Originally Posted by Austruck
Well, in America you can still often tell or guess a person's heritage by their name, their looks, etc. And, unless you are a Native American/Indian, you have to say, "My family came to America from _____." Because, well, they did. I'm sure there are tons of families in countries in Europe whose ancestors have always lived in the very same area, always. There's no line of change from one country, one continent to another.
There's been plenty of movement of people going on in Europe over time, there's both good and bad examples of that. To take just one example regarding my own country: the misconception that all swedes are blonde wouldn't have been a misconception a couple of centuries or a thousand years ago. But due to migrations from east and south, nowadays swedes are not all blonde of course and, simultaneously, lots of the immigrants were of course blonde too.
I think the difference between America and Europe is not the level of migration that has taken place over time, but the fact that immigrants that came to a certain country in Europe came to an allready existing culture and sooner or later had to adapt to that culture. Immigrants who came to America came to either a land of wilderness or a land inhabited of indians, whose culture wasn't appealing to the immigrants. Therefore they could and did preserve the culture they brought with them from their european country. When modernity set in it became more and more important to have your own group of people to turn to which strenghtens the bonds to "your own kind". To me it often seems like (white) America towards the rest of the world stands pretty much unified in one american culture, while domestically your heritage play a bigger part in culture terms.
We're known as a melting pot for a reason. We have a common language, a common country, but different backgrounds and heritages. It's what makes us unique. And most of us do, I think, seamlessly flow from thinking of ourselves as American and/or then whatever our heritage is (in my case, German on my father's side and Scottish on my mother's side).
I know that, and that's why I said I think it's interesting. Never said there was anything wrong with it...
If you lived in England but your family emigrated there from another country in a previous century (let's say Italy), would it be so outrageous to think of yourself as both Italian (heritage) and British (citizenship)?
If my ancestors emigrated from Italy 200 years ago and ever since then my family had only married other italian immigrants, then sure I would probably consider myself italian. My grandmother was/is polish (I don't know whether she's still alive) but I've had no contact with her or polish culture so I feel 0% polish - even though I really am 25% polish. My point is that americans even though they, as you yourself stated, share the same language and the same culture (realtively speaking) they still hang on pretty hard to their heritage, even though no family member has ever been to "the old country" or speak that language. And that, I find interesting. Not dumb or a sign of that american culture is low. Just interesting.
Perhaps it's something only Americans really understand, but we all do it here.
Great! Keep doing it there!
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