this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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I always find this kind of silly. You were born and raised in the USA, so you're American, whether you like it or not. There's people saying they're Irish American despite 3 generations having passed, so when does it end? Am I Dutch-Norwegian because my great grandmother was Norwegian and came to The Netherlands?
No, I'm Dutch, I was born and raised here without influence of the Norwegian culture.
But in the US it is a cultural thing. Like Italian-Americans have a different culture from other Americans and from current day Italians. The US is a big place, with many different cultures and people like Europe. It's like if I said to you that you are European so stop calling yourself Dutch.
Your comparison between "European vs Dutch" and "American vs Irish-American" is fundamentally flawed.
Nationality vs ancestry are different concepts. Dutch is my current nationality, defined by citizenship, language, culture, and shared social experience. Being "Dutch-Norwegian" would mean I hold dual citizenship or were raised in both cultural contexts simultaneously. Most Americans claiming to be "Irish-American" have no citizenship, language fluency, or authentic cultural immersion in Ireland.
The cultural disconnect is stark. What Americans call "Italian-American culture" has diverged dramatically from actual Italian culture over generations. It's become a distinctly American phenomenon with superficial cultural markers rather than authentic representation. When Irish-Americans visit Ireland, locals often view them as simply American tourists because the cultural gap is so evident.
With each generation, the cultural connection weakens substantially. By the third or fourth generation, what remains is often reduced to stereotypical elements like celebrating St. Patrick's Day or eating pasta on Sundays. This selective cultural picking isn't equivalent to genuine cultural identity.
European identity framework differs fundamentally. In Europe, identity is primarily based on where you were born and raised, your language, and your lived experience – not distant ancestry.
Many Americans who claim hyphenated identities have minimal knowledge of their ancestral country's modern culture, politics, or social realities. They cling to outdated or stereotypical notions that no longer reflect the actual country.
Comparing a continental identity (European) to a national one (Dutch) is not the same as comparing a national identity (American) to a hyphenated ancestral one (Irish-American). The Netherlands exists within Europe; "Irish-American" does not represent a legitimate political or cultural subset of America in the same way.
He literally said “American culture is different from its EU origins and therefore we call it out differently”
And then you said “nah since you’re American it’s all fake as fuck you’re just once large homogenous group”
Yeah ok and you chain-smoking bullfighters need to get your Lederhosen fitted at…wait, that doesn’t make sense? EU is different places with different cultures? No wayyyyyy 🤡
The level of authority that you're speaking with about another country's culture while clearly only having a surface-level understanding is actually wild. Maybe accept that the Americans who are telling you otherwise have more knowledge and understanding of their own culture.
Americans totally have more knowledge and understanding of their own culture.
Irish-Americans have very little knowledge and understanding of Irish culture
Right, and Irish-Americans have more knowledge and understanding about Irish-American culture.
The other poster was making it seem like American culture is homogenous or like descendants of immigrants can't still retain distinct cultural traditions and identities outside of generic American. Whether or not those traditions are the same as the original country of origin is immaterial. Nobody is claiming that it is.
I suspect the Irish part of that description is highly misleading.
In 2025, is Irish-American culture anything more than wearing green on "St. Pattys" day and supporting Boston Celtics?
Yeah, it often involves being Catholic and having massive families
That sounds Italian American to me.
Because they're both predominantly Catholic communities...
They actually seem to be quite educated on the topic. Unlike yourself who seems to think that you'd have authority to speak on this issue because you have a certain passport? It's really not that wild. I moved here as a first generation immigrant about 10 years ago & I pretty much concur what they are saying. Irish and American Italians in Boston and NJ respectively feel that they have more in common with their 'home' countrymen than fellow Americans, just one example. Personally I think there's also an aspect of "oh I'm not just white, I'm actually 1/8 Irish". Mind you that's not what I think at all, why would I have a bias against you if you are white? But it's almost like I'm asked to view them as more than "white American" when people tell me that stuff after I tell them where I'm from. You can imagine what their answers typically were when I asked about whether they often go back to visit family/home or foods they cook. It's just ancestry, they have no actual ties to those lands.
One thing I will say though is that whenever I'd talk about this kind of thing is that people get weirdly defensive about it. Overall I learned just to let them say what they want to say, it's not worth my energy trying to understand their mental gymnastics as to why they're actually as Irish as I am Egyptian. They're not ready or willing to have that conversation.
I understand the cultural grouping that happens when large migrant communities form. What I don't understand is why Americans portray themselves as Dutch when coming to the Netherlands. Their customs, language, culture, and nationality are different. They're not Dutch whatsoever.
Use it to identify yourselves within the USA, that makes sense. Don't use it to claim being part of a culture that you know nothing about.
Do they, though? Are there really that many Americans who think or try to pretend they are actually Dutch, instead of Americans who are have Dutch ancestry?
It honestly sounds like they are just trying to connect by sharing a commonality and something that is (probably) important to them in some way. It's an expression of appreciation. Even if the cultural traditions carried on in the US are different than in the modern-day country--so what? It doesnt make those cultural traditions less important to the people who celebrate them. I fail to understand what is wrong with acknowledging or appreciating where those traditions originated.
Is it just a matter of semantics and an objection to the label itself "(whatever nationality)-American"?
OP wasn't arguing that Italian-American culture necessarily resembles Italian culture. Of course they're different. You're implying that the concept of "Italian-American culture" is superficial or illegitimate because it differs from the way that Europeans talk about international or intergenerational identities, and that's some prescriptivist bullshit. "Genuine cultural identity"? Get out of here.
In US. Grew up with family speaking itallian when I was young. I am not itallian, even though one day I may get citizenship there. And, the fact is:
What you are saying just isn't true. People want it to be, but it isn't. If you go from your house to someone else's, it is the same, maybe lunch is different. If you go from a British house to a French one, so much is different, exponentially more so. That doesn't even take into account the surrounding infrastructure.
The cold hard truth is that everyone who is actually Itallian is laughing at you for thinking otherwise..
Come on dude it's a white centric thing to make them feel more ethnic. No one else does this, even in the US. What you're describing is locality pride so someone should be proud to be from a certain state. Not claiming relation/influence from a European country. Immigrants in the US are the first to want to call themselves American while racists refuse to accept that while saying they're Irish or whatever the fuck.
This is just bs. Immigrants from all over refer to themselves as hyphenated Americans. It is absolutely not just white people.
Europeans get upset over this because they hate immigrants and immigrant culture in general, and have absolutely no understanding of it and no willingness to learn or open their minds about it.
Lol melting pot
Do they speak a different language, have their own celebrations or social groups?
yes. There are still people who speak an Italian dialect, there are even people in the US who speak a German dialect or even Chinese. And they have their own celebrations beside the American events. Like many Chinese-American families have been there for generations and still speak Chinese and celebrate Chinese holidays, should they stop calling themselves Chinese-American?
That's just being part of a minority no matter where you live. White Americans don't all celebrate the same things and don't all talk the same way, with some of them being nigh impossible to understand if you weren't raised around people who speak like them, yet they're just called Americans. Hell, if you were raised in the USA and have Danish parents no one will call you a Danish-American as long as you don't have an accent, but if you are of Latino origins and your family has lived on US soil since before the USA was a thing you will be called a Latin-American. It's just racism.
Speaking a heritage language or celebrating occasional holidays doesn't justify claiming a nationality you don't possess.
Most "hyphenated Americans" cherry-pick pleasant cultural elements while remaining disconnected from the contemporary realities of those countries. The vast majority don't speak their ancestral languages or meaningfully participate in authentic cultural practices.
There's a significant difference between recent immigrants maintaining strong cultural ties and 4th/5th generation Americans with minimal connection claiming the same identity. Americans also inconsistently apply this logic, often identifying with only one ancestral line while ignoring others.
When "Irish-Americans" visit Ireland, locals don't recognize them as Irish in any meaningful sense—revealing the fundamental disconnect between claiming an identity and being accepted as authentic by actual members of that culture.
These hyphenated identities ultimately function as American cultural constructs rather than genuine connections to the nations they reference.
No one is claiming a nationality. They're claiming an ethnicity, a heritage. You being hung up on this distinction is on you. Not the people you go out of your way to misinterpret.
So when does the heritage end? As I said, they don't have much Irish anymore
Why do you even care? Some of them still have living relatives who came from the old country.
Sometimes, yes, yes.
Nah, that's a load of bullshit, the only cultural aspect to it is racism. It's just used as a way to divide people, there's "real Americans" and then there's the rest.
There's a shit ton of black Americans that will never just be called Americans even though their family has lived on US soil much longer than the family of some of the white people who are just called Americans.
And then you have Asian Americans, who just want to be considered Americans. Probably every American born Asian has been asked at least once in their life "Where are you from?" and has their [location in the US] answer rejected with "No where are you really from?", as if it's impossible for an Asian to be American born - they must be foreign born and an immigrant. Asking about ethnic origin, ancestry, or even family are more semantically accurate terms that won't make the person questioned feel like they don't belong.
I'm a French-german-dutch-viking-celt-englishman.
I am a Meat Popsicle.
I... I understood that reference.
I know this is difficult for people in Europe to understand. And they hate it when a US tourist goes to visit x country and says “I’m x”.
We never really had a unifying cultural identity as pretty much everyone was immigrants. (Except of course for Native Americans, but their culture was basically eliminated.)
This is why we have terms like African American or Asian American or Irish American. When a black person moves from Africa to England, they don’t call themselves “African English”, they just call themselves English. A lot of this has to do with the power structure which separates us and the underlying racial hierarchy imposed by the ruling class for two centuries. Most European countries do not have this same level of diversity. And whatever diversity they have, the reasons for it are very different.
I call BS.
I'm Canadian and my parents immigrated here from England before I was born. I have a UK passport as well as a Canadian passport.
I'm not English-Canadian, I'm just Canadian. No one hyphenates in Canada, and you cannot say that Canada has any more unifying cultural heritage than the USA.
I understand the different cultural groups, though factually it's incorrect. The main issue is Americans coming to their respective country of descent, and portraying themselves as, for example, Dutch. They're not Dutch whatsoever, their language, customs, culture, and nationality are different. It's incorrect and frankly pathetic.
I believe the USA would be better off if people would just drop the grouping and start being Americans.
Racism, that's the word you're looking for! So well implemented that the victims keep it going without any influence from the group that "has the right" to just call itself American without any prefix.
I was born and raised by my dad whether I liked it or not but I disowned him too.
Oh, I guess that’s where we differ. My family is from Leipzig, and the “German culture” (which is largely different from that of Americans in my particular state) was something engrained in me since birth.
I also spent 1/3 of my life visiting family in Germany.
But more importantly, my comment was mostly a remark about the idiocy of American politics, and how I’d like to distance myself from the notion of “Americanism” as much as possible, even on a genetic level.
It’s not that serious 😅
My family is so full of wankery about being Irish and I fucking hate it. If you can't move back to Ireland and regain citizenship based upon ancestry you aren't fucking Irish.
I think it's a way for people to separate themselves from any last shred of responsibility for the country they reside in. They really are simply pieces of American shit just like me.
The desire to disassociate is strong among Americans.
It's like being an eighth native American and claiming heritage without being a member of a tribe.
Yeah my kids are 1/8 and I encouraged them to learn about that part of their heritage but no, they’re just American.