Americans seem get really weird with the whole ancestry thing. There appears to be a desire to look into your family history and find something “exotic”, which basically seems to mean non-English - I imagine because that’s perceived as the ‘default’ ancestry, so-to-speak.
Honestly, who the fuck cares? What difference does it make? Nationalities aren’t Skyrim races. You don’t get special abilities. It makes no difference whether your ancestors were British/Irish/Spanish/French/whatever.
E: This is obviously not intended as a hateful statement, people. You have to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t care about this, so we’re confused when we look to the US and see them take it so seriously. We’re especially puzzled when Americans say “I’m Irish” because their great great great uncle bought a pint of Guiness in the 1870s. It’s an alien concept to the rest of the planet.
I worked with a French guy in Amsterdam. His parents were Portuguese, but he was born and raised in France. As far as he was concerned, he was French.
Contrariwise, I worked with an American woman in Virginia. Her grandparents were Irish, and she considered herself Irish, in spite of having been born and raised in America, and both of her parents having been born and raised in America.
It is a kind of fetish in America to hyphenate yourself. Irish-American. Cuban-American. And so on.
My own theory is that this is because America has no culture going back many generations, so people try to find one.
My own theory is racism. Other countries in the Americas are not obsessed with ancestry. But bigotry against Scots, Irish, Italians, Africans, Chinese, Polish, etc. ran / run rampant.
Jeez, are there people the English didn’t hate? I wonder if the overall disdain for other people the English had in the 1800s wasn’t what was carried over to the new world and festered into this.
if I found out I was 100% British I’d be disappointed too. America number 1!
Don’t worry, I’m sure your IQ test will come back negative too.
“People who boast about their IQ scores are losers”
- Stephen Hawking
