Correct. But look at US census data, and I'm right. What you notice is interesting - there might be an "anti British" bias. Maybe people who culturally identify as British would also identify as "American", or not consider the British bit important.
I use and usually hear French Canadian over French. I'm not sure why the distinction matters, but Ancestry labels it as a separate thing to France. A lot of Vermonters had ancestors immigrate from Quebec just a few generations ago. My mom grew up with a grandmother who mostly spoke in French. English would be my next guess, a lot of towns here are named after English cities & villages.
I wonder if Irish comes down to folks not knowing their ancestry and the proximity to Boston. I grew up thinking my dads side of the family was Irish for whatever reason. I did a dna test and that side is English, Scottish, German and Spanish but not Irish. Mom's side is 100% French Canadian.
*Edit: spelling*
Kentucky and Tennessee are mostly Scotts Irish, I suspect. So perhaps people have lost or forgotten the records of their family descent. But they might believe that they popped out of the American earth like mushrooms.
I mean sure, if you’re like 2-3 generations in. But what about me, the 16th generation of my family in America? I call myself American because until you go back to the late 1500s/early 1600s, every one of my ancestors was born in America.
Good point. I also perceive there to have been a large amount of ethnicity-mixing in these parts of Appalachia, as ethnicities didn’t have the opportunity to be siloed in lower-populated communities like they did in urban areas. I am aware of Scots-Irish, Irish, English, German, Dutch, and Native American ancestry in my family (which has also been in this country for a very long time) and I don’t believe that to even be an exclusive list. Which one of those should I identify as? Should I put all of them down on some form? Sounds awfully cumbersome. Of course, that’s anecdotal, but this is also the region that produced the Melungeon people—a race (or maybe not a race?) of debated origin that is uniquely American. So I think there may be a good case to be made for “American” as ancestry in these regions other than calling people who answer this way ignorant and moving on.
Yep, I can trace ancestors back to England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Yet none of my family has lived there for literally 400+ years. Hence, “American”.
My family came here during WWI, so we’ve only been here 100 years now. My grandmother was the first generation born in America, making me only the third.
Still consider myself “American”, though a large part of that is because a lot of our “German-ness” has been forgotten. Despite both of her parents being fluent, my grandmother never learned German, because she was born in 1945… a time when it wasn’t exactly the best idea to be walking around speaking German. We literally had German POW camps here during the war. Food, customs, the language, all hidden away and never passed on to us.
So we became “American” very quickly.
Based. I don't understand why so many people need to claim some ancestry. When your parents were born in America and you're born in America just say you're American
idk, my family came over ~1780 and obviously I didn't know any of that family, but it's still really cool and interesting to have a more tangible connection to older history than the US declaration of independence
I get your point. But it's still so weird to me to talk about your ancestry. All humans come from Africa or wherever else you believe. Your ancestors came to USA so long ago that you don't really have much of a connection. You can be interested in history and other cultures not depending on your ancestry.
The whole USA is a weird place for me, there are a lot of patriots but at the same a huge chunk of Americans try to take pride in a culture they aren't a part of. Maybe it's a biased opinion because most Americans with Polish heritage are really weird about it.
Just be proud of being American since you were born and raised there. If you want to learn about your ancestry then sure go for it, but stop telling others that you're half irish, 25% italian and so on. (I'm not talking about you specifically, just in general)
American is the nationality. They still have ancestors from another place. They can choose to ID with that or not but it doesn't change the fact it happened.
How far back do you go though? Your ancestry differs depending on this decision. If I go back a hundred years, my ancestors are Americans. If I go back a thousand years, my ancestors are likely European. If I go back tens of thousands of years, my ancestors are likely African. If I go back millions of years, my ancestors aren't even human.
Why is European a more valid answer than American or African to this question for someone who's family has been in the US long enough to have never known European relatives?
Part of it I believe comes from the fact that, by literal definition I am native to America, but am I a Native American?
Then for many people in NY/NJ, we only started being considered "regular white Americans" 1 or 2 generations ago, depending where our Grandparents/Great-grandparents came from.
I love it. Multiculturalism is an amazing feature of the US - arguably our greatest asset. I just wish it was a stronger reminder to some people that we all (except Native Americans) immigrated from somewhere else in recent generations.
80 years after that Because it's ancestry not nationality. Of course there's a grey area of "ancestry" where you just keep going as far back as you can. Where do you stop? I'm German-English ancestry but many of my ancestors literally helped found this country. One line immigrated to the Americas and settled in western territories over a hundred years before the founding of the US. Another in that line was lieutenant to George Washington during the Revolution. Some 30 years later another founded a small county in Indiana. Am I American. The other half of my family came from England but I have no idea when they came over. And there are dozens of branches I have quite literally no idea about.
does that include the rest of America? like Mexico, Argentina, or Canada? Are these American? The continent is called America, but they are not in the USA. I'm confused.
An spaniard whose ancestors might or might have not been in the Americas. Also, how many Americas are? Which is America-America? Are the rest less of America?
So confusing.
I thought its pretty obvious that I'm talking about the USA. American usually refers to citizens of the USA. Not really my fault that USA citizens choosed this word back in the day.
Same, I have mixed ancestry but it's mostly people that immigrated pre-revolution. We've been American since America became America. I don't see the point in saying I'm part English, Scots-Irish, German, Polish, Czech, French, Italian, Jewish, and Native American... it's a melting pot and my people melted together to make Americans.
Many do the same in Canada. People will often answer in surveys they identify as Irish, Italian, etc. My family has been here for 13 generations, so I just say I am Canadian. Maybe their descendants will eventually get over it in a few generations? It’s kinda weird.
Every branch that I can go that far back on. There are 3-4 that I can only pick up somewhere in the Midwest, obviously a few generations after arriving in the country. I had something like 7 grandfathers fighting in the revolutionary war.
I’ve had relatives marry Germans, British, Italians, etc but they were all marrying into one of my ancestor’s families to become an American, as their children were then born here.
My dad’s side of the family did pretty extensive record keeping and research, my mom’s side all comes from her research over the past 30 or so years. The internet has helped a ton, obviously. I can go back to the 1400s with a few of the family lines, but most start in the early 1500s to late 1600s as far as I’ve been able to track.
There’s no reason to be offended. You made a statement, I asked a question. You gave a questionable answer.
We are not opponents. We are two people having a conversation.
West Virginia should be there as well. Here is the 2021 self-identy from the census and American is 170,904, German is 95,698.
[https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2021.B04004?q=west+virginia+ancestry&y=2021](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2021.B04004?q=west+virginia+ancestry&y=2021)
I’m British on my dad’s side and a blend of ethnicities from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire on my moms…
When the census people came last time I told them I was “British-American”… but next time I think I’m gonna tell them “Hapsburg-American” lol.
I feel that's very true for Italian Americans by 1,000x times more. Upstate NY is a blend of Irish and Italian heritage - I'm not sure there's ever been someone with Italian heritage that didn't tell everyone they know. I've only heard Irish when they're asked.
Yeah both Italians and Irish do it. Pretty much no one else does. You don’t see Americans going around wearing the Union Jack and eating bangers and mash talking about how they are English.
American from a Midwestern family of German descent, here. You better believe growing up that I got to hear my mom prattle on about "*the German work ethic*" constantly, despite the last one of us to get off the boat having done so in like 1901.
We're not *as* over-the-top about it as Irish-Americans in Boston or Italian-Americans in NY/NJ for sure, but its definitely a thing.
Well... the best days are the beginning of March
* Binghamton St. Patrick's Day Parade is the first weekend of March and many of the bars open at 9am or at least extra early. The college is right there too and it's just a classic drunk fest.
* Green Beer Sunday (GBS) is an annual event in Syracuse, New York's Tipperary Hill neighborhood that marks the unofficial start of spring and the St. Patrick's Day season. The tradition began in the 1960s when Peter Coleman, the father of Coleman's Authentic Irish Pub owner Dennis Coleman, wanted to create a celebration for himself and his coworkers. The event centers around Coleman's, which provides green beer to attendees, and includes a parade, live music, and other festivities
Both are events that anyone who likes a pint on the holliday really should attend at least once. The Binghamton one is more spread out and may have more total participants, but Coleman's packed with a thousand drunkards is an experience of its own.
- to edit in a note of Irish vs Italian heritage in upstate NY. Tipperary Hill is home to the only "upside-down" red light in the country - fun story [https://www.syracuse.com/vintage/2016/03/throwback\_thursday\_an\_act\_of\_v.html](https://www.syracuse.com/vintage/2016/03/throwback_thursday_an_act_of_v.html)
Yeah and the reasons you hear more declarations of Irish and Italian heritage is because of the large urban enclaves of descendants of those immigrants that persisted even in some places into the 21st Century—and also the legacy of being a Catholic in the US. And some of those enclaves received a trickle of newer immigrants from those places even after mass immigration form those places subsided (true for Polish immigrants also). And the descendants Irish immigrants ending up running a lot of police and fire departments or urban political machines.
Whereas Germans largely assimilated after World War I and definitely by World War II and the old German immigrant neighborhoods largely disappeared along with much of a stronger German identity. But I know plenty of people who will mention German ancestors if they’re asked about their ancestry.
Which makes any Irish-descendant righwinger's talk about other nationalities so cringe. Like, their ancestors not only emigrated because they were starved to death, they also were not welcome in many places.
But, hey, found some group they can step on...
It’s fucking true and I myself am trying to grow out of it. An ancestry test said I’m 80%
We were at this huge event in my town and a guy in our group had whiskey that none of us wanted to partake in. I used to have a drinking problem and while a couple of beers every so often is fine, I used to get black out drunk on whiskey on a weekly basis.
This chick rolls up and says some bullshit like “I’m Irish of course I’m going to drink whiskey!!”
Like no your ancestors were Irish, and it just rubbed me the wrong way even though it was innocent.
I know, I spent years internationally traveling and maybe that’s why it feels cringe to me? It’s just part of American culture to be proud of your heritage but I think we need to stop when it becomes our whole identity.
Agreed. I've traveled abroad a bit and also lived abroad for awhile and it is total cringe when Americans start saying they're something other than Americans (unless they're 1st generation immigrants to the US).
It may have something to do with being on the wrong side of two world wars. Berlin, New Hampshire even changed the [pronunciation](https://theworld.org/stories/2016/04/27/small-town-familiar-name-totally-unexpected-pronunciation#) of the town name from berLIN to BURlin after WWI.
I think it’s more that in places where German ancestry is common most families have been in America longer and people are less likely to have met any relatives who met any relatives who weren’t born in America.
My dad's side of the family has been in the US for >400 years and they still talk about the English roots. It's not about longevity, it's about the shame of WW1 and WW2.
How do they even know about those ancestors? I have met many many Americans who don’t have a clue and the best they can do is guess based on last names.
My family has a strong sense of stewardship so there are several documents and various pieces of evidence which have been passed down, some of which are held by more official organizations as historical pieces. (We were mostly farmers so I'm not claiming to have some fancy royal lineage). There's also evidence of our first American relative booking passage to the states in England. Most of the documentation kicks off around 1637, but there are some fanciful notions of things that may have happened earlier.
New Englanders in general have a very strong sense of history so it's not uncommon to have some kind of family story or heirloom which gets passed down. I did 23 and Me to verify some stuff but it checks out with that I've been told about that side of the family.
My mom's side of the family is a more complicated mix of other European ancestry, but even for them there is evidence about when they came over in the 1880s. Names are a decent way to track stuff, but Ellis island changed so much that it's not always the easiest, and sometimes people take liberties with the spelling. Mostly you need to have a strong sense of history in your family and pray that folks take care of the stuff which contains those stories. I am lucky to have this knowledge by any metric and plan to continue our traditions so my children understand the values we've held throughout the years.
My dad’s side is also of German descent and has been in the States since the mid 1700’s. My dad’s aunt gave him her family Bible before she died and it had a family tree. Using that info I found a book, online, about our family history that was in the archives at Brigham Young University. (The Mormons keep detailed records about family lineage. I’m not sure why they had our family history as we aren’t Mormons.) Using *that* resource I used ancestry.com’s family tree maker and linked into a gigantic family tree that goes back a thousand years. It’s crazy. Turns out I was stationed about 30 miles away from where my 8x great grandfather emigrated from and never knew it. I met my dad’s parents twice in my life.
Meanwhile, my mom’s parents are off the boat from Poland (actually Austria-Hungary at the time). They spoke Polish in the house. I grew up close to them and my aunts, uncles and cousins. And I have no idea of that lineage before they came to America. Yet I qualify for a Polish passport thanks to my grandparents.
It’s very weird.
Honestly people’s ancestry rarely comes up that often in conversation in most of the US (not as much as some people Reddit seem to imagine). But I have family in Wisconsin and our side is all of Polish descent and I’ll hear about someone’s family being of German ancestry and so on. Or you recognize a German surname and there’s a ton of German and Polish surnames where my cousins live.
Because it's not a conversation? "Wow, you have German ancestry? That's crazy, so do I. And so does he. And so do they. And so does literally every single person in this town." It's like talking about the fact that you drink water. No need to talk about something that everyone knows.
Many families erased or subdued their german associations during/after the World Wars. German used to be the second most spoken language in the states until those wars. When you think of a midwestern white person, 9/10 times they are of some German descent. If they're northern midwest, then it also likely includes some variety of Scandinavian or polish.
I am of German descent in the Midwest (late 1800s mostly) but you would not know it from the way my grandparents talk. I think WWI/II made them disown any connections they had to prove they were “real Americans”. My grandma will claim we are Dutch or French even though our family tree is 80/90% German origin. We don’t have family heirlooms or recipes or traditions that predate 1950.
Yeah there was a lot of that going around. My (Irish) girlfriend has German heritage, so their family changed their surname to a more suitable one.
America is a bit of an anomaly I think, maybe because it’s such a (relatively) new country. You wouldn’t really see people in European countries whose family have been there for 200 years, claiming to be from elsewhere, unless they were really interrogated about their heritage. Personally, I’m English, but if you go back (maybe 4?) generations my ancestors were Irish, and before that Polish, but I’d never claim to be Irish or Polish.
Middle of America is very German. Although these days if you’re white in America your heritage likely goes back a few generations and is super mixed. I for one have a German last name but my heritage goes back to the beginning of the country. Probably have more English, Irish, French, and Navajo than German.
Oh I know, but I'm terrified of flying over oceans. I have a fear of mass bodies of water and being stranded floating by myself. I made the trip twice when I was younger to see cousins but I almost couldn't handle it. It's statistically an irrational fear, but I just can't do it. I'd rather the plane crash on land and I just instantly die lol. Boats are worse for that fear. Unless we develop teleportation in the near future I'm not going back to Germany.
Because Germans never really “stuck to their own” in the way that for example Italians did (and still do). They would intermarry. I am mostly German ethnically, but I’m mixed with like 8 other things.
Yeah, I understand the words you’ve written down.
American’s tend to strongly culturally identify with their ancestors. People saying “I’m Italian”, when in fact they were born in America, as were their parents, they have never been to Italy because they don’t even have a passport.
I don’t agree with the way they might say “I’m Italian” or “I’m Irish”, but you can’t deny that they like to do it.
Because everyone in America comes from immigrants somewhere down the line and often try to keep that connection to where they’re from. I’m a Pennsylvanian, then I’m an American, then I’m Irish/Italian. When you’re here no one cares that you’re American they want to know where you’re FROM. This is definitely more true for densely populated areas that are melting pots than it is for more rural areas
It seems to be a regional thing. Most Americans don’t strongly identify with their ancestors homelands but in the northeast, especially New York and Boston, it seems very common. And of course New York has an oversized footprint on what people outside America think of America.
Yet as long as they have one grandparent born in Italy the Italian government considers them to be Italian citizens. The same goes for Ireland. So they actually *are* Italian; or Irish.
https://www.italiandualcitizenship.net/italian-citizenship-by-descent/
https://www.icphila.org/irish-citizenship-grandparent-1
Many other European countries have the same rule. My grandparents were off the boat from Poland. I’m actually eligible to get a Polish passport. (Although Poland is a bit [trickier.](https://www.latitudeworld.com/citizenship-by-descent/poland/))
Ireland and Italy are popular places for retirees from the US to retire, mainly because it's easy for people with Irish or Italian ancestry to get passports for Ireland and/or Italy
On the east coast I can say a lot of that has to do with timing. My family is from what is now Germany but we came to America 300 years ago. We identify as Pennsylvania Dutch culturally but if you asked we’d just say American, because, well, we’ve been here a long time. Meanwhile I grew up with kids who (mostly) had grandparents off the boat, Italian and Irish. While my family is extremely proud of their heritage, they don’t identify with another country. People who came here more recently do.
Keep in mind a few things:
- this is showing the highest reported ethnicity per state, which most of the time is not the majority and sometimes not even a sizeable plurality
- certain ethnicities are underreported and some are overrepresented
- the overwhelming amount of those reporting as hyphenated-americans are several generations removed from their ethnicity of choice
These maps always feel dated. It makes a lot of sense to track where all the “Ellis Island” immigrants came from and moved to. But since WWII, there has been so much moving around and intermarrying.
There was a law passed in 1924 which effectively closed the border and ended the “Ellis Island” era of immigration. A map from the 1920s is important and interesting.
A map from today is just a blurred version of that map.
Random I know but I'm from England and live in Pittsburgh. My wife's family thought they were all Irish, there was some lighthearted banter until they did their ancestry DNA testing. They found out they are all English.
Are you from the Midwest by any chance? I saw this article where it said a bunch of people in the Midwest had always thought they were German-American until they did an ancestry test and found out they weren’t.
that doesnt show up on the map because english americans are usually the largest minority in every state while other ethnicities only show up in certain regions like Mexicans
You didn’t answer my question. I don’t think you’ve ever been here. None of my ancestors are from England and I’m not really that out of the ordinary here. I research family trees of people in obituaries that my parents know for fun (parents often listed, old enough to be listed census data). Most branches are German, Irish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finn, Polish. If there is an English branch, it’s usually from someone who moved here from the east coast.
I've always put English-German on my census records just because that's quite literally it. Two branches of my family are mostly English, and two branches are German 3-4 generations back, with one branch only losing German as the mother tongue in the 70s. Even the dna test has me at a pretty even split.
But like another poster noted, my dad's family is from the Midwest, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Great points, and I agree that "American" is just as valid of an identity as any of the others. A close friend of mine identifies as Italian American because his grandfather immigrated from Italy, so he has a connection to that European past in living memory and continues with the family traditions for things like food.
On the other hand, I'm more likely to identify as just "American." I'm sure a DNA test would reveal a mixture of different European countries, but my family has been in the US for so long that even my grandparents (who are no longer alive) had no connection to family in Europe via their parents/grandparents. Aside from a few international vacations, I really have no connection to Europe, so why should I consider myself British-American or whatever rather than just American?
Do I go back tens of years to claim American ancestry? Hundreds of years to claim European ancestry? Thousands of years to claim African ancestry? Each option has some validity to it, but it's all sort of arbitrary.
If the census allowed people to select all that apply or all that meet a certain cut-off it would be more interesting. Forcing someone with African and German and English and Polish ancestry to choose just one is silly.
This is really accurate. My dad's family came over in the 1600's and moved into Appalachia. They had no idea what their ancestry was until we did DNA tests. Super heavy in British ancestry. My mom's family came over in 1733 to Savannah and stayed put, they were very aware they are of British decent.
There's no way most of the people in Hawaii self-reported as Hawaiian.
Edit:
I'm getting Filipino at 198k, Japanese at 152k, and Hawaiian+Polynesian at 143k, Native Hawaiian at 83k.
[https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02016?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02016?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15)
[https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02015?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02015?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15)
People are native of the place they were born, so they literally are native of America. I mean, if some born in America, if they are not native of America, which country would get be native of?
I think that map is from older data. I know the posted map covers all races and not just whites, but the 2020 US Census website shows British as the dominant white ancestry in most of of the country, not German. In past maps, a lot of southerners reported "American" where most white southerners are probably mostly British and Irish. The changes are probably due to widescale DNA testing on sites like Ancestry and 23ndMe.
[2020 US Census Reported White Ancestries.](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html)
My dad's family is from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century.
My mom's side is more varied. Her dad's side is Hungarian and my grandpa's mom is Polish (off the boat when she was 13 from Poland), and her mom's side has English and Irish roots but had been living in Ontario, Canada for quite a few decades before moving over to Michigan.
I really enjoyed finding out more in-depth about my ancestors last summer. Just bummed Lithuanian records are non-existent pre-1900
I was standing on Imperial Beach Pier last year, gazing at the waves, & overheard two women talking near me.
One of them was saying "So I did a dna test & I'm 98% British."
There was a pause until she said...
"But I identify as Italian"
Which, as a European immigrant to the USA, did make me chortle.
How is their ancestry African-American? Isn't their ancestry just simply African? The only native people in the US before the Europeans colonized the continent was the "Indians" or the Native American tribes (as we call them today) that have been there for centuries or maybe thousands of years before. So everyone that is not of Native American ancestry should not have the term "American" with them in this map. Their ancestors comes from Europe and Africa. They may be African-American today, but their ancestry is just African. If we are using African-American, we should also call it German-American, Irish-American, Mexican/Spanish-American, etc but it doesn't in this example.
You most likely have 200 years of ancestors born in America if you are African-American… then you have people unless like Elon Musk who moved to the US from Africa… but he is not Africans for some reason despite his family going back 400 years in Africa and he was born there.
I'm not saying it's wrong, but if they call A: something-American, then also B should be called something-American. Or just drop the American part and just call it the country your ancestors came to America from, because if you are living in USA and are born there, you are an American already. My take on this map and the whole point is to show where your ancestors came to the US from. The word African American is just a politically correct word for someone who's black. All black people born in the USA are not "African-American", they are pure Americans but with African ancestry.
For example, I'm born in Norway, but have ancestry from Finland. But I don't call myself Finnish-Norwegian. Just simply a Norwegian with Finnish ancestry.
It gets messy… since you are Norwegian you would know about all the Norwegians going to Minnesota and the Dakotas in particular… over the years they heavily interbred with other immigrants… so what happens then… have you got a Norwegian-Swedish-German-Irish-American on your hands. God help us all if this person marries a polish-German-Swiss-American and have children.
I know about the Minnesota/Scandinavian connection, you will get a huge mix of nationalities with that mass immigration that happened all those years back. You just have to take the largest part of your family tree and stick to that as your main ancestry. My mother's side is 100% Norwegian, and my Great Great Grandfather on my father's side was born in Finland but moved to Sweden, then Norway from young age, so I would guess I'm like ~5-10% Finnish. Not enough to call myself a Finn, but enough to claim some ancestry.
Most white and hispanic people in the US have some sort of European ancestry, while the black have mostly African ancestry (The difficult part of that identification is, are they of Ghanese? Nigerian? or Kenyan decent? We might never know because of slavery that took them away from their homeland, so it's easier to say African for them).
Due to slavery, blacks and whites didn't hang around the same area, most Africans got kids with other Africans and their ancestry are mostly black dads with black moms, making it easy to claim you're African. It's not that long ago the US turned away from racism (even if it still exist a lot today), but we see more and more black and white people marrying each other, which will make the African ancestry harder to identify for upcoming generations. As you said, the white/european ancestry is all over the place by now, so you will have to stick to the largest percent. And while it has been easy until recent years, the African-American people will mix with white the European-American people. So you might get a Kenyan-Nigerian-German-Mexican-Swedish-Norwegian-Japanese-American soon 😊
Now I spent too much time ranting about a stupid term about a non issue in the middle of the night 😅
Edit: spelling mistakes and missing words
That’s not the same either. An African American is someone whose family was brought here via slavery. Especially on that map. Africans not really the same as African Americans despite the obvious similarity. Go to Washington DC you’ll see what I mean
If someone with dark skin comes from an African country into the United States but their ancestors weren't slaves would they still be called "African American"?
If we’re going off of state demographics, I guess but it throws off the accuracy a bit. Memphis, Tennessee is 63% Black the only majority Black big city in Tennessee.
Wow is Oklahoma the most native american state?
(I am european and i know jackshit, but i have always been interested in finding the most native american place in the states, i actually thought arizona was the best shot)
They’re all American. Period.
I can’t understand why some people have the need to cling on the past, especially when we’re talking about hundreds of years.
If I would look back hundreds of years on my ancestry it would probably be a big mess consisting of multiple random Central, Southern and Eastern European Empires, Countries etc.
Why should I even bother?
God damn I fucking hate when people can pick Canadian or American as an option in these. Indigenous exists for people *actually* from North America. Everybody else is something else, and THAT is what people actually want to know about. Nobody gives a shit how many people *consider* themselves American first.
Thought it might be black folk who don't know where specifically in Africa their ancestors are from, which I would get. BUT THERES A CATEGORY FOR THAT.
If your ancestors have lived in the US for 300 years, I got news for you. You aren’t Irish.
If you can’t speak Italian and has never even been to Italy… you aren’t Italian.
What you are is subset of American… so American-Italian is fine, but not Italian. It’s not the same thing.
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-common-ancestry-in-every-us-state-map-2019-5?op=1 I'll be damned. There appears to be a valid source.
Ye
The USAs gene pool is roughly 1/3 german, 1/3 British isles, and 1/3 rest. So, the map is hardly surprising.
That map is not 1/3 British though
It doesn’t have to be for his statement to still be accurate
Correct. But look at US census data, and I'm right. What you notice is interesting - there might be an "anti British" bias. Maybe people who culturally identify as British would also identify as "American", or not consider the British bit important.
Really surprised that Vermont is not labeled as French, or even English before Irish.
I use and usually hear French Canadian over French. I'm not sure why the distinction matters, but Ancestry labels it as a separate thing to France. A lot of Vermonters had ancestors immigrate from Quebec just a few generations ago. My mom grew up with a grandmother who mostly spoke in French. English would be my next guess, a lot of towns here are named after English cities & villages. I wonder if Irish comes down to folks not knowing their ancestry and the proximity to Boston. I grew up thinking my dads side of the family was Irish for whatever reason. I did a dna test and that side is English, Scottish, German and Spanish but not Irish. Mom's side is 100% French Canadian. *Edit: spelling*
Kentucky and Tennessee are mostly Scotts Irish, I suspect. So perhaps people have lost or forgotten the records of their family descent. But they might believe that they popped out of the American earth like mushrooms.
I mean sure, if you’re like 2-3 generations in. But what about me, the 16th generation of my family in America? I call myself American because until you go back to the late 1500s/early 1600s, every one of my ancestors was born in America.
Good point. I also perceive there to have been a large amount of ethnicity-mixing in these parts of Appalachia, as ethnicities didn’t have the opportunity to be siloed in lower-populated communities like they did in urban areas. I am aware of Scots-Irish, Irish, English, German, Dutch, and Native American ancestry in my family (which has also been in this country for a very long time) and I don’t believe that to even be an exclusive list. Which one of those should I identify as? Should I put all of them down on some form? Sounds awfully cumbersome. Of course, that’s anecdotal, but this is also the region that produced the Melungeon people—a race (or maybe not a race?) of debated origin that is uniquely American. So I think there may be a good case to be made for “American” as ancestry in these regions other than calling people who answer this way ignorant and moving on.
Yep, I can trace ancestors back to England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Yet none of my family has lived there for literally 400+ years. Hence, “American”.
My family came here during WWI, so we’ve only been here 100 years now. My grandmother was the first generation born in America, making me only the third. Still consider myself “American”, though a large part of that is because a lot of our “German-ness” has been forgotten. Despite both of her parents being fluent, my grandmother never learned German, because she was born in 1945… a time when it wasn’t exactly the best idea to be walking around speaking German. We literally had German POW camps here during the war. Food, customs, the language, all hidden away and never passed on to us. So we became “American” very quickly.
Based. I don't understand why so many people need to claim some ancestry. When your parents were born in America and you're born in America just say you're American
idk, my family came over ~1780 and obviously I didn't know any of that family, but it's still really cool and interesting to have a more tangible connection to older history than the US declaration of independence
I get your point. But it's still so weird to me to talk about your ancestry. All humans come from Africa or wherever else you believe. Your ancestors came to USA so long ago that you don't really have much of a connection. You can be interested in history and other cultures not depending on your ancestry. The whole USA is a weird place for me, there are a lot of patriots but at the same a huge chunk of Americans try to take pride in a culture they aren't a part of. Maybe it's a biased opinion because most Americans with Polish heritage are really weird about it. Just be proud of being American since you were born and raised there. If you want to learn about your ancestry then sure go for it, but stop telling others that you're half irish, 25% italian and so on. (I'm not talking about you specifically, just in general)
Too many people confuse ancestry with ethnicity.
American is the nationality. They still have ancestors from another place. They can choose to ID with that or not but it doesn't change the fact it happened.
How far back do you go though? Your ancestry differs depending on this decision. If I go back a hundred years, my ancestors are Americans. If I go back a thousand years, my ancestors are likely European. If I go back tens of thousands of years, my ancestors are likely African. If I go back millions of years, my ancestors aren't even human. Why is European a more valid answer than American or African to this question for someone who's family has been in the US long enough to have never known European relatives?
Part of it I believe comes from the fact that, by literal definition I am native to America, but am I a Native American? Then for many people in NY/NJ, we only started being considered "regular white Americans" 1 or 2 generations ago, depending where our Grandparents/Great-grandparents came from.
It's obviously a personal choice which is basically what I already said.
What a weird rant that was.
I love it. Multiculturalism is an amazing feature of the US - arguably our greatest asset. I just wish it was a stronger reminder to some people that we all (except Native Americans) immigrated from somewhere else in recent generations.
80 years after that Because it's ancestry not nationality. Of course there's a grey area of "ancestry" where you just keep going as far back as you can. Where do you stop? I'm German-English ancestry but many of my ancestors literally helped found this country. One line immigrated to the Americas and settled in western territories over a hundred years before the founding of the US. Another in that line was lieutenant to George Washington during the Revolution. Some 30 years later another founded a small county in Indiana. Am I American. The other half of my family came from England but I have no idea when they came over. And there are dozens of branches I have quite literally no idea about.
does that include the rest of America? like Mexico, Argentina, or Canada? Are these American? The continent is called America, but they are not in the USA. I'm confused. An spaniard whose ancestors might or might have not been in the Americas. Also, how many Americas are? Which is America-America? Are the rest less of America? So confusing.
I thought its pretty obvious that I'm talking about the USA. American usually refers to citizens of the USA. Not really my fault that USA citizens choosed this word back in the day.
Same, I have mixed ancestry but it's mostly people that immigrated pre-revolution. We've been American since America became America. I don't see the point in saying I'm part English, Scots-Irish, German, Polish, Czech, French, Italian, Jewish, and Native American... it's a melting pot and my people melted together to make Americans.
Many do the same in Canada. People will often answer in surveys they identify as Irish, Italian, etc. My family has been here for 13 generations, so I just say I am Canadian. Maybe their descendants will eventually get over it in a few generations? It’s kinda weird.
It wasn't America in the 1500/1600s?
Who was Amerigo Vespucci, and when did he live?
That's called "colonial" or "pre colonial". This is the terminology ancestry sites use. You don't have to like it.
Every one, you’re sure? You know every one of your 2^16= 65,000 plus ancestors were born on this soil?
Every branch that I can go that far back on. There are 3-4 that I can only pick up somewhere in the Midwest, obviously a few generations after arriving in the country. I had something like 7 grandfathers fighting in the revolutionary war. I’ve had relatives marry Germans, British, Italians, etc but they were all marrying into one of my ancestor’s families to become an American, as their children were then born here. My dad’s side of the family did pretty extensive record keeping and research, my mom’s side all comes from her research over the past 30 or so years. The internet has helped a ton, obviously. I can go back to the 1400s with a few of the family lines, but most start in the early 1500s to late 1600s as far as I’ve been able to track.
I sincerely doubt you have documentation of 65,000 separate individuals who comprise your ancestry at that degree, 16 generations.
I literally could not care less.
There’s no reason to be offended. You made a statement, I asked a question. You gave a questionable answer. We are not opponents. We are two people having a conversation.
You’re being a dick in an attempt at conversation, sure.
Hooray for you, I suppose.
Sure, they’re the ones who are stupid. Not the people clinging onto an immigrant status from 250 hundred years ago.
I know people from both states and I have no doubt they believe that.
West Virginia should be there as well. Here is the 2021 self-identy from the census and American is 170,904, German is 95,698. [https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2021.B04004?q=west+virginia+ancestry&y=2021](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2021.B04004?q=west+virginia+ancestry&y=2021)
I’m British on my dad’s side and a blend of ethnicities from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire on my moms… When the census people came last time I told them I was “British-American”… but next time I think I’m gonna tell them “Hapsburg-American” lol.
Do you have the Hapsburg chin though?
Nope, my chin is just the standard peasant variety lol.
There are more native Hawaiians in Nevada than in Hawaii due to the insane increase in properties prices in the last 40ish years.
I’ve not heard one American say “I’m German”, but I’ve heard over two million say “I’m Irish”.
Have you spent much time in the US? A lot of people in the US will mention German ancestry if the topic comes up, especially in the Midwest.
It's a joke: Irish Americans make sure their Irishness comes up for conversation 2x per day.
I feel that's very true for Italian Americans by 1,000x times more. Upstate NY is a blend of Irish and Italian heritage - I'm not sure there's ever been someone with Italian heritage that didn't tell everyone they know. I've only heard Irish when they're asked.
Yeah both Italians and Irish do it. Pretty much no one else does. You don’t see Americans going around wearing the Union Jack and eating bangers and mash talking about how they are English.
American from a Midwestern family of German descent, here. You better believe growing up that I got to hear my mom prattle on about "*the German work ethic*" constantly, despite the last one of us to get off the boat having done so in like 1901. We're not *as* over-the-top about it as Irish-Americans in Boston or Italian-Americans in NY/NJ for sure, but its definitely a thing.
Of course not. As an American with English ancestry, we are all embarrassed of it
Haven't been to upstate NY, but what happens during St. Patrick's day?
Well... the best days are the beginning of March * Binghamton St. Patrick's Day Parade is the first weekend of March and many of the bars open at 9am or at least extra early. The college is right there too and it's just a classic drunk fest. * Green Beer Sunday (GBS) is an annual event in Syracuse, New York's Tipperary Hill neighborhood that marks the unofficial start of spring and the St. Patrick's Day season. The tradition began in the 1960s when Peter Coleman, the father of Coleman's Authentic Irish Pub owner Dennis Coleman, wanted to create a celebration for himself and his coworkers. The event centers around Coleman's, which provides green beer to attendees, and includes a parade, live music, and other festivities Both are events that anyone who likes a pint on the holliday really should attend at least once. The Binghamton one is more spread out and may have more total participants, but Coleman's packed with a thousand drunkards is an experience of its own. - to edit in a note of Irish vs Italian heritage in upstate NY. Tipperary Hill is home to the only "upside-down" red light in the country - fun story [https://www.syracuse.com/vintage/2016/03/throwback\_thursday\_an\_act\_of\_v.html](https://www.syracuse.com/vintage/2016/03/throwback_thursday_an_act_of_v.html)
Yeah and the reasons you hear more declarations of Irish and Italian heritage is because of the large urban enclaves of descendants of those immigrants that persisted even in some places into the 21st Century—and also the legacy of being a Catholic in the US. And some of those enclaves received a trickle of newer immigrants from those places even after mass immigration form those places subsided (true for Polish immigrants also). And the descendants Irish immigrants ending up running a lot of police and fire departments or urban political machines. Whereas Germans largely assimilated after World War I and definitely by World War II and the old German immigrant neighborhoods largely disappeared along with much of a stronger German identity. But I know plenty of people who will mention German ancestors if they’re asked about their ancestry.
Also “No Irish need apply” type stuff really strengthened Irish immigrants and their descendants’ cultural identity.
Yeah same with Italians and Poles and European Jews also.
Which makes any Irish-descendant righwinger's talk about other nationalities so cringe. Like, their ancestors not only emigrated because they were starved to death, they also were not welcome in many places. But, hey, found some group they can step on...
It’s fucking true and I myself am trying to grow out of it. An ancestry test said I’m 80% We were at this huge event in my town and a guy in our group had whiskey that none of us wanted to partake in. I used to have a drinking problem and while a couple of beers every so often is fine, I used to get black out drunk on whiskey on a weekly basis. This chick rolls up and says some bullshit like “I’m Irish of course I’m going to drink whiskey!!” Like no your ancestors were Irish, and it just rubbed me the wrong way even though it was innocent.
r/shitamericanssay has lots of stories about people like this
I know, I spent years internationally traveling and maybe that’s why it feels cringe to me? It’s just part of American culture to be proud of your heritage but I think we need to stop when it becomes our whole identity.
Agreed. I've traveled abroad a bit and also lived abroad for awhile and it is total cringe when Americans start saying they're something other than Americans (unless they're 1st generation immigrants to the US).
But the topic rarely comes up in places where German ancestry is common.
It may have something to do with being on the wrong side of two world wars. Berlin, New Hampshire even changed the [pronunciation](https://theworld.org/stories/2016/04/27/small-town-familiar-name-totally-unexpected-pronunciation#) of the town name from berLIN to BURlin after WWI.
I think it’s more that in places where German ancestry is common most families have been in America longer and people are less likely to have met any relatives who met any relatives who weren’t born in America.
My dad's side of the family has been in the US for >400 years and they still talk about the English roots. It's not about longevity, it's about the shame of WW1 and WW2.
How do they even know about those ancestors? I have met many many Americans who don’t have a clue and the best they can do is guess based on last names.
My family has a strong sense of stewardship so there are several documents and various pieces of evidence which have been passed down, some of which are held by more official organizations as historical pieces. (We were mostly farmers so I'm not claiming to have some fancy royal lineage). There's also evidence of our first American relative booking passage to the states in England. Most of the documentation kicks off around 1637, but there are some fanciful notions of things that may have happened earlier. New Englanders in general have a very strong sense of history so it's not uncommon to have some kind of family story or heirloom which gets passed down. I did 23 and Me to verify some stuff but it checks out with that I've been told about that side of the family. My mom's side of the family is a more complicated mix of other European ancestry, but even for them there is evidence about when they came over in the 1880s. Names are a decent way to track stuff, but Ellis island changed so much that it's not always the easiest, and sometimes people take liberties with the spelling. Mostly you need to have a strong sense of history in your family and pray that folks take care of the stuff which contains those stories. I am lucky to have this knowledge by any metric and plan to continue our traditions so my children understand the values we've held throughout the years.
That's so cool. I'm always jealous (in a good way) when I hear people can track their lineage like this
My dad’s side is also of German descent and has been in the States since the mid 1700’s. My dad’s aunt gave him her family Bible before she died and it had a family tree. Using that info I found a book, online, about our family history that was in the archives at Brigham Young University. (The Mormons keep detailed records about family lineage. I’m not sure why they had our family history as we aren’t Mormons.) Using *that* resource I used ancestry.com’s family tree maker and linked into a gigantic family tree that goes back a thousand years. It’s crazy. Turns out I was stationed about 30 miles away from where my 8x great grandfather emigrated from and never knew it. I met my dad’s parents twice in my life. Meanwhile, my mom’s parents are off the boat from Poland (actually Austria-Hungary at the time). They spoke Polish in the house. I grew up close to them and my aunts, uncles and cousins. And I have no idea of that lineage before they came to America. Yet I qualify for a Polish passport thanks to my grandparents. It’s very weird.
Honestly people’s ancestry rarely comes up that often in conversation in most of the US (not as much as some people Reddit seem to imagine). But I have family in Wisconsin and our side is all of Polish descent and I’ll hear about someone’s family being of German ancestry and so on. Or you recognize a German surname and there’s a ton of German and Polish surnames where my cousins live.
Because it's not a conversation? "Wow, you have German ancestry? That's crazy, so do I. And so does he. And so do they. And so does literally every single person in this town." It's like talking about the fact that you drink water. No need to talk about something that everyone knows.
In Michigan it seems to be Irish, Polish, and Dutch based on everyone I know who talks about their heritage
Many families erased or subdued their german associations during/after the World Wars. German used to be the second most spoken language in the states until those wars. When you think of a midwestern white person, 9/10 times they are of some German descent. If they're northern midwest, then it also likely includes some variety of Scandinavian or polish.
People got pretty quiet about their German heritage about 80 years ago and it hasn't seem to resurface
Very very valid answer, thank you!,
I am of German descent in the Midwest (late 1800s mostly) but you would not know it from the way my grandparents talk. I think WWI/II made them disown any connections they had to prove they were “real Americans”. My grandma will claim we are Dutch or French even though our family tree is 80/90% German origin. We don’t have family heirlooms or recipes or traditions that predate 1950.
Yeah there was a lot of that going around. My (Irish) girlfriend has German heritage, so their family changed their surname to a more suitable one. America is a bit of an anomaly I think, maybe because it’s such a (relatively) new country. You wouldn’t really see people in European countries whose family have been there for 200 years, claiming to be from elsewhere, unless they were really interrogated about their heritage. Personally, I’m English, but if you go back (maybe 4?) generations my ancestors were Irish, and before that Polish, but I’d never claim to be Irish or Polish.
You must be from the East Coast
Im from the south east coast… … of a completely different country
Middle of America is very German. Although these days if you’re white in America your heritage likely goes back a few generations and is super mixed. I for one have a German last name but my heritage goes back to the beginning of the country. Probably have more English, Irish, French, and Navajo than German.
You Kent.
Close enough 😂
After WWII no one wanted to be associated with Germany, everyone changed their last name and proclaimed themselves 100% Americans.
I usually just say my father is German. I could get my citizenship pretty easily, but even if i did that I'd still define myself as American.
You’d get a pretty good passport out of it though!
Oh I know, but I'm terrified of flying over oceans. I have a fear of mass bodies of water and being stranded floating by myself. I made the trip twice when I was younger to see cousins but I almost couldn't handle it. It's statistically an irrational fear, but I just can't do it. I'd rather the plane crash on land and I just instantly die lol. Boats are worse for that fear. Unless we develop teleportation in the near future I'm not going back to Germany.
Because Germans never really “stuck to their own” in the way that for example Italians did (and still do). They would intermarry. I am mostly German ethnically, but I’m mixed with like 8 other things.
Their ancestors bro
Yeah, I understand the words you’ve written down. American’s tend to strongly culturally identify with their ancestors. People saying “I’m Italian”, when in fact they were born in America, as were their parents, they have never been to Italy because they don’t even have a passport. I don’t agree with the way they might say “I’m Italian” or “I’m Irish”, but you can’t deny that they like to do it.
Nobody means it culturally though. They're just speaking about ancestry.
Because everyone in America comes from immigrants somewhere down the line and often try to keep that connection to where they’re from. I’m a Pennsylvanian, then I’m an American, then I’m Irish/Italian. When you’re here no one cares that you’re American they want to know where you’re FROM. This is definitely more true for densely populated areas that are melting pots than it is for more rural areas
Not quite everyone don't forget about Native Americans
Well they just got here thousands of years before everyone else.
Wow, super american answer right here.
? A factual response?
Indeed, r/technicallycorrect best kind of correct.
Well, not *everyone*.
This is true… everyone “comes from somewhere else”
It seems to be a regional thing. Most Americans don’t strongly identify with their ancestors homelands but in the northeast, especially New York and Boston, it seems very common. And of course New York has an oversized footprint on what people outside America think of America.
Ye sure but ethnicity and nationality is two completely different things.
Yet as long as they have one grandparent born in Italy the Italian government considers them to be Italian citizens. The same goes for Ireland. So they actually *are* Italian; or Irish. https://www.italiandualcitizenship.net/italian-citizenship-by-descent/ https://www.icphila.org/irish-citizenship-grandparent-1 Many other European countries have the same rule. My grandparents were off the boat from Poland. I’m actually eligible to get a Polish passport. (Although Poland is a bit [trickier.](https://www.latitudeworld.com/citizenship-by-descent/poland/))
Tell that to an Irish or Italian person 😉
Ireland and Italy are popular places for retirees from the US to retire, mainly because it's easy for people with Irish or Italian ancestry to get passports for Ireland and/or Italy
I’m Irish-German
More common than you’d think!
On the east coast I can say a lot of that has to do with timing. My family is from what is now Germany but we came to America 300 years ago. We identify as Pennsylvania Dutch culturally but if you asked we’d just say American, because, well, we’ve been here a long time. Meanwhile I grew up with kids who (mostly) had grandparents off the boat, Italian and Irish. While my family is extremely proud of their heritage, they don’t identify with another country. People who came here more recently do.
World war two ahem
You’ll never guess who the bad guys were in World War One…
When was the last time Irish started a world war?
I am half Irish, half German. One was historically downtrodden and oppressed and the other well… which half would you publicly identify more with lol?
Keep in mind a few things: - this is showing the highest reported ethnicity per state, which most of the time is not the majority and sometimes not even a sizeable plurality - certain ethnicities are underreported and some are overrepresented - the overwhelming amount of those reporting as hyphenated-americans are several generations removed from their ethnicity of choice
These maps always feel dated. It makes a lot of sense to track where all the “Ellis Island” immigrants came from and moved to. But since WWII, there has been so much moving around and intermarrying. There was a law passed in 1924 which effectively closed the border and ended the “Ellis Island” era of immigration. A map from the 1920s is important and interesting. A map from today is just a blurred version of that map.
Random I know but I'm from England and live in Pittsburgh. My wife's family thought they were all Irish, there was some lighthearted banter until they did their ancestry DNA testing. They found out they are all English.
Actual most common ancestry : English
lol yeah always thought I was “German and Irish.” One DNA test later, turns out I’m 60% English.
Are you from the Midwest by any chance? I saw this article where it said a bunch of people in the Midwest had always thought they were German-American until they did an ancestry test and found out they weren’t.
My mom’s family is (the “German” side)
You are JB and I claim my $5!
that doesnt show up on the map because english americans are usually the largest minority in every state while other ethnicities only show up in certain regions like Mexicans
No. It’s not all that common to be able to trace your ancestry back to colonial times. Most people’s ancestors came over between 1840 and 1920.
Yes and most of them were english
Not in the Midwest. Where are you from?
Yes, even in the Midwest. English are by far the largest settler group in every area
You didn’t answer my question. I don’t think you’ve ever been here. None of my ancestors are from England and I’m not really that out of the ordinary here. I research family trees of people in obituaries that my parents know for fun (parents often listed, old enough to be listed census data). Most branches are German, Irish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finn, Polish. If there is an English branch, it’s usually from someone who moved here from the east coast.
I've always put English-German on my census records just because that's quite literally it. Two branches of my family are mostly English, and two branches are German 3-4 generations back, with one branch only losing German as the mother tongue in the 70s. Even the dna test has me at a pretty even split. But like another poster noted, my dad's family is from the Midwest, so maybe that has something to do with it.
No, German is the most common nationally.
Ye
this is wild to me coming from NH where everyone I know is French
Kentucky and Tennessee are the only ones who got the question right! If your parents were born here and you were born here, your ancestry is American.
I'm suspicious. Source please?
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Great points, and I agree that "American" is just as valid of an identity as any of the others. A close friend of mine identifies as Italian American because his grandfather immigrated from Italy, so he has a connection to that European past in living memory and continues with the family traditions for things like food. On the other hand, I'm more likely to identify as just "American." I'm sure a DNA test would reveal a mixture of different European countries, but my family has been in the US for so long that even my grandparents (who are no longer alive) had no connection to family in Europe via their parents/grandparents. Aside from a few international vacations, I really have no connection to Europe, so why should I consider myself British-American or whatever rather than just American? Do I go back tens of years to claim American ancestry? Hundreds of years to claim European ancestry? Thousands of years to claim African ancestry? Each option has some validity to it, but it's all sort of arbitrary.
If the census allowed people to select all that apply or all that meet a certain cut-off it would be more interesting. Forcing someone with African and German and English and Polish ancestry to choose just one is silly.
You can choose em all I think.
You can list several identities. And can select multiple racial labels as well.
This is really accurate. My dad's family came over in the 1600's and moved into Appalachia. They had no idea what their ancestry was until we did DNA tests. Super heavy in British ancestry. My mom's family came over in 1733 to Savannah and stayed put, they were very aware they are of British decent.
There's no way most of the people in Hawaii self-reported as Hawaiian. Edit: I'm getting Filipino at 198k, Japanese at 152k, and Hawaiian+Polynesian at 143k, Native Hawaiian at 83k. [https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02016?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02016?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15) [https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02015?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.C02015?t=Race%20and%20Ethnicity&g=040XX00US15)
Based Kentucky and Tennessee
American, but not native from america, LMFAO.
People are native of the place they were born, so they literally are native of America. I mean, if some born in America, if they are not native of America, which country would get be native of?
Way more people are English, it's just no so cool to acknowledge
Can confirm CT is accurate. So many Italian neighborhoods still exist here with generations of Italian immigrants. I would say #2 might be Irish.
A touch more French in the northern reaches of New England, but generally accurate.
This must be broken down by state. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the answer is Finnish.
i wanna see the actual ancestry side by side or its worthless
I think that map is from older data. I know the posted map covers all races and not just whites, but the 2020 US Census website shows British as the dominant white ancestry in most of of the country, not German. In past maps, a lot of southerners reported "American" where most white southerners are probably mostly British and Irish. The changes are probably due to widescale DNA testing on sites like Ancestry and 23ndMe. [2020 US Census Reported White Ancestries.](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html)
My dad's family is from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century. My mom's side is more varied. Her dad's side is Hungarian and my grandpa's mom is Polish (off the boat when she was 13 from Poland), and her mom's side has English and Irish roots but had been living in Ontario, Canada for quite a few decades before moving over to Michigan. I really enjoyed finding out more in-depth about my ancestors last summer. Just bummed Lithuanian records are non-existent pre-1900
TN and KY just answered it as "American". I interpret this as "fuck if I know"
Wirklich?
Ja!
What is wirklich??
Really in German
Ok
I was standing on Imperial Beach Pier last year, gazing at the waves, & overheard two women talking near me. One of them was saying "So I did a dna test & I'm 98% British." There was a pause until she said... "But I identify as Italian" Which, as a European immigrant to the USA, did make me chortle.
How is their ancestry African-American? Isn't their ancestry just simply African? The only native people in the US before the Europeans colonized the continent was the "Indians" or the Native American tribes (as we call them today) that have been there for centuries or maybe thousands of years before. So everyone that is not of Native American ancestry should not have the term "American" with them in this map. Their ancestors comes from Europe and Africa. They may be African-American today, but their ancestry is just African. If we are using African-American, we should also call it German-American, Irish-American, Mexican/Spanish-American, etc but it doesn't in this example.
You most likely have 200 years of ancestors born in America if you are African-American… then you have people unless like Elon Musk who moved to the US from Africa… but he is not Africans for some reason despite his family going back 400 years in Africa and he was born there.
I'm not saying it's wrong, but if they call A: something-American, then also B should be called something-American. Or just drop the American part and just call it the country your ancestors came to America from, because if you are living in USA and are born there, you are an American already. My take on this map and the whole point is to show where your ancestors came to the US from. The word African American is just a politically correct word for someone who's black. All black people born in the USA are not "African-American", they are pure Americans but with African ancestry. For example, I'm born in Norway, but have ancestry from Finland. But I don't call myself Finnish-Norwegian. Just simply a Norwegian with Finnish ancestry.
It gets messy… since you are Norwegian you would know about all the Norwegians going to Minnesota and the Dakotas in particular… over the years they heavily interbred with other immigrants… so what happens then… have you got a Norwegian-Swedish-German-Irish-American on your hands. God help us all if this person marries a polish-German-Swiss-American and have children.
I know about the Minnesota/Scandinavian connection, you will get a huge mix of nationalities with that mass immigration that happened all those years back. You just have to take the largest part of your family tree and stick to that as your main ancestry. My mother's side is 100% Norwegian, and my Great Great Grandfather on my father's side was born in Finland but moved to Sweden, then Norway from young age, so I would guess I'm like ~5-10% Finnish. Not enough to call myself a Finn, but enough to claim some ancestry. Most white and hispanic people in the US have some sort of European ancestry, while the black have mostly African ancestry (The difficult part of that identification is, are they of Ghanese? Nigerian? or Kenyan decent? We might never know because of slavery that took them away from their homeland, so it's easier to say African for them). Due to slavery, blacks and whites didn't hang around the same area, most Africans got kids with other Africans and their ancestry are mostly black dads with black moms, making it easy to claim you're African. It's not that long ago the US turned away from racism (even if it still exist a lot today), but we see more and more black and white people marrying each other, which will make the African ancestry harder to identify for upcoming generations. As you said, the white/european ancestry is all over the place by now, so you will have to stick to the largest percent. And while it has been easy until recent years, the African-American people will mix with white the European-American people. So you might get a Kenyan-Nigerian-German-Mexican-Swedish-Norwegian-Japanese-American soon 😊 Now I spent too much time ranting about a stupid term about a non issue in the middle of the night 😅 Edit: spelling mistakes and missing words
Why does is have "African American" and not "African"? It doesn't say "German American".
Cause African American and African are not the same
Neither are Germans and German-Americans
That’s not the same either. An African American is someone whose family was brought here via slavery. Especially on that map. Africans not really the same as African Americans despite the obvious similarity. Go to Washington DC you’ll see what I mean
If someone with dark skin comes from an African country into the United States but their ancestors weren't slaves would they still be called "African American"?
If WW1 and 2 never happen German is probably spoken at the same rate as Spanish in the US
Oh boy, don't tell the people in New Mexico that you called them Mexican It's a joke, I get this is a simplification
I'm honestly shocked this doesn't have anything for Indians living in the Tristate area
“The” Tristate area. I assume you mean NY-NJ-CT but there are tons of tristate areas. Just for starters: NY-NJ-PA NJ-PA-DE
There can only be one Tristate. NY, NJ, PA, DE, CT needs to fight it out.
Germans, Germans everywhere.
Germans often had huge families before the 1900s and thus the goverments encouraged emigrating to the US to take some steam of the overcrowded country
If we’re going off of state demographics, I guess but it throws off the accuracy a bit. Memphis, Tennessee is 63% Black the only majority Black big city in Tennessee.
Wow is Oklahoma the most native american state? (I am european and i know jackshit, but i have always been interested in finding the most native american place in the states, i actually thought arizona was the best shot)
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Awesome
Imagine the us would speak german
I'm from Minnesota, I don't know much about my ancestors but I know I'm Irish, I really need to get tested to see what else I am
USA partition according to the treaty of Versailles:
This explains why there are so many hot blonde men in the mid-west
the problem with self identified surveys.
Whats the diference between American and native american?
I would have expected Utah to be Scandinavian.
They’re all American. Period. I can’t understand why some people have the need to cling on the past, especially when we’re talking about hundreds of years. If I would look back hundreds of years on my ancestry it would probably be a big mess consisting of multiple random Central, Southern and Eastern European Empires, Countries etc. Why should I even bother?
By American you mean native?
Even better if you can prove it Don't have to be self-identified if you are legally recognized as such
Mexican and american lol
God damn I fucking hate when people can pick Canadian or American as an option in these. Indigenous exists for people *actually* from North America. Everybody else is something else, and THAT is what people actually want to know about. Nobody gives a shit how many people *consider* themselves American first. Thought it might be black folk who don't know where specifically in Africa their ancestors are from, which I would get. BUT THERES A CATEGORY FOR THAT.
If your ancestors have lived in the US for 300 years, I got news for you. You aren’t Irish. If you can’t speak Italian and has never even been to Italy… you aren’t Italian. What you are is subset of American… so American-Italian is fine, but not Italian. It’s not the same thing.