this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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America is a melting pot of ethnicities and cultural heritages, so it's useful to be able to identify when those of a common background. I'm German and Jewish, and saying so lets me find common ground or complimentary differences with those I meet that are of similar or different backgrounds. I might discover that someone I met has a shared culrural heritage including foods or traditions I share, or have experiences entirely different than mine. I'd rather know the difference if the person I meet celebrates one set of holidays or another, so I might be polite and not assume. I don't think it's strange at all, as though culture isn't entirely tied to ethnicity, they frequently overlap greatly. It often has nothing to do with ethnicity as well, as often someone will reference how they were raised as a cultural background and not as the arbitrary boundaries we place between people that look slightly different.
It has nothing to do with useless categorization and everything to do with a country filled almost entirely with immigrants from around the world. Other than indigenous peoples, everyone that lives here has only been here a few generations at most. The people around me during my day to day life have dozens of different backgrounds and languages, which is true in many places around the world but especially in a country of immigrants. We don't have a long shared cultural heritage like most countries do. We bring our histories with us from everywhere else. Race is an entirely social construct, so being able to distinguish oneself as German rather than French, or Turkish instead of Armenian, or Japanese rather than Korean can help the person you're speaking to have an idea of what cultures you've been exposed to, since such a blend of different ethnicities means it might not be apparent. I certainly don't have any of the common traits of anyone of my heritage except my skin tone, so when I meet someone with shared heritage we can connect by simply saying so.
McDonald's is older than Iceland, I'm gonna say you guys are past the statute of limitations for "we are a young country without a shared cultural heritage".
It's been 250 years, guys, you are pretty much the median age for a country at this point. I think you can let go of that one now.
It's not about the overall age of the country, it's how long on average most people have been here. The majority of Americans haven't had family here for more than a few generations, and that number is skewing rapidly towards the shorter side as more and more people emigrate and mix with people already here. How can you expect a people where most come from a different country far more recently than the founding of the US to have a shared cultural heritage? It's the same type of talking points the American right espouses to denounce immigrants, as though they need to assimilate into a shared culture, when they're really just being racist.
There isn't some shared culture; America is a very rich blend of cultures. My first generation neighbors are no less American than I am, who have had family here for three generations, and I'm no less American than my friend who can trace their family back to the original 13 colonies. The cultural heritage of America isn't a shared one, unless you only care about the culture of the European settlers, a minority. Most countries just don't experience this level of blending of different people from around the entire world. It isn't the most diverse country, and doesn't have the most immigrants each year, but it's mostly populated by people that trace their heritage back to somewhere else. A lot of the Americas share a very similar tradition of distinguishing what parts of their past trace to different cultures, because the people that live on these continents now, unfortunately, are almost entirely not the original people that lived here.
Man, I get why Americans think this makes sense, but it really doesn't. Yes, America is less ethnically uniform than most other places, but migration flows have been high on many areas from very heterogeneous sources. And there are plenty of countries out there that have extremely complex ethnical and cultural makeups built right in (trust me, I know, we were killing each other over it here within my lifetime).
It's the exceptionalism that gets me, I think. You guys USplaining to the world how reconciling different groups of people under a single republic works like nobody else had to deal with it is kinda nuts. Normally Americans, particularly progressive Americans, aren't bad at recognizing the ways in which they're weird or outliers. You point out health care or guns or the weird electoral system and the average American is very much on board, if not mildly frustrated that you're explaining obvious issues they have to deal with back at them. Rightfully so.
This thing? Not so much.
I think your prejudice is blinding you to something that makes good sense in context. I don't expect to change your mind, or even that I could, but it seems odd to blanket denounce a behavior present throughout North and South America on such a weak premise as "we don't do it here." How can you be blind to the use in communicating shared histories in an increasingly multicultural society? I think you'll find that the same behavior is present in many primarily immigrant nations. The US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and others. It's just a shortcut we make because those categories, however arbitrary, mean something to us and allow quicker sharing of information. "America bad" is such a tired argument. Americans may have a generally high opinion of themselves, but I think you'll find similar behavior in the defensive nature of those that belittle them as well. Humans are humans wherever you go. Step down off your high horse and recognize that maybe a behavior that naturally develops among hundreds of millions of independent people from different backgrounds entirely might be due more to its intrinsic value than some bizarrely specific American thing. Because it isn't. Americans are just an obvious example of it since they have such an overwhelming presence online.
Well, my observation is that it's not the same as in other places through North and South America. Canada yeah, South America, definitely not so much. I could see it in Argentina, where the migrant waves match a bit closer and you sometimes hear the Italian and Jewish diaspora bring it up a little more over time, but even then definitely not to the same degree, definitely not as universally identity-defining. And that's Argentina. None of the other people from Central and South America I know ever hit me with their ancestry unprompted, but I know which of my US friends "are" Polish or Italian or Irish or whatever, almost without exception. It's so bizarre.
And the argument isn't "America bad", by the way. I actually like Americans. I think the country itself is weird, but it's not necessarily weird in ways its inhabitants are on board with, like I said. America is a weird country full of very normal, often quite charming people.
What I'm saying is this specific aspect of it doesn't match that pattern. This is more transversally weird and people get more defensive about it.