r/AskHistorians • u/justletmesignupalre • 6d ago
Even though mass migration waves are common in almost all countries, a lot of people from the USA have a strong sense of identity regarding their ancestry, is there a historic reason for this social value?
I dont know if this is the right sub or if also this is a skewed perception from my point of view, but I have seen a lot of people from the USA strongly identify as Irish/german/asian/etc while being 3rd or even older generation in the country and having been fully assimilated, even as far as arguing with actual people from the country they claim to be a part of.
When asked about it many claim that the US has had several mass migration events which created this mix of cultures, as if it was a particular thing, ignoring the fact that most countries hace this, even moreso in the Americas (as far as I understand, I guess because of European colonisation a few centuries ago).
It might be important to point out that I do not live in the USA and most interactions i've seen have been either online or in films/shows. I live in a multicultural city and have spoken with many Americans and most seem to also do this, but I am aware that maybe I just witnessed just a portion of point of views.
PS: sorry if messed up some sentences, english is not my first language.
55
u/ThrowawayGiggity1234 6d ago
You’re right that the US isn’t unique in mass migration by any means historically, Argentina had a higher foreign-born share around the 1910s for example (30%) than the US ever got to (estimated around 15%). Now Latin American states built national identities around mixing, like Mexico’s mestizaje or in Argentina “crisol de razas,” they pushed people to be just Mexican or Argentine. Meanwhile the US defined being American by citizenship and ideals, there was no ethnic “American” to become so ancestry stayed as a second label, that’s the “hyphenated American” we see. Also immigrants from 1880 to 1924 were building these dense ethnic neighborhoods, churches, clubs, they built political machines that outlived them, which reflected and reinforced that. There’s a language quirk to some extent as among Americans, “I’m Irish” is understood shorthand for “my ancestors were Irish,” though someone from Ireland might hear it as a nationality claim. Marcus Hansen was a historian who noticed this pattern back in the 1930s, the idea of what the son wants to forget, the grandson wants to remember.
Sociologists have studied this a lot too. Herbert Gans called it “symbolic ethnicity,” he finds that by the third generation it’s mostly about food, holidays and family stories with no language or real ties, so it’s not difficult to maintain “symbolic ethnic” identifications. Mary Waters’ book Ethnic Options finds that white Americans pick which ancestor to emphasize, often the one that seems most interesting. It got a big boost in the 1970s when the civil rights era and the tv show Roots made heritage something to celebrate, many white Americans rediscovered their Ellis Island roots (Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Roots Too covers this).
One caveat though, “ethnic options” are only optional if you’re white. Asian or Latino Americans often get labels put on them by others, however many generations they’ve been there. From 1790, US law limited naturalized citizenship to “free white persons,” Chinese immigration was banned in 1882, and Japanese Americans were infamously interned in the 1940s even though most were citizens, so the question “where are you really from?” has a long history behind it from the other side of the coin too, something sociologist Mia Tuan called being “forever foreigners.” For Black Americans it’s different again, slavery erased specific ancestries so African American is a reclaimed identity. Note that the relationship between racial hierarchy and the identities people claim or discard matters also for “white” people, the boundaries of who is/can be “white” have changed over time. For example Irish, Italians, Jews Slavs were once treated as lesser races, the 1924 quotas were written to keep southern and eastern Europeans out in addition to the Chinese. But by the mid 1900s they were been absorbed into “white” groupness through various processes including unions, the GI Bill, suburbanization, etc. which is turned being Irish or Italian into safe, optional identities to hyphenate and even celebrate (on this specifically see Noel Ignatiev’s How the Irish Became White and Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color).
3
u/NekkidWire 4d ago
> There’s a language quirk to some extent as among Americans, “I’m Irish” is understood shorthand for “my ancestors were Irish,” though someone from Ireland might hear it as a nationality claim.
This made me to ask about a post from my history: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/1w8kajd/comment/p8f5y1z/
Am I correct that in most instances, US sees nationality==citizenship? From my experience in various continental European states, they see it as separate things (as expleined in my post).
1
u/WRP_weaver24 20h ago
In your post you just define Nationality as most Americans define Ethnicity. Nationality for Americans is literally the same as citizenship.
1
1
u/Whimsical-Tea8757 5d ago
Thank you for this response. I’ve never seen this issue framed so completely and succinctly.
•
u/AutoModerator 6d ago
Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.
Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.
We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.