American Identity

[Khajit]

I consider myself black

[Not not Mattaru]

I'm American, and yes people who do that are retards that feel they need to belong to a 'group'.

Did you just like. Whoosh yourself. A group is a group but you seem to discriminate on the scale or something. I'm not calling you retarded, but you are.

First, America has a culture, not totally consistent across the board because different regions of America have very different cultures for various reasons. Any person born, raised, educated etc. in America has certain traditional and cultural values that affect who they are. Some people like to be more specific and bring up other labels that help identify themselves better.

If I list my whole genealogy off it is because I think it gives some people a better idea of the history of what it means for me to be an American. For the record my first ancestors in America were French far before the Revolutionary War, but I am all of the British Isles, French, German, and Polish.

Honestly I would identify with the region of America I am from first because that probably has a large impact on who I am culturally/linguistically etc. It is like if I as a white person come up to you in the United States (I think you are from or live in Japan) and ask where you are from and you may respond Japan. But if I were Japanese or we were in Japan and I ask where you are from you may say Tokyo, Kansai, Hokkaido et. al.

Identity, nationality etc. are of course reified constructions, but they have real impact on how we live are lives and relate to others. Does that mean they are bad, anachronistic, harmful. Not at all, as long as you actually KNOW what it is and act in a self-aware manner. In other words - Sath is full of it from the best I can tell and is still at a cursory level from skimming his ethnic studies 101 textbook or something.

[Yabby]

Did you just like. Whoosh yourself. A group is a group but you seem to discriminate on the scale or something. I'm not calling you retarded, but you are.

First, America has a culture, not totally consistent across the board because different regions of America have very different cultures for various reasons. Any person born, raised, educated etc. in America has certain traditional and cultural values that affect who they are. Some people like to be more specific and bring up other labels that help identify themselves better.

If I list my whole genealogy off it is because I think it gives some people a better idea of the history of what it means for me to be an American. For the record my first ancestors in America were French far before the Revolutionary War, but I am all of the British Isles, French, German, and Polish.

Honestly I would identify with the region of America I am from first because that probably has a large impact on who I am culturally/linguistically etc. It is like if I as a white person come up to you in the United States (I think you are from or live in Japan) and ask where you are from and you may respond Japan. But if I were Japanese or we were in Japan and I ask where you are from you may say Tokyo, Kansai, Hokkaido et. al.

Identity, nationality etc. are of course reified constructions, but they have real impact on how we live are lives and relate to others. Does that mean they are bad, anachronistic, harmful. Not at all, as long as you actually KNOW what it is and act in a self-aware manner. In other words - Sath is full of it from the best I can tell and is still at a cursory level from skimming his ethnic studies 101 textbook or something.

If you have to list off your background to define who you are as a person, you sir are the retard. I am who i am because of my own thoughts and actions, not that of my ancestors. If you really think someone is better/worst because of their ancestors you are nothing but a short sighted buffoon, with no knowledge of what America is then a 3 year old.

[BerenTebogo]

Did you just like. Whoosh yourself. A group is a group but you seem to discriminate on the scale or something. I'm not calling you retarded, but you are.

First, America has a culture, not totally consistent across the board because different regions of America have very different cultures for various reasons. Any person born, raised, educated etc. in America has certain traditional and cultural values that affect who they are. Some people like to be more specific and bring up other labels that help identify themselves better.

If I list my whole genealogy off it is because I think it gives some people a better idea of the history of what it means for me to be an American. For the record my first ancestors in America were French far before the Revolutionary War, but I am all of the British Isles, French, German, and Polish.

Honestly I would identify with the region of America I am from first because that probably has a large impact on who I am culturally/linguistically etc. It is like if I as a white person come up to you in the United States (I think you are from or live in Japan) and ask where you are from and you may respond Japan. But if I were Japanese or we were in Japan and I ask where you are from you may say Tokyo, Kansai, Hokkaido et. al.

Identity, nationality etc. are of course reified constructions, but they have real impact on how we live are lives and relate to others. Does that mean they are bad, anachronistic, harmful. Not at all, as long as you actually KNOW what it is and act in a self-aware manner. In other words - Sath is full of it from the best I can tell and is still at a cursory level from skimming his ethnic studies 101 textbook or something.

So, your suppositions that are based off of - in your own words - the determining factor of whether or not someone acts in a self-aware manner or not, are a far better indicator of the impact of cultural and ethnic pride and identity than that of thousands of years of history?

That's cool.

Insert a lol somewhere in there and I think that sums up your horrible assessment of human nature quite accurately. I'm also waiting for some evidence to support that nationality or ethnic identity influence our every day lives in a positive way that could not be achieved at a broader view or if eliminated entirely. My anecdotal evidence (in place of actually citing legitimate sources on BG out of laziness) was based on historically accepted culture conflicts and the accepted contributing factors to them. You're just saying things without even something as flimsy as anecdotal evidence to support yourself.

In short, you're talking out your ass and should be smacked in the head with an Ethnic Studies 101 book. Whatever that is, anyways.

[Cream Soda]

I just say I'm black

[Not not Mattaru]

If you have to list off your background to define who you are as a person, you sir are the retard. I am who i am because of my own thoughts and actions, not that of my ancestors. If you really think someone is better/worst because of their ancestors you are nothing but a short sighted buffoon, with no knowledge of what America is then a 3 year old.

Dude you said you were American. I'm just saying you were committing a performative contradiction. It doesn't matter if you list one or many you still ascribe yourself to a group.

I also never made a value judgment based on ancestry, all I said is it does affect you. Stop putting words in my mouth. You are like, succeeding in being divisive over non-ethnicity, it boggles the mind.

@Sath: No I am saying that having a cultural identity is not categorically bad or divisive if you are self-aware about it. In other words you understand that difference about certain things is no reason to hate, be violent etc. towards another person.

As far as the proof you ask for you are asking for a debate that is not falsifiable since you could never hold up your burden of proof in proving what a world without ethnicity looks like. It is like when radicals argue for an ideal worldview and draw strength from the fact that they never have to be accountable to such a world.

[Nirokun!]

Idk, being multi-ethnic, this question usually had that curve to it. "Are you Chinese?" "No." I usually tell people where I was born, where I've moved around to (military family), what (ethnicity) my parents are and where they came from. Sex/Sexual Orientation/Gender is often a question, too. I only consider myself a "different" kind of American with food and customs. My friend called his favorite egg dish "Dirty Eggs" (eggs cooked in rendered bacon fat), and I was like "those are just eggs lol" because it's a southern cooking thing to use bacon grease to fry eggs and cook beans and stuff. And I guess I've been called out on saying "Yes ma'am" and "No ma'am" because it made some people feel old, but it was a custom that I grew up with showing respect to your elders. I know there's a lot of pride from people of certain states (California, New York/Jersey, Texas, North/South Carolina, Georgia come to mind) and other states people never care to mention lol

Idk, I definitely observed the same thing going on once I went to college (I went to a really, really diverse school) and everyone had friends from whatever country they were from. The asians were the worst, the foreign ones would only hang around asians from the same country as them Racists

[Yabby]

Dude you said you were American. I'm just saying you were committing a performative contradiction. It doesn't matter if you list one or many you still ascribe yourself to a group.
.

The OP stated what you say when you are asked where you are from. Thus the response "I'm from America" doesn't label me about my 'group' but an answer to the question. If i responded 'I'm Native-Irish-Germen-American' THAT would be a label because i'm not stating a real place of where i was born, but rather my entire background.

[Max™]

Texan?

Comanche/Cherokee, Scottish, German bloodlines.

[BerenTebogo]

Dude you said you were American. I'm just saying you were committing a performative contradiction. It doesn't matter if you list one or many you still ascribe yourself to a group.

I also never made a value judgment based on ancestry, all I said is it does affect you. Stop putting words in my mouth. You are like, succeeding in being divisive over non-ethnicity, it boggles the mind.

@Sath: No I am saying that having a cultural identity is not categorically bad or divisive if you are self-aware about it. In other words you understand that difference about certain things is no reason to hate, be violent etc. towards another person.

As far as the proof you ask for you are asking for a debate that is not falsifiable since you could never hold up your burden of proof in proving what a world without ethnicity looks like. It is like when radicals argue for an ideal worldview and draw strength from the fact that they never have to be accountable to such a world.

I'm not proposing that I can offer any proof of the outcome of a world without ethnicity. I'm hypothesizing based on something I can prove and have referenced as proof: the state and history of a world WITH ethnicity and conflicts rising directly out of differences in ethnicity or culture.

If I started right now, writing down all the armed conflicts in the history of civilization that were caused because of differences in culture, ethnicity, tribe, or otherwise I wouldn't finish by the end of the week. Hell, if I started in Africa I wouldn't even finish Africa by two days from now. That is verifiable, factual, decisive evidence of the negative aspect of holding cultural and ethnic identity as a source of pride and "self."

I'm asking you, the person claiming that ethnicity and cultural identity can be a blessing so long as we're nice people, for evidence of any sort that identifying with a cultural or ethnic identity on a small scale as opposed to a large scale, such as identifying with our humanity or our common ancestry point, has provided a benefit to humanity that we would not have experienced without the positive cultural identity.

Despite being able to offer up literally tens of thousands of solid, inarguable counter points I'll accept one single well-reasoned factual argument from your perspective. If you can do this I will concede that ethnic identification may not be a universal blight on mankind, just a galactic one.

I'm not offering up any strawmen here. I may be far-reaching in my summary judgments based on human history but the evidence I'm basing these judgments on is rock-solid and completely undeniable. You've offered nothing to this conversation except your opinion about my opinion. No facts, no academic argument, no real points in any way, shape, or fashion, just a stark disagreement with my conclusions.

Ready?

Set.

Go!

[Not not Mattaru]

The OP stated what you say when you are asked where you are from. Thus the response "I'm from America" doesn't label me about my 'group' but an answer to the question. If i responded 'I'm Native-Irish-Germen-American' THAT would be a label because i'm not stating a real place of where i was born, but rather my entire background.

Um. Well nonetheless you are labeling, and quite simply whether or not you hyphenate is a nominal issue because the process, the way you create difference, is the same. The only issue is you draw a problem to which the extent people do the same thing you are doing, and I think that is a poor reason for calling people retarded.

Where you are from is a question that simply means different things to different people and they can answer it how they please. You try to answer it in a way to escape origin or what not, but you don't. You just reemphasize...where you are from.

[Yabby]

Well i can see that this is pointless, considering you can't differentiate background from locations.

[Maguspk]

Well i can see that this is pointless, considering you can't differentiate background from locations.

I don't think you get it, you are saying it's perfectly fine to say American but as soon as you append a 'Native' to it and say Native-American, suddenly it's retarded. They both do the same thing, they describe a culture based on a lifestyle and/or upbringing. Implied in your judgment is that specificity is retarded, which is asinine.

[Acturus]

So I guess my questions to BG are; What do you identify yourself as? Are Americans today just proud of their family history and want to embrace where they came from? Are people just being overly pretentious because having Irish, Italian, Norweigian blood etc, is considered 'cool'? <___> Or are people just trying to distinguish themselves from the 'America, FUCK YEAH!' stereotypes that have a bad rep in many foreign countries?

I -identify- myself as American. Amongst Americans, I am Floridian.

And I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't call myself "Irish-American" because it sounds cool, or because I'm fighting some stereotype. I'm 3rd generation Irish-American. My father's grandfather came over on "the boat" around the time of the potato famine, and my family has been steeped in Irish history and heritage for as long as I've been alive. The patriarch of my family, my father's father, is about as Irish as they come, and he's dressed in green and kept all of the old sayings his entire life. That's fueled my family's identity, and while we're an American family, we take a lot of personal pride in where we're from. We even keep in touch with the family we still have in "the old country".

It's not something I flaunt or anything, but I've always had the association that "American" just meant "my family was originally from somewhere else and they're here now."

But yeah, ask me where I'm from, and I'll say Florida. Ask me where my family's from, and I'll say Ireland.

[Maguspk]

How retarded!

Can't you see you're letting your label define you and perpetuate millennia of hatred!?

[Caiti]

I don't think you get it, you are saying it's perfectly fine to say American but as soon as you append a Mexican to it and say Native-American, suddenly it's retarded. They both do the same thing, they describe a culture based on a lifestyle and/or upbringing. Implied in your judgment is that specificity is retarded, which is asinine.

I do believe Yabby is missing the point here because Magus has it pegged. If you're taking the side against Matt then you're taking the side that includes refusing to associate yourself with being an American over, say, a Northern Hemispherian or a 45 degree latitudian (I don't know my lat / long coordinates, lol, just offering an example) or an Earthian, etc etc so forth and so on, in favor of just saying you're a human.

Although, I'm fine with being an "Earthian" or some other far more clever moniker that I can't think of at the moment since I'm tired. I like things that unite all of humanity, not things that divide us. All humans are also inhabitants of Earth. Anything else is a Function (All humans are members of the set of Earth but not all members of the set of Earth are human. All people from Portugal are members of the set of Earth but not all Earthling - that's what I was looking for, fuck - are from the set of Portugal)

Also, this is Sath. My computer sucks at the moment.

[Yabby]

I don't think you get it, you are saying it's perfectly fine to say American but as soon as you append a 'Native' to it and say Native-American, suddenly it's retarded. They both do the same thing, they describe a culture based on a lifestyle and/or upbringing. Implied in your judgment is that specificity is retarded, which is asinine.

America = location
Asian = culture/type of person
Japan = location
germen = culture/type of person
Germany = location
irish = culture/type of person
Ireland = Location


If you put one of the culture words before a location you are not answering the question "Where are you from" without giving more info then is needed. Where are you from man? Japan, but i'm irish-japanese. Fuck off with that shit.If you are born somewhere that is where you are from, i don't care where your mother was born, if i did i was ask her.

[Not not Mattaru]

I'm asking you, the person claiming that ethnicity and cultural identity can be a blessing so long as we're nice people, for evidence of any sort that identifying with a cultural or ethnic identity on a small scale as opposed to a large scale, such as identifying with our humanity or our common ancestry point, has provided a benefit to humanity that we would not have experienced without the positive cultural identity.

I obviously can not insert myself into the thought process of some past event and use it to undeniably prove my point, but I can use my experience, if that works for you.

So I'll write this with the knowledge that the alternative is a world without a differing cultural identity and get to that later. I identify as American, more specifically Coloradan/West Coast-ish (mind you I was born in Texas so where I was born is not how I answer where I am from). I lived in Japan for about 4-5 months and lived with a Japanese family for 4 months. I will be going back to Japan for a job I got through a program at Princeton (no I did not go to the Ivy Leagues for school whatever it matters) for at least 1, probably 2 years on my own. I've also spent a brief amount of time with a family in Germany when I was younger. Point being I have spent at least a measurable amount of time outside of my culture inside another and they were times when I learned a lot about myself and how I deal with difference not only in culture, but in anyway that people choose to differentiate themselves. I could go into specific instances of my experiences there if you want, but I hope you can take my word for it.

Why was it valuable? Because it was different. Conflict is going to happen (unless we like...totally transcend human ego or something), the issue is how you deal with that conflict. You can see it as categorically divisive and something to defeat and squash or you can use it to overcome a problem, situation, etc. The problem is that of communication and education in this direction.

So in a world without cultural difference....you still have other forms of difference so that is problematic, and I now have one less opportunity to learn how to constructively deal with issues of identity - the one that has been most helpful to me personally.

Oh and btw, most scholarly literature on ethnic warfare etc. (mind you the debate continues, but there is debate - it is not set in stone) usually leans to the thesis that conflict is caused by material concerns and things like ethnicity are used as tools to rationalize particular behavior. So culture and ethnic identity can be used to rationalize a conflict via misinformation and propaganda first and foremost.

Edit to quasi-Sath: Unity is not a bad thing, but under what circumstances. Ignorance, misinformation and a lack of empathy for each other is what is truly divisive. Having a cultural identity, in a positive sense, is admitting that you come from a certain place, with certain norms and that has an effect on you whether it is always conscious or not.

[Maguspk]

America = location
Asian = culture/type of person
Japan = location
germen = culture/type of person
Germany = location
irish = culture/type of person
Ireland = Location


If you put one of the culture words before a location you are not answering the question "Where are you from" without giving more info then is needed. Where are you from man? Japan, but i'm irish-japanese. Fuck off with that shit.If you are born somewhere that is where you are from, i don't care where your mother was born, if i did i was ask her.

You are a little lost, so let me direct you to the thread title. This thread is called American Identity and the question proposed was "What do you identify yourself as?". Maybe the names that sound like places got you a little confused, but hopefully I've straightened everything out for ya.

[Not not Mattaru]

America = location
Asian = culture/type of person
Japan = location
germen = culture/type of person
Germany = location
irish = culture/type of person
Ireland = Location


If you put one of the culture words before a location you are not answering the question "Where are you from" without giving more info then is needed. Where are you from man? Japan, but i'm irish-japanese. Fuck off with that shit.If you are born somewhere that is where you are from, i don't care where your mother was born, if i did i was ask her.

See what I said in the post above. I was born in Texas, I never say I am from Texas because I grew up mainly in Colorado (though I also lived in Virginia and Wisconsin). Stop being so state-centric bra. If you meet other 'Americans' and they ask where you are from, while you may say 'uh America' the vast majority of my experience has been people will identify with a state or region. Because identity is nested...not an A or B answer.