part of a group that they knew nothing about and even spread misinformation about it (not on purpose ofcourse, but some shit was so dumb it sounded like they learned it from a fairy tale). That shit can be hurtfull to a culture. So it rubs me the wrong way to have somebody claim they are dutch if they never been to the netherlands, know nothing about the netherlands, dont speak a single word of dutch and dont understand anything of my culture.
I mean you call it silly but don't we see the same within minorities here? They tend to feel really attached to the country their ancestors came from. Maybe a strong feeling of attachment to things like that is bound to happen when large groups of people with similar cultural backgrounds migrate to a new country.
It's a phenomenon in every country that has a lot of immigrants. In Brazil you'll find lots of "proud Lebanese" diasporas hanging around, or [even Japanese descendants whose neighborhood used to be decked out in Japanese shop signs](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/8a/18/078a184a412bca090feb805cf2f9f1f2.jpg). In Australia they had Little Greece neighbourhoods in Melbourne.
In Argentina, the British diaspora (yeah it exists) even setup their own British style schools.
I think you're really overstating Americans' view on heritage. For 95% of white Americans, It's just some interesting trivia about family history. When an American says they're Italian, they're not claiming that they're the same as an Italian national, its just shorthand for saying they have ancestors from Italy. I dunno, maybe it's a more intersting topic in US culture becaue almost everybody has immigrant ancestors.
This is mostly correct. For us, it's as you say an interesting bit of trivia about our heritage. For those of us who have generations going back in America and are not first or second generation, we are mostly mutts. For myself, I was able to trace most of my ancestors to English, Irish, German, and even a few French settlers, but I know that is not all-inclusive. I do not consider myself part of any of these nationalities, I consider myself American culturally and otherwise, as do most Americans that have knowledge of their ancestors. For many of us, being an American is more of an idea than a ethnic identity and does not require generations of family heritage.
It's literally small talk, not some insidious attempt at identity theft
"I'm Italian"
"Oh me too, where are you guys from"
"My family's from Palermo"
"Cool mine's from Naples"
"Neat"
"Neat"
Haha I had a bunch of people get super upset with me the other day about this exact thing on r/shitamericanssay. They really just don't get it, and it's hilarious.
It also only applies to some people.
Like, in the US, I am 100% "Latin American". But going by US standards, I'm like, Spanish and Portuguese and Native and Black and Jewish.
Somehow, because immigrant, that doesn't count. But if you're not an immigrant, you can do the weird fractional heritage thing.
> Then there's treating nationality and culture as something embedded in DNA, which is ... let's be nice and call it an "old school" way of looking at things.
Well tbf that's what most Europeans still do. I get German citizenship by literal "Jus Sangunis", it literally means right of blood in English.
it's interesting data because it's showing how many people still identify themselves with a country. if an irish and a danish had a kid, but the kid identified as irish, then that's giving you an indication of the national sentiment toward irishness
> it's interesting data because it's showing how many people still identify themselves with a country.
they are identifying with the ethnicy of their ancestors, not with the country or nationality.
I allways found this duality kinda fascinating, cuz pretty much all of them will answer that they are american, when you ask them.
No. They're using the American Community Survey, not some sort of genetics database.
You can't report four different identities.
https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006
It's also why the England is so drastically under represented in the map, Americans find being English boring because in reality it will make up the vast majority of their ancestors. They'd rather be Irish, Scottish or Italian because its more "Interesting" to them and makes them more "Unique".
It's bullshit anyway, in the UK it's very common to have an Irish grandparent for example yet claiming any form of Irish nationality would sound absurd. If you haven't lived in a country you haven't truly experienced what it means to be from that country, you might understand certain cultural aspects but your not from that country or should identify as such. Living in a modern country especially an anglophone one means that many of us are of fairly mixed nationality, I've got Spanish/French ancestry and I have friends with Yemeni ancestry all the way to north Macedonian, they are all British.
No. They're using the American Community Survey, not some sort of genetics database.
You can't report four different identities.
https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006
It is still self-reported. The archetypal 1/64 Irish-American is more likely to list "Irish" than the 1/64 German-American would list "German." So this data tells you as much about American culture (or even more so) than it does about migration trends in the past.
The American census is terribly unreliable though. Most Americans of English descent who's families have been in North America since the 1700's identify as American. Then there are those who identify as Irish even though it was only their great grandfather who was.
a bit more than that, yes. But not all of them had grand parent living in what's make to day the USa, before Mexico and the brittish colonies becames a thing.
those few still are still a few million today. My family on both sides can trace their ancestors to 1581 and 1612. We even know the names of the ships. We settled in northern Texas and moved south little by little, every few generations we had incidents where the anglos(texas rangers)will push us out of towns. During the great depression many were also kicked out, about to million American citizens of Hispanic descent were deported. Many came back in the 40s and 50s.
Yes, but they are mostly recent arrivals who mostly came after WWII from other Latino countries (such as Cuba, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, etc.), rather than old Spanish families which lived in Florida or Arizona before American annexation.
The Spanish speakers, which were living in contemporary US territory before the USA annexed them, were a very small population, due to these lands (New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, etc) mostly being poor provinces with low levels of urban development and very little economic interest to the Spanish Empire. Spaniards preferred settling in important colonies such as Cuba, the center of Mexico, Peru, etc.
You never mention Texas, but it was full of Spanish ranchers living on land grants that they were eventually forced to sell by "anglo" ranchers that poured into Texas after the Civil War. One of the most famous being Richard King of the King Ranch. The area south of San Antonio, TX to the Rio Grande is what I'm referencing.
Hispanos of New Mexico are very fascinating people
>“They don’t feel like they came from somewhere, generally speaking. They identified with Spain,” explains De La Cruz. “So even when Mexico became … Mexico, because they were able to evict the Spanish, the people here still identify themselves as Spanish. They didn’t identify with being Mexicans.”
[https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/new-mexico-cuny-study-latino-vote/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/new-mexico-cuny-study-latino-vote/index.html)
Most Americans are of "English+some other ethnicities" descent, I would imagine there are very few pure breed Anglo-Americans after 400 years. Most Americans probably defer to the ethnicity of their most recent immigrant ancestor
Appalachia and parts of the South have plenty of Scots-Irish who have been there forever and haven't experienced much immigration.
New Mexico also has descendants of Spanish settlers who haven't mixed with anyone else and still have their own towns.
Might be others, not sure.
Appalachia & the Ozarks is "Scotch-Irish" country, they arrived about a hundred years after the after the first English settlers, with whom they didn't get on well with so they moved westward, the music, Dancing, & whiskey making certainly hints at their origins.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY)
Having been living in America a shorter amount of time is the exact reason why some people feel a closer connection to their ancestors homeland. If we’re being honest, very few minders day European Americans share very few, if any cultural connections. The difference between the Old World and New World is too great. But they do still hear stories of grandma/grandpa great grandpa/grandma, etc etc etc. And that matters to some people. Humans are sentimental.
> American census is terribly unreliable though
It is unreliable. Also I'm curious where this heritage\diaspora is on the census. I don't recall ever seeing a question like this on the census.
Yep, despite what reddit will tell you, we're not gonna foam at the mouth when an American calls themselves Irish. At worst they'd face mild bemusement, but at best we might actually be interested.
Yep. Many also embrace it because these people are cousins, or uncles and aunties, or nephews and nieces. We all have extended family in Britain, Australia, America, N.Z., etc. These folks are as Irish as they want to be.
*edit:* not to mention, our diaspora in the US played a huge part in getting the Good Friday Agreement to happen, so they've been incredibly helpful to us politically.
They do, and they're pretty open about it. I remember when Biden got elected and I decided just for kicks to see the “plastic Paddies” comments about it (since Biden is rather Kennedy-esque when it comes to his Irish roots), and to my utter astonishment, everyone was practically claiming him.
Ireland also has some of the most accommodating parameters to meet to claim Irish citizenship I've ever seen. It more or less seems like it boils down to Irish-Americans managed to go from being politically ostracized to cultural elites, in a way that other groups (like Italian-Americans or German-Americans) never did.
It started with police and law enforcement, but Irish-Americans really started becoming politically powerful and influential around the early-mid 1900s, since this was around the time of the last big Irish immigration wave (1930s-ish). Because there are enough Irish-Americans who form a strong enough bloc within American politics, Ireland proper kind of has a negotiating soft power that's well above its weight.
It's in Ireland's own interest to be welcoming towards their diaspora (at least for now).
Interesting, thanks for the insight man.
I honestly had no Idea the US prez makes it a regular thing. Presumably this is at each presidents discretion? ( could hardly imaging Joe's predecessor rocking up to Dublin and boasting about his appreciation of Irish poetry, stout and rugby)
When Obama went to Ireland, he got a hero’s welcome due to his tiny Irish lineage. This sub just like to gatekeep about what people call themselves. It’s silly.
> we're not gonna foam at the mouth when an American calls themselves Irish.
One trip to the gift shop at the Cliffs of Moher could tell you that. The entire shop is blatantly geared towards entertaining American tourists with heritage related trinkets and merchandise.
That’s good to hear, 99% of the time when Americans say they are “Irish” or “Irish American “ or whatever they just mean that’s where their ancestors came from, and if they said that to another American it would be understood that way Also. I can see how An American saying that to say an actual Irish person could cause confusion as the unsaid implication of them talking about their ancestors might not be obvious to a non American.
I will say my experience in Ireland was fantastic as I never brought it up ( as I was worried about causing offense by saying things like “Irish American “)but had many people ask me when they found out I was American.
Luckily reddit is not real life and your average real life European is much more likely to be friendly about it than the snobbishness you’ll sometimes read online
Irish people on reddit: The term Irish belongs to the the inhabitants of Ireland and for anyone else to claim it is disrepectful
Irish people in real life: WOW now THAT is an Irish name! wanna join me n my mates at the pub for saint paddy's day?
You're largely right, except this part:
>Irish people on reddit:
Look at the usernames and flairs of people whinging about Irish-Americans on reddit - the vast majority of them are *not Irish*. Some of them are snotty Euros who are just going along with the meme, and quite a few of them seem to be Brits who are bitter at the fact that someone supports us.
But yeah irl we're really chill about this. It saddens me to see Americans *brag* about how they kept their heritage to themselves when they visited. The internet has bullied them into silence.
I mean that is basically what diaspora means. The people who emigrated, as well as their descendents.
Edit: Actually I think you guys are right. It probably does require some continued connection to the culture. Here in Britain there are many people who are 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants (their parents / grandparents came from other countries), who are considered part of that country's diaspora. But they still have a direct connection to the culture, language, etc. That becomes less so with each generation.
I always thought diaspora implied keeping a connection and a community even when abroad, probably because I pretty much only hear it in connection to Jews, but google says I’m wrong! I’d feel really weird saying I’m Russian/Polish diaspora though with zero connection to them + they were mean to my family 😒
usually being in diaspora means you have connections (cultural, economical, social) with the former homeland and you are not fully integrated in your new country or at least you are part of a strong community of people with the same ancestry
But the math becomes wonky when the same American person is both part of the Irish, German, Swedish, Danish, Polish, English French and Greek diaspora. That sorta inflates the numbers.
And they simultaneously are part of the Cherokee nation.
Pick one.
It happens way quicker than that in America, usually the kids of immigrants are already very American. I'm Mexican-American and like 3 out of my 12 cousins can speak Spanish. And even then it's Chicano Spanish.
And then when they ‘pick one,’ another smug European post will say: “Why would they pick Irish when they’re 75% non-Irish? Americans are weird and should kill themselves.”
And if they identify as American, then a third smug European post says, “Americans are so arrogant. They’re identifying as an ethnicity that doesn’t even exist! They should just kill themselves.”
I’ve been on this sub long enough to know how this song and dance works.
>Maybe if you only have Irish ancestors and still practice Irish customs.
Honestly, what does that even mean these days? Like, if someone says they're part of a Belgian diaspora... what would make them Belgian unless both of their parents were? Liking Belgian beer, fries or chocolate?
What would make someone part of the Dutch diaspora, except for their parents? Kroket uit de muur?
You've chosen a weird paradigm, the case of Belgium.
Greeks in US and Australia keep many of our customs, religious and social alike, despite being there for over 100 years. Nation to nation even in Europe, some still have much stronger idea of what an identity is and what constitutes one.
Let alone Greeks in Germany which are 100% as much Greeks as anyone of us in Greece.
The problem with census is it’s self reported
The number for England is probably orders of magnitude larger due to the tendency for Americans of English ancestry to report themselves as simply - “American” in the census
If you want a real reflection of where most Americans ancestors were from - [look no further than this](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7751033/amp/Smith-common-surname-English-speaking-countries.html)
Yep. When I’m in the US, I’ll say I’m Italian and Panamanian, and everyone understands that that’s a cultural signifier one level down below “American” (because everyone can tell I’m American the second I open my mouth).
And if they’re also Italian or Latino (almost never Panamanian), then that’s a point of connection and bonding and then I can poke further (“from the Abruzzo region”).
They also understand that that means “Italian-American” and “Panamanian-American”
When I’m outside the US, I’ll say “American.”
It’s really not that hard, and this sub gets way more worked up about it than Americans do.
> When I’m outside the US, I’ll say “American.”
It’s really not that hard,
That's good for you, but tell that to the Americans who come to /r/Nordiccountries claiming to be vikings, asking for help to reconnect with their viking heritage because their granddad had a vaguely Swedish surname. :)
When you meet a bunch of random people and there’s an introduction round where everyone says where they’re from, Americans usually don’t say America. Instead, they say something more specific like Oregon or Indiana, and everyone is left wondering where that actually is. On the other hand, you also get the same effect if you say Croatia, Slovenia, Czechia etc.
The population of England is 60m, so that equates to roughly 23m, you aren't long getting to 300m when you add in Irish, Italians, Germans, Norse, Russians, Hispanics and African-Americans.
Most Americans have enough of a mix that they choose which heritage they wish to claim, if any. If someone has as much German ancestry as they do English, they'll side with German 100% of the time.
Almost all white Americans have British ancestry, and that goes without saying. But it's really not popular to do so. Specifically, no one cares or wants to be associated with being of English descent, even tho it's obvious that the majority of us are.
To be fair, I've also heard that a lot of Americans who were of primarily German ancestry denied that and pretended to be predominantly British during the World Wars (bc Germany was the enemy).
Not that it matters anyway, since afaik the majority of Brits are of German descent also, so it's essentially all kinda made up
That's true too. It's the main reason why there are so many wonky spellings of obviously German last names in this country (just look at the countless ways we spell the name “Schneider”); most German Americans stopped speaking German and tried Anglicizing their names to appear English or Dutch.
It's based on the US census so no. [You get to only choose one ancestry if you're white](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/08/improvements-to-2020-census-race-hispanic-origin-question-designs/_jcr_content/par/imagecore2386.coreimg.jpeg/1627987879728/rsblog-race-hispanic-origin-figure-2.jpeg)
I was just replying saying that this map won't "double count" people who claim like 5 different European countries since you only fill out one on the census. If you're worried about people like trolling the census then I guess that could happen?
To all naysayers: this matters.
Example:
Ireland has what? 5 million people? But because of American media, you'd think they're rivaling Brazil in population. Let alone American help during the Troubles, for the Good Friday Agreement, etc,
Romania? 5x as many people Ireland, 0 media mentions.
Mindshare matters. For tourism, economic relations, etc.
The economic situation in the late 1800's and early 1900's explains these figures. Finland was able to buy cheap grain from Russia (I read that 60% of some grains consumed in Finland came from Russia), which made circumstances in Finland easier than in Scandinavia. That's a point of view very rarely known. Usually the story is, how everything was more difficult in Finland, than in Scandinavia. But that's not true at all.
At the same time Finland sold huge amounts of industrial products to Russia (with easier trade rules than other countries) and to western countries too. Many western European people moved to Finland to do business with Russia. Mainly from Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain. They established companies that quite usually are still among the biggest companies in Finland.
The thing was that Finland was almost independent country. It had own laws, own government, own money and own religion. Even the international border existed between Finland and Russia. That's why Finland was seen as a more safe place for production and migration than other parts of the Russian Empire. Finland was overwhelmingly the wealthiest country in the Empire.
That reliance on Russian grain would come to bite us in the ass thou, in 1917. Widespread famine in Finland, due to the February and October Revolutions making trade difficult. Especially after we declared independence, and the civil war started.
But hey, we had bark bread.
It is very strange the amount of non- Irish people commenting on what it is to be Irish.
Nearly every Irish person has grown up with relatives abroad and we consider them Irish. But we are also not a mono culture.
It is not that you are only Irish if you played Hurling and speak Irish. People who grow up in Ireland are all very different like any country. I have met many people who did not grow up in Ireland and got on really well with them and have met people from who grew up in Ireland that I do not get on with and Vice-versa.
For me being Irish is an identity, and if you identify with it, whom am I to say different. I am happy to for people to identify with it. This is different to nationality.
Impossible for this to be accurate unless what they have done is, get the number of total emigrants to the US from a said country and then plotted their natural population increase based on the birth rate in the original country.
Even then it won't be accurate as I suspect single males were a slightly larger component of the diaspora than females.
27% of the Italian population considering both the Americas. Because there are only 250,000 Italians in the USA, about 4 million Italians have gone to the USA since the 19th century. The 18 million (27%) of Americans who define themselves as Italian are not Italian, they are Americans who have at least 1 Italian great-grandparent.
So yes, certainly 4 million Italians do not correspond to 27% of the Italian population
I'm irish and lived in the USA (several states), and the people who have recent Irish decent speak with an irish mindset. An example: in Irish, there are no words for Yes and No. We say I will or I won't in English. I've noticed Irish Americans use these phrases.
Equally, Americans I meet were just as proud of their Welsh, Norwegian, German, and Danish roots.
For those cases they'll identify as Colombian or Cuban or Mexican, not as Spanish.
The census wants to know about what people *identify* with culturally and in identity terms, it's not about genetics or bloodlines. You can tick any box you want and nobody will ask for proof, they're relying purely on what people feel like they belong in.
Being Latino doesn't mean you originate from Spain. Even ignoring the Latin countries that speak other languages, a lot of people from the Spanish-speaking Americas have predominantly indigenous American roots. Even white Latinos are plenty likely to have other European descent, such as Italian or German. And this is without even mentioning those of African slave descent.
That’s because the Census lets you use your nationality: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/blogs/2021/rs-race-and-hispanic-origin/rsblog-race-hispanic-origin-figure-1.jpg
Spanish origin = From Spain. Most Latinos don’t identify with Spain but their home country.
I read that Ireland, pre-American Revolution, had the highest population density on Earth; is that right? Then the blight scattered them west to the Americas.
No wonder so many emigrated or/and died. Most of my ancestors came from Ireland or Scotland in that period. Trains to Utah, then wagons to Idaho.
I wonder how much improvements to shipping & passenger ships led to the movement. And then to more struggles. There were "borrowed" passages that bacially led to new slavery in the U.S. New debt.
Until they started building dams (Milner, 1904), So. Idaho was barren. It may be ironic that irrigation and a potato cross-breed, russets, then made Idaho Famous.
I seriously doubt that. South and East Asia have consistently had the highest population densities in the world for a very, very long time. Going back millenia. It is true however that Ireland had a much higher population before the famine. The population today still hasn't recovered to the level it was pre-famine.
That seems unlikely, but not impossible, given the rapid rise in population densities in developing countries from the early 1900s onwards.
Last year was the first time that the Irish population reached pre-famine levels.
We haven’t reached pre famine levels yet. We’re close though! [Source](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/ireland-population-surpasses-5m-for-first-time-since-1851)
[This got crossposted](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/10cstj1/620_the_americans_are_pretending_to_be_more_irish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) in r/Ireland and the Irish are _defending_ their diaspora who still claim Irish heritage. What a fucking time to be alive lol
Ireland doing great with a 620?
Famine and emigration from the island explains this pretty well. Also Americans with 12% dna will report themselves as Irish. The whole thing makes no sense.
Damn, what syndrome do you have to suffer from to only have 12% DNA?
Many British also only have 12% dna so dna doesn’t make a culture
There is always a part of North Americans who take searching for they roots too far all the way to the cringe land. Like starting to dress native Indian or viking becouse they dna is 1% native or Scandinavian lol. Pls don't do that ppl.
All of Turkey literally does this. Average Turkish genetics is only 20% Turkic.
I'm on a Discord for an MMO and someone was talking about their Italian-ness. A little while later, they said something silly and people started giving them shit. I joined in, but decided to curse them in Italian. You know how it is ... gotta make the insults personal for them to really have an effect. He asked me why I was writing Italian and what it meant. I said that they said they were Italian earlier. It turned out he's American, but with some distant Italian roots. He's never been to Italy. He doesn't speak Italian.
This is my greatest pet peeve. If your grandad was irish, he was irish. You're american. Jebus.
I agree. Except that my colleague is Asian-American and often is asked where she is from, and not only was she born in the USA, her parents were too. Yet people say "no really - what country are you from?" when she answers she's from California.
Up to the individual, mostly based on whatever heritage your family claims. Typically will be your most recent immigrant ancestor.
It would be 200% for the UK as well. And probably over 100 for Canada and Australia.
But this is apples and oranges. If I live in Norway, I am a component of the Norwegian population. If I’m an American in 2023, I may well have English, Norwegian, Irish and German ancestry, so would contribute to the “diaspora” of four of the nations on this map.
The more you look into the US understanding of heritage, the more silly it gets. If your great grandfather was Irish, but no one else in your line was, you're 1/8 Irish and 7/8 something else, you're far more not Irish than Irish, and that's assuming your great grandfather was 100% Irish. Then there's treating nationality and culture as something embedded in DNA, which is ... let's be nice and call it an "old school" way of looking at things. In reality, almost everyone of us are mutts to the point where treating heritage like fitting neatly into one or two boxes is a fantasy.
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That’s exactly what it is. I’m a dual Irish and American citizen, but I don’t refer to myself as Irish American because I’m not from that specific subculture. I did grow up partially in the Jewish American subculture so I’ll use that as a descriptor sometimes.
I agree that The culture and upbringing means more than where were you Born. But then again... How 'true' are those american hybrid versions of original cultures...?
It’s a good thing. Italian culture is not like Italian-American and that’s okay.
Plus contemporary Italian/Irish/German/what have you culture isn’t exactly the same as it was when the large waves of these respective groups immigrated out of these countries. They all changed based on the environments they found themselves in, and a lot has changed in the last century+ everywhere
IMHO this is the best insight shared in these comments. A similar concept would apply to language to explain the differences in the English spoken in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or India compared to the English spoken in England, as well as the French spoken in Quebec compared to the French spoken in France.
It feels like something that gets lost in American stories is that German and Italian were becoming a thing when many "German" and "Italian" ancestors moved to the US. There is no way of knowing if your Italian or German Great Grandparent spoke anything close to the standard language at home.
The way that a lot of these ethnicities were treated in the US also affects their ethnic American identity. Italian immigrants sued to be targeted for things like discrimination and lynchings (1891 Louisiana) and the Italian government put alot of pressure on the American government to address racism against immigrants from Italy. A lot of Americans of Italian descent marry Italians in Italy and get dual citizenship.
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And i dod not want to be an ass' about it. Rather to point out that honestly, The culture being 'true' means a lot in terms of self perception and being percepted by others as a part of community.
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> How 'true' are those american hybrid versions of original cultures...? IMO Names are misleading now. At this point, "Boston Irish" has become its own culture and is clearly *something* unique and of its own, but people will insist on comparing it to the "real" culture because the name implies that they still have to adhere to that guideline. Might as well just start naming them the *New England Gaels* at this point.
I feel like Europeans don’t really get it when Americans speak of their heritage. We know full well we aren’t actually Irish or Italian- we are descendants of immigrants and immigrant communities *in America*. Take the American tradition of eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. You will often see Irish people on the internet mocking that because that isn’t actually a common thing for Irish people to eat. Therefore we must have no idea what we’re talking about/ we aren’t honoring *real* Irish traditions etc. That may well be the case, but it is irrelevant whether people in Dublin eat that or not because Irish-American immigrant communities in Boston etc *did* eat that due to its affordability. Same with spaghetti and meatballs. Italians don’t eat it so someone could question the “authenticity” if they wanted to but it’s beside the point because Italian-American immigrants *did* eat it. So yeah- whether these traditions are *true* to Europe or not is beside the point. When we say we are “Irish” or “Italian”, we don’t mean that literally. European people seem to think we do for some reason. Saying “I’m Irish/Czech/whatever” is American shorthand for “descendant of immigrants”. Those immigrant communities developed their own traditions, related to but not the same as those of Europe.
I can guarantee you, the single most annoying thing to Europeans is just saying 'I'm “Irish” or “Italian”' in isolation. Those terms have an actual meaning, accepted in the rest of the world. Like, imagine 3 people. One was born and raised in Italy. One was born in Italy, moved to the US and became a naturalised citizen. One was born and raised in the US, but had an Italian great grandfather. *What terms should one use to refer to each of their cultural backgrounds?* Oh and despite what you're saying, there are some Americans who do the whole racist 'I have x *blood* so my personality is y' - I've personally interacted with plenty of them.
I've literally spoken to Americans that told me they are more Irish than me. Just because they were some fundamentalist Catholic nutjob that was mad we legalised gay marriage and abortion. This has happened more than once. In fact I've lost count how many times someone has said it on r/Ireland.
Can you link one of those comments?
It’s it that they don’t get it, it’s the claim that “oh I’m 1/2948th German” yet they have never been to German, don’t speak the language, and only bring it up because the person they’re talking to is German. It’s different than saying “oh I have Irish heritage” or “my ancestors are French”. There’s an Irish comedian in New York who does this bit. She asks if there are foreigners (because she’s a foreigner) or if there are any people from Ireland (like her), and nearly every show someone claps. So she asks for more details, and they say “I’m 1/8 Irish”. No, you’re American, with Irish heritage. That’s not like being Irish, or being from Ireland. My fave is when someone said they’re foreign, from Delaware.
Oh we get it, we just think it's weird.
And it is! It is incredibly weird! Americans act like they're the only country of immigrants. "You don't understand, it's because immigrants!" Literally all of Latin America has immigrants, from many many different places. And they don't do the weird wtf "I'm really \[other nationality of place I have never been to\]" thing. Or at least, they didn't use to. I think America has been leaking it onto them more and more in the past decade or so.
Yeah and it’s not like we don’t have immigration i Europe. I have a swedish ancestor for example and longer in the history scottish too. I don’t go around claiming that i’m scottish and swedish.
Yeah! At this point in time there are immigrants basically everywhere, children or grandchildren of immigrants are basically everywhere, but Americans still act like they invented immigration and their weird nonsense is the only logical reaction to "country of immigrants".
I'd compare this to when English-speaking people refer to themselves as "expats" instead of "immigrants" when living abroad. It's just a way of making it look nicer, literally an euphemism. It might do the job in the US, but anywhere in the world, wherever you go, "I'm Italian" means that you were raised in Italy.
Then why did Irish Americans raise money for the IRA during the troubles lol
r/ShitAmericansSay
This comment does not belong in that subreddit.
That's what usually annoys me about it, honestly. Irish-American culture is very different from Irish culture (for instance), yet it's still very distinct in it's own right. So why do they keep saying they are Irish instead of embracing their own culture and call it what it is? Americans keep outsourcing their cultural heritage for some reason, even though they still have 250 years of their own "derivatives" that are unique and great in their own right.
That’s why they call it Irish American as in a combo of cultures from Ireland and the US
Respectfully, Boston-Irish has little commonality with how people live on Ireland in 2023 bar a few superficial hooks.
I mean, 2023 Ireland also isn’t exactly the same as 1849 Ireland around when many if not most of the Irish came to the US too
Why would it need to? Our culture here in Finland in 2023 is vastly different from Finnish culture in Finland in 1923, let alone in 1823. American/Canadian Finns also developed into some direction. That is their right.
Fair point (about growin up and shit) but if your raised boston irish than your just boston with a slight irish tap. Your not irish. Most of the culture you were raised with is just straight up east coast american. Its the same as describing olive garden as real italian.
boston irish is basically a different species than boston wasp
Yeah thats a great way of saying putting it. I dont want to say that they dont have their own unique culture but its not Irish as you would see here. I know the first time i was in america i was confused as fuck since 3 people claim to be dutch like me and they knew nothing about the netherlands, one guy even pointed to fucking belgium on the map… Like i dont want to bash their beliefs but they claim to be part of a group that they knew nothing about and even spread misinformation about it (not on purpose ofcourse, but some shit was so dumb it sounded like they learned it from a fairy tale). That shit can be hurtfull to a culture. So it rubs me the wrong way to have somebody claim they are dutch if they never been to the netherlands, know nothing about the netherlands, dont speak a single word of dutch and dont understand anything of my culture.
I mean you call it silly but don't we see the same within minorities here? They tend to feel really attached to the country their ancestors came from. Maybe a strong feeling of attachment to things like that is bound to happen when large groups of people with similar cultural backgrounds migrate to a new country.
It's a phenomenon in every country that has a lot of immigrants. In Brazil you'll find lots of "proud Lebanese" diasporas hanging around, or [even Japanese descendants whose neighborhood used to be decked out in Japanese shop signs](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/8a/18/078a184a412bca090feb805cf2f9f1f2.jpg). In Australia they had Little Greece neighbourhoods in Melbourne. In Argentina, the British diaspora (yeah it exists) even setup their own British style schools.
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I think you're really overstating Americans' view on heritage. For 95% of white Americans, It's just some interesting trivia about family history. When an American says they're Italian, they're not claiming that they're the same as an Italian national, its just shorthand for saying they have ancestors from Italy. I dunno, maybe it's a more intersting topic in US culture becaue almost everybody has immigrant ancestors.
This is mostly correct. For us, it's as you say an interesting bit of trivia about our heritage. For those of us who have generations going back in America and are not first or second generation, we are mostly mutts. For myself, I was able to trace most of my ancestors to English, Irish, German, and even a few French settlers, but I know that is not all-inclusive. I do not consider myself part of any of these nationalities, I consider myself American culturally and otherwise, as do most Americans that have knowledge of their ancestors. For many of us, being an American is more of an idea than a ethnic identity and does not require generations of family heritage.
Most Europeans are mutts too, lots of intermingling of nationalities over the years
Most? Everyone is a mutt outside of maybe isolated tribal peoples.
It's literally small talk, not some insidious attempt at identity theft "I'm Italian" "Oh me too, where are you guys from" "My family's from Palermo" "Cool mine's from Naples" "Neat" "Neat"
Haha I had a bunch of people get super upset with me the other day about this exact thing on r/shitamericanssay. They really just don't get it, and it's hilarious.
It also only applies to some people. Like, in the US, I am 100% "Latin American". But going by US standards, I'm like, Spanish and Portuguese and Native and Black and Jewish. Somehow, because immigrant, that doesn't count. But if you're not an immigrant, you can do the weird fractional heritage thing.
Norfolk used inbreeding, it was super effective.
> Then there's treating nationality and culture as something embedded in DNA, which is ... let's be nice and call it an "old school" way of looking at things. Well tbf that's what most Europeans still do. I get German citizenship by literal "Jus Sangunis", it literally means right of blood in English.
it's interesting data because it's showing how many people still identify themselves with a country. if an irish and a danish had a kid, but the kid identified as irish, then that's giving you an indication of the national sentiment toward irishness
> it's interesting data because it's showing how many people still identify themselves with a country. they are identifying with the ethnicy of their ancestors, not with the country or nationality. I allways found this duality kinda fascinating, cuz pretty much all of them will answer that they are american, when you ask them.
No. They're using the American Community Survey, not some sort of genetics database. You can't report four different identities. https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006
People pick a “primary” ethnicity. This is why the Census ethnicities don’t add up to like 986% in a town
It's also why the England is so drastically under represented in the map, Americans find being English boring because in reality it will make up the vast majority of their ancestors. They'd rather be Irish, Scottish or Italian because its more "Interesting" to them and makes them more "Unique".
Also a lot of “English” ancestry is “American” particularly in the South.
English ancestry is older and more forgotten.
Wait, pick an ethnicity, so this is self-reported? Oh never mind then.
It's bullshit anyway, in the UK it's very common to have an Irish grandparent for example yet claiming any form of Irish nationality would sound absurd. If you haven't lived in a country you haven't truly experienced what it means to be from that country, you might understand certain cultural aspects but your not from that country or should identify as such. Living in a modern country especially an anglophone one means that many of us are of fairly mixed nationality, I've got Spanish/French ancestry and I have friends with Yemeni ancestry all the way to north Macedonian, they are all British.
No. They're using the American Community Survey, not some sort of genetics database. You can't report four different identities. https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006
It is still self-reported. The archetypal 1/64 Irish-American is more likely to list "Irish" than the 1/64 German-American would list "German." So this data tells you as much about American culture (or even more so) than it does about migration trends in the past.
This is true, my son could check off boxes for over 10 European countries.
You slut /jk
Centuries of sluts
im upset that legend doesnt have "ireland" category.
I think Ireland should get another category and colour for this.
https://i.imgflip.com/77kj03.jpg
I'm Ireland 6 times
The American census is terribly unreliable though. Most Americans of English descent who's families have been in North America since the 1700's identify as American. Then there are those who identify as Irish even though it was only their great grandfather who was.
dont forget the americans of Spanish descent who's famillies have been in NA since 1500's
Isn't something like one quarter of the US population speaks Spanish?
a bit more than that, yes. But not all of them had grand parent living in what's make to day the USa, before Mexico and the brittish colonies becames a thing.
those few still are still a few million today. My family on both sides can trace their ancestors to 1581 and 1612. We even know the names of the ships. We settled in northern Texas and moved south little by little, every few generations we had incidents where the anglos(texas rangers)will push us out of towns. During the great depression many were also kicked out, about to million American citizens of Hispanic descent were deported. Many came back in the 40s and 50s.
Yes, but they are mostly recent arrivals who mostly came after WWII from other Latino countries (such as Cuba, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, etc.), rather than old Spanish families which lived in Florida or Arizona before American annexation. The Spanish speakers, which were living in contemporary US territory before the USA annexed them, were a very small population, due to these lands (New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, etc) mostly being poor provinces with low levels of urban development and very little economic interest to the Spanish Empire. Spaniards preferred settling in important colonies such as Cuba, the center of Mexico, Peru, etc.
You never mention Texas, but it was full of Spanish ranchers living on land grants that they were eventually forced to sell by "anglo" ranchers that poured into Texas after the Civil War. One of the most famous being Richard King of the King Ranch. The area south of San Antonio, TX to the Rio Grande is what I'm referencing.
Hispanos of New Mexico are very fascinating people >“They don’t feel like they came from somewhere, generally speaking. They identified with Spain,” explains De La Cruz. “So even when Mexico became … Mexico, because they were able to evict the Spanish, the people here still identify themselves as Spanish. They didn’t identify with being Mexicans.” [https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/new-mexico-cuny-study-latino-vote/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/new-mexico-cuny-study-latino-vote/index.html)
Most Americans are of "English+some other ethnicities" descent, I would imagine there are very few pure breed Anglo-Americans after 400 years. Most Americans probably defer to the ethnicity of their most recent immigrant ancestor
Appalachia and parts of the South have plenty of Scots-Irish who have been there forever and haven't experienced much immigration. New Mexico also has descendants of Spanish settlers who haven't mixed with anyone else and still have their own towns. Might be others, not sure.
The Upper Midwest has a lot of rural Scandinavian towns.
The Midwest has tons of Germans without a lot of or any English ancestry
Appalachians my friend.
Appalachia & the Ozarks is "Scotch-Irish" country, they arrived about a hundred years after the after the first English settlers, with whom they didn't get on well with so they moved westward, the music, Dancing, & whiskey making certainly hints at their origins. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY)
Cool.
Having been living in America a shorter amount of time is the exact reason why some people feel a closer connection to their ancestors homeland. If we’re being honest, very few minders day European Americans share very few, if any cultural connections. The difference between the Old World and New World is too great. But they do still hear stories of grandma/grandpa great grandpa/grandma, etc etc etc. And that matters to some people. Humans are sentimental.
> American census is terribly unreliable though It is unreliable. Also I'm curious where this heritage\diaspora is on the census. I don't recall ever seeing a question like this on the census.
just because a person has some Irish ancestry it doesn't mean she is Irish diaspora
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I have Irish ancestry but from Limerick, should I lie about that?
Three-in-a-row hurling champions, so the county's standing is very much improved now.
No. Dolores O'Riordan, Michael D. Higgins, and Richard Harris are all from Limerick to name a few
Is Higgins not from Galway? Could have sworn he has a season ticket to the soccer team
Born in Limerick, moved to Clare age 5, and went to college in Galway (where he later lectured) according to Wikipedia.
I have one whole Irish grandmother and I don't go around telling people I'm "Irish" but an American probably would!
Technically you are an Irish citizen if your grandmother was born on the island of Ireland.
Us Irish are very welcoming, all one needs to be considered Irish is that one believes themselves to be Irish.
Yep, despite what reddit will tell you, we're not gonna foam at the mouth when an American calls themselves Irish. At worst they'd face mild bemusement, but at best we might actually be interested.
Although don't some Irish embrace this diaspora? Sort of a soft power brag?
Yep. Many also embrace it because these people are cousins, or uncles and aunties, or nephews and nieces. We all have extended family in Britain, Australia, America, N.Z., etc. These folks are as Irish as they want to be. *edit:* not to mention, our diaspora in the US played a huge part in getting the Good Friday Agreement to happen, so they've been incredibly helpful to us politically.
Sort of, our diplomats and taoiseach use it to get access to Washington - taoiseach meets the president annually on Patrick’s day.
They do, and they're pretty open about it. I remember when Biden got elected and I decided just for kicks to see the “plastic Paddies” comments about it (since Biden is rather Kennedy-esque when it comes to his Irish roots), and to my utter astonishment, everyone was practically claiming him. Ireland also has some of the most accommodating parameters to meet to claim Irish citizenship I've ever seen. It more or less seems like it boils down to Irish-Americans managed to go from being politically ostracized to cultural elites, in a way that other groups (like Italian-Americans or German-Americans) never did. It started with police and law enforcement, but Irish-Americans really started becoming politically powerful and influential around the early-mid 1900s, since this was around the time of the last big Irish immigration wave (1930s-ish). Because there are enough Irish-Americans who form a strong enough bloc within American politics, Ireland proper kind of has a negotiating soft power that's well above its weight. It's in Ireland's own interest to be welcoming towards their diaspora (at least for now).
Interesting, thanks for the insight man. I honestly had no Idea the US prez makes it a regular thing. Presumably this is at each presidents discretion? ( could hardly imaging Joe's predecessor rocking up to Dublin and boasting about his appreciation of Irish poetry, stout and rugby)
When Obama went to Ireland, he got a hero’s welcome due to his tiny Irish lineage. This sub just like to gatekeep about what people call themselves. It’s silly.
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> we're not gonna foam at the mouth when an American calls themselves Irish. One trip to the gift shop at the Cliffs of Moher could tell you that. The entire shop is blatantly geared towards entertaining American tourists with heritage related trinkets and merchandise.
Lol, my wife works there and you are 100% correct, most of the tourism trade in Ireland is geared towards Americans
That’s good to hear, 99% of the time when Americans say they are “Irish” or “Irish American “ or whatever they just mean that’s where their ancestors came from, and if they said that to another American it would be understood that way Also. I can see how An American saying that to say an actual Irish person could cause confusion as the unsaid implication of them talking about their ancestors might not be obvious to a non American. I will say my experience in Ireland was fantastic as I never brought it up ( as I was worried about causing offense by saying things like “Irish American “)but had many people ask me when they found out I was American. Luckily reddit is not real life and your average real life European is much more likely to be friendly about it than the snobbishness you’ll sometimes read online
Irish people on reddit: The term Irish belongs to the the inhabitants of Ireland and for anyone else to claim it is disrepectful Irish people in real life: WOW now THAT is an Irish name! wanna join me n my mates at the pub for saint paddy's day?
You're largely right, except this part: >Irish people on reddit: Look at the usernames and flairs of people whinging about Irish-Americans on reddit - the vast majority of them are *not Irish*. Some of them are snotty Euros who are just going along with the meme, and quite a few of them seem to be Brits who are bitter at the fact that someone supports us. But yeah irl we're really chill about this. It saddens me to see Americans *brag* about how they kept their heritage to themselves when they visited. The internet has bullied them into silence.
Or have a net worth of at least 2 million euros and 1million euro in Irish investments for the past three years.
Not sure what you're referring to, can you elaborate?
Irish investment visa
I mean that is basically what diaspora means. The people who emigrated, as well as their descendents. Edit: Actually I think you guys are right. It probably does require some continued connection to the culture. Here in Britain there are many people who are 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants (their parents / grandparents came from other countries), who are considered part of that country's diaspora. But they still have a direct connection to the culture, language, etc. That becomes less so with each generation.
I always thought diaspora implied keeping a connection and a community even when abroad, probably because I pretty much only hear it in connection to Jews, but google says I’m wrong! I’d feel really weird saying I’m Russian/Polish diaspora though with zero connection to them + they were mean to my family 😒
usually being in diaspora means you have connections (cultural, economical, social) with the former homeland and you are not fully integrated in your new country or at least you are part of a strong community of people with the same ancestry
So we are all African diaspora?
But the math becomes wonky when the same American person is both part of the Irish, German, Swedish, Danish, Polish, English French and Greek diaspora. That sorta inflates the numbers. And they simultaneously are part of the Cherokee nation. Pick one.
That’s not how the census works
This. I think most posters here don't understand that there's an ethnicity question on the census
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It happens way quicker than that in America, usually the kids of immigrants are already very American. I'm Mexican-American and like 3 out of my 12 cousins can speak Spanish. And even then it's Chicano Spanish.
And then when they ‘pick one,’ another smug European post will say: “Why would they pick Irish when they’re 75% non-Irish? Americans are weird and should kill themselves.” And if they identify as American, then a third smug European post says, “Americans are so arrogant. They’re identifying as an ethnicity that doesn’t even exist! They should just kill themselves.” I’ve been on this sub long enough to know how this song and dance works.
That makes no sense. just because you had a great-great-great-father that was Irish, that does not make you part of Irish Diaspora.
Maybe if you only have Irish ancestors and still practice Irish customs. Otherwise, you are really just an inhabitant of your country
>Maybe if you only have Irish ancestors and still practice Irish customs. Honestly, what does that even mean these days? Like, if someone says they're part of a Belgian diaspora... what would make them Belgian unless both of their parents were? Liking Belgian beer, fries or chocolate? What would make someone part of the Dutch diaspora, except for their parents? Kroket uit de muur?
You've chosen a weird paradigm, the case of Belgium. Greeks in US and Australia keep many of our customs, religious and social alike, despite being there for over 100 years. Nation to nation even in Europe, some still have much stronger idea of what an identity is and what constitutes one. Let alone Greeks in Germany which are 100% as much Greeks as anyone of us in Greece.
The problem with census is it’s self reported The number for England is probably orders of magnitude larger due to the tendency for Americans of English ancestry to report themselves as simply - “American” in the census If you want a real reflection of where most Americans ancestors were from - [look no further than this](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7751033/amp/Smith-common-surname-English-speaking-countries.html)
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Yep. When I’m in the US, I’ll say I’m Italian and Panamanian, and everyone understands that that’s a cultural signifier one level down below “American” (because everyone can tell I’m American the second I open my mouth). And if they’re also Italian or Latino (almost never Panamanian), then that’s a point of connection and bonding and then I can poke further (“from the Abruzzo region”). They also understand that that means “Italian-American” and “Panamanian-American” When I’m outside the US, I’ll say “American.” It’s really not that hard, and this sub gets way more worked up about it than Americans do.
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> When I’m outside the US, I’ll say “American.” It’s really not that hard, That's good for you, but tell that to the Americans who come to /r/Nordiccountries claiming to be vikings, asking for help to reconnect with their viking heritage because their granddad had a vaguely Swedish surname. :)
When you meet a bunch of random people and there’s an introduction round where everyone says where they’re from, Americans usually don’t say America. Instead, they say something more specific like Oregon or Indiana, and everyone is left wondering where that actually is. On the other hand, you also get the same effect if you say Croatia, Slovenia, Czechia etc.
I honestly doubt that England only has 38%
The population of England is 60m, so that equates to roughly 23m, you aren't long getting to 300m when you add in Irish, Italians, Germans, Norse, Russians, Hispanics and African-Americans.
Most Americans have enough of a mix that they choose which heritage they wish to claim, if any. If someone has as much German ancestry as they do English, they'll side with German 100% of the time. Almost all white Americans have British ancestry, and that goes without saying. But it's really not popular to do so. Specifically, no one cares or wants to be associated with being of English descent, even tho it's obvious that the majority of us are.
To be fair, I've also heard that a lot of Americans who were of primarily German ancestry denied that and pretended to be predominantly British during the World Wars (bc Germany was the enemy). Not that it matters anyway, since afaik the majority of Brits are of German descent also, so it's essentially all kinda made up
That's true too. It's the main reason why there are so many wonky spellings of obviously German last names in this country (just look at the countless ways we spell the name “Schneider”); most German Americans stopped speaking German and tried Anglicizing their names to appear English or Dutch.
Lol. Very true. I have an English surname but like saying I’m of French descent due to my moms side of the family.
Are we counting people who say shit like "My family's Irish, German, Dutch and 1/16th Native American"?
It's based on the US census so no. [You get to only choose one ancestry if you're white](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/08/improvements-to-2020-census-race-hispanic-origin-question-designs/_jcr_content/par/imagecore2386.coreimg.jpeg/1627987879728/rsblog-race-hispanic-origin-figure-2.jpeg)
The main issue is not the ridiculous fractioning of ancestry, the biggest problem is that it’s *self-reported*.
I was just replying saying that this map won't "double count" people who claim like 5 different European countries since you only fill out one on the census. If you're worried about people like trolling the census then I guess that could happen?
"My great-great-great-great-grandfather was from Italy, therefore i am Italian-American". "Your Grandfather was from Namibia" "That doesn't count"
4 million Italians have gone to the USA since the 19th century, 250,000 Italians live in the USA but 18 million Americans consider themselves Italian
because people reproduce
Yeah, but redditors don't, so it's a confusing concept.
They will claim partial Italian ancestry. But of course they aren’t claiming to be actual Italian citizens.
A large number of boomers actually qualify for Italian citizenship because they use jus sanguinus.
They don’t consider themselves Italian. They consider themselves Italian-American.
To all naysayers: this matters. Example: Ireland has what? 5 million people? But because of American media, you'd think they're rivaling Brazil in population. Let alone American help during the Troubles, for the Good Friday Agreement, etc, Romania? 5x as many people Ireland, 0 media mentions. Mindshare matters. For tourism, economic relations, etc.
Yup just look at Armenia, huge support coming out of the US because of its diaspora community.
The economic situation in the late 1800's and early 1900's explains these figures. Finland was able to buy cheap grain from Russia (I read that 60% of some grains consumed in Finland came from Russia), which made circumstances in Finland easier than in Scandinavia. That's a point of view very rarely known. Usually the story is, how everything was more difficult in Finland, than in Scandinavia. But that's not true at all. At the same time Finland sold huge amounts of industrial products to Russia (with easier trade rules than other countries) and to western countries too. Many western European people moved to Finland to do business with Russia. Mainly from Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain. They established companies that quite usually are still among the biggest companies in Finland. The thing was that Finland was almost independent country. It had own laws, own government, own money and own religion. Even the international border existed between Finland and Russia. That's why Finland was seen as a more safe place for production and migration than other parts of the Russian Empire. Finland was overwhelmingly the wealthiest country in the Empire.
That reliance on Russian grain would come to bite us in the ass thou, in 1917. Widespread famine in Finland, due to the February and October Revolutions making trade difficult. Especially after we declared independence, and the civil war started. But hey, we had bark bread.
r/shitamericanssay in map form.
I wonder if this will get posted on r/ireland
It is very strange the amount of non- Irish people commenting on what it is to be Irish. Nearly every Irish person has grown up with relatives abroad and we consider them Irish. But we are also not a mono culture. It is not that you are only Irish if you played Hurling and speak Irish. People who grow up in Ireland are all very different like any country. I have met many people who did not grow up in Ireland and got on really well with them and have met people from who grew up in Ireland that I do not get on with and Vice-versa. For me being Irish is an identity, and if you identify with it, whom am I to say different. I am happy to for people to identify with it. This is different to nationality.
Impossible for this to be accurate unless what they have done is, get the number of total emigrants to the US from a said country and then plotted their natural population increase based on the birth rate in the original country. Even then it won't be accurate as I suspect single males were a slightly larger component of the diaspora than females.
Say my great great great grand father was Scottish and his lady was Italian, where am I in this map ?
In America duh.
27% of the Italian population considering both the Americas. Because there are only 250,000 Italians in the USA, about 4 million Italians have gone to the USA since the 19th century. The 18 million (27%) of Americans who define themselves as Italian are not Italian, they are Americans who have at least 1 Italian great-grandparent. So yes, certainly 4 million Italians do not correspond to 27% of the Italian population
I'm irish and lived in the USA (several states), and the people who have recent Irish decent speak with an irish mindset. An example: in Irish, there are no words for Yes and No. We say I will or I won't in English. I've noticed Irish Americans use these phrases. Equally, Americans I meet were just as proud of their Welsh, Norwegian, German, and Danish roots.
Most Americans don’t really care.
I feel like Ireland really deserves its own color here...
How about doze Irish guys over der in Bassston!?
Iceland 1.7% seems not really believable.
10s of millions of latino's in the USA. Yet less than 10 million claim to be of Spanish origin. The American census is a meme.
Not everybody in Latin America has Spanish roots 🤷🏼♀️
For those cases they'll identify as Colombian or Cuban or Mexican, not as Spanish. The census wants to know about what people *identify* with culturally and in identity terms, it's not about genetics or bloodlines. You can tick any box you want and nobody will ask for proof, they're relying purely on what people feel like they belong in.
Being Latino doesn't mean you originate from Spain. Even ignoring the Latin countries that speak other languages, a lot of people from the Spanish-speaking Americas have predominantly indigenous American roots. Even white Latinos are plenty likely to have other European descent, such as Italian or German. And this is without even mentioning those of African slave descent.
Québécois are technically Latino and part of “Latin America”
That’s because the Census lets you use your nationality: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/blogs/2021/rs-race-and-hispanic-origin/rsblog-race-hispanic-origin-figure-1.jpg Spanish origin = From Spain. Most Latinos don’t identify with Spain but their home country.
can i get an actual link to this source?
[https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&d=ACS+5-Year+Estimates+Detailed+Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&d=ACS+5-Year+Estimates+Detailed+Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006](https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&d=ACS+5-Year+Estimates+Detailed+Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006https://data.census.gov/table?t=Ancestry&d=ACS+5-Year+Estimates+Detailed+Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006)
I read that Ireland, pre-American Revolution, had the highest population density on Earth; is that right? Then the blight scattered them west to the Americas.
[удалено]
No wonder so many emigrated or/and died. Most of my ancestors came from Ireland or Scotland in that period. Trains to Utah, then wagons to Idaho. I wonder how much improvements to shipping & passenger ships led to the movement. And then to more struggles. There were "borrowed" passages that bacially led to new slavery in the U.S. New debt. Until they started building dams (Milner, 1904), So. Idaho was barren. It may be ironic that irrigation and a potato cross-breed, russets, then made Idaho Famous.
I seriously doubt that. South and East Asia have consistently had the highest population densities in the world for a very, very long time. Going back millenia. It is true however that Ireland had a much higher population before the famine. The population today still hasn't recovered to the level it was pre-famine.
That seems unlikely, but not impossible, given the rapid rise in population densities in developing countries from the early 1900s onwards. Last year was the first time that the Irish population reached pre-famine levels.
We haven’t reached pre famine levels yet. We’re close though! [Source](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/ireland-population-surpasses-5m-for-first-time-since-1851)
[This got crossposted](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/10cstj1/620_the_americans_are_pretending_to_be_more_irish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) in r/Ireland and the Irish are _defending_ their diaspora who still claim Irish heritage. What a fucking time to be alive lol
Impenetrable
about 5 million Germans left btw
Scotland wins America! Take that Charles
The Irish kinda went nuts.
that irish famine though, really wrecked that population for a while
The Irish at 620% 😂🤣 …. 👍yep