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Thread: Kiss me, I'm Greek!

  1. #1

    Default Kiss me, I'm Greek!

    ...from the photography thread...

    While I don't consider myself "thems fightin' words" Greek, I was raised as one. My grandmother made my dad get baptized into the Greek Orthodox church, we learned a bit of Greek culture/traditions from the grandmother, learned a little Greek. My fathers background, English and Russian was rarely ever brought up.

    So my question to you, since many of you 'mericans are mutts like me, do you identify yourself as one of your multiple nationalities/genetic lines? Can you only claim you are something if you are born there, or can you claim something when you are immersed in the culture? Or only if both your parents are of the same genetic line?

    Should we just call it bullshit and say we are 'merican. How many generation mixings does it take to lose ones ability to claim to be anything?

  2. #2
    Senior Member Flixy's Avatar
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    I always found it incredibly confusing when Americans called themselves Greek, or Irish, or whatever, when they meant that they were not actually Greek or Irish, but their ancestors generations before them were.
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  3. #3
    Yup pure 'Merican. Mudding and off roading all day every day

  4. #4
    So, as soon as genes are mixed, you lose your families heritage of both parties?

  5. #5
    Well, no, because that would've started with the 2nd pair of genes ever to be mixed, so nothing afterwards would've mattered.

    I've got a half-German, quarter-Russian, quarter-English background, but it's never something that's brought up or that I even think about. I claim to be an American because it's where I live, was born, and identify with.

    I hate how people call black people here African-American. I always insist that I be called German-Russian-English-American when someone insists on saying AA. They're black, I'm white, we're both Americans, on with the discussion. It's so absurdly overused (AA I mean) that I've heard people refer to full-blooded Africans living in Africa as African-Americans. THEY'RE BLACK. THEY'RE AFRICAN.

  6. #6
    It's tough to figure it all out sometimes. Some people have first generation parents, and so are more "pure" than the rest of us.

    My mother was practically raised Greek as well; her mother was full Greek. Her parents came from Greece in 1910s but my grandmother was born here in the States. My mother's dad (my Grandaddy) had a rough childhood so much of his history and family wasn't involved in her upbringing as much as her Greek side. (You know how it is, big Greek family tend to overpower everyone else anyway ) But his background was English, Canadian-French, Native American, etc.

    On my Dad's side there are several backgrounds to claim; English, Irish, Austrian, Canadian, etc.

    Then you get into my husband's genealogy which involves a large amount of Italian/Lithuanian influence, and also English and Irish.

    Too confusing when you get to our generation, and even worse for the little one.

    While I plan to give her as much information on our ancestors as I can remember, in the end we are still American. I do identify better with some of my backgrounds because of the traditions and lifestyle I was raised in. But in the end I love that I have so much of a background in my blood. I like being a mutt.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Bitter Jeweler View Post
    Should we just call it bullshit and say we are 'merican. How many generation mixings does it take to lose ones ability to claim to be anything?
    None, depending on how someone is engaging with that identity. It's like the people who have discovered they had an ancestor of an unexpected different race, or found out that they were once a different religion (EG Madeline Albright).

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Bitter Jeweler View Post
    So, as soon as genes are mixed, you lose your families heritage of both parties?
    Ethnicity comes from your mother. Well, that is unless you're the first "black" President or you want to get some of the proceeds from Indian casinos...then you get to select which side you get your ethnicity from. But I'm a Heinz 57 and proud that no ethnicity claims me.
    Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
    If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Being View Post
    Ethnicity comes from your mother.
    Can't tell if you're joking or being cynical with a very strange worldview.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Can't tell if you're joking or being cynical with a very strange worldview.
    You're not really Jewish, are you?
    Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
    If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?

  11. #11
    Dad was adopted so I'm clueless on that front. Makes it real easy claim American, which I like. If people ask about my heritage I follow the family tree my mom built. Which makes me German Mennonite (lazy Amish) that stayed Pennsylvania Dutch up until my Grandma.

  12. #12
    Cat, are we Americans just because we were born here? If you moved to Germany and had a baby, is that baby German, or American?


    I know, I'm being silly.


    Hey, where's GGT?

  13. #13
    Senior Member Lor's Avatar
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    At work, a few colleagues often call me 'Mongrel' due to the mixed nature of my background. My mothers side of the family are from India but my fathers side is a tad bit diverse (overstatement?). My grandmother is from Italy and my grandfather is a Greek Cypriot.

  14. #14
    Due the size of the country, I actually doubt that there are many 'pure' Swiss even if you only consider the last 2-3 generations.
    "Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt

  15. #15
    Just Floatin... termite's Avatar
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    I'm an Aussie, not a Scottish Aussie, or an English Aussie or whatever, just an Aussie. I just don't associate myself with any other "ethnic" group.

    Though I am well aware of my "heritage" and have studied it in some depth.

    A brief history...

    In 1829 the first members of my family (on my dads side)came to Western Australia as "free" settlers, that is to say that they were not convicts - they actually "chose" to come to the most isolated place in the world to start a new life with new opportunities including the prospect of "owning" land.

    I find that I tend to associate myself more with that pioneering view and that attitude they brought with them rather than an emotional attachment to the country they left of their own free will. My dads father was quite different, he embraced most things that he saw as being from the "old country" despite being a 5th generation Australian himself.

    The country they left? Even that is complicated! They left Scotland for England in the 1700's before then deciding that it was a brave new world for them and apparently America was the first choice but for some reason now lost to the vagaries of time they ended up bound for the brand new colony of Fremantle.

    So here I sit in my humble home in a beautiful modern city in a country that holds its own in most ways and has vast wealth both in an economic sense and in natural wonders of all kinds. It also just happens to be as far from anywhere else on this globe as you can get and I thank my forebears for their choice - I don't know if I'd have been able to make such a bold move.

    My mother was born in England, came here as a 3 year old and has only ever known her life as an Aussie so while I could claim some English & Scottish heritage I tend to focus on the generations of my family that are/were Australians - this includes my mum and her parents and siblings. My mums father was English, he fought in WW2 from 1939 to 1945 and when the war was finally over he packed up his young family and brought them to Australia in much the same way and for much the same reasons as my fathers ancestors 180 odd years ago. He was born an Englishman but he died peacefully at our home exactly 50 years after WW2 ended and was very much an Aussie.

    I would love to visit Scotland and England someday and I have to admit that some of the pics posted by Steely Glint of Loch this or Downs that do stir in me a desire to see them with my own eyes. Hopefully fate will allow me that opportunity.
    Such is Life...

  16. #16
    If anyone asks, I always just say American. My ancestry is French on both sides, but it's been a few generations that the families have been in the States, so I don't see any point to saying that I'm French-American.

    Now, in the highly unlikely scenario that I ever have children, they would be able to claim a dual ethnicity, since I now live in Germany and I'm engaged to a German.
    I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way...

  17. #17
    Let sleeping tigers lie Khendraja'aro's Avatar
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    Polish / German, I suppose.
    When the stars threw down their spears
    And watered heaven with their tears:
    Did he smile his work to see?
    Did he who made the lamb make thee?

  18. #18
    :waves to Bitter:

    My mother was adopted. No ethnic "surprises" in her 3 kids or my 2, but her lineage ends there (unless my kids breed). My paternal side was all WASPy English, but the surname is very German.

    It's fun hanging out with my sister's husband's Greek family, but they'll never really consider her truly Greek, just married to one.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Bitter Jeweler View Post
    Cat, are we Americans just because we were born here? If you moved to Germany and had a baby, is that baby German, or American?


    I know, I'm being silly.


    Hey, where's GGT?

    No you're not being silly. It's the big debate that everyone has about anchor babies.

    Actually, one of my good friends was born at a base in Iceland, so technically he could claim dual citizenship until he was 18. But he's always been American.

    I wonder what my cousin's kids are, come to think of it. Their mom is American, dad Canadian, and they were born in Canada. Now everyone lives here as of 3 years ago. Hmm.

    It's a mess, what one considers themselves. There's no right answer I guess....but you do have to choose where your nationality lies as far as citizenship goes. Beyond that how you identify yourself is your choice.

    I don't mind people having hyphenated American names if that makes them feel good about themselves. Like being said, I'm a Heinz 57 so no worries to me.

  20. #20
    Oh BTW, my heritage up to my grandparents, 50% Swiss, 25% German, 25% Dutch.
    "Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Knux897 View Post
    Yup pure 'Merican. Mudding and off roading all day every day
    That's not an American trait, it's a redneck trait.


    My father is half Schwarzwald German, half Sudetenland Czech (i.e. probably German, since my paternal gradmother's family spoke primarily German). On the other side, my mom's father was pure Scots, while her mother was illegimate, so father unknown. My maternal great grandmother, however, was German.

    We sort of think of ourselves as being of fairly German descent, for a couple of reasons. First, my mother is somewhat estranged from her family, and they didn't have much identity at all. Second, my father's family was raised with a very strong German identity. He and his sibs grew up in a small Nebraska town where 95% of the residents and surrounding farms consisted of German Catholics. The church, the heart of town, was very German. My dad as oldest spoke German until he was five and entered school. And they have a very germanic upbringing, including a strong bias against the French. I'd even say my upbringing was fairly German. Then also we are in touch with my German relatives: they visit over here, we visit over there, and we all exchange Christmas greetings (I've been three times). One cousin, a Franciscan priest, makes it to all American family branch weddings. They are the descendants of my grandfather's sister. So there are some moderate ties there of multiple sorts.


    It is funny how Americans do this. Even though the country is a melting pot, many still have strong ethnic ties. In part this may be because different ethnic groups really do have cultural tendencies and even religious subcultures, and so identifying yourself with a group is actually quite informative. Also, many Americans are only one or two generations removed from immigrants, so that heritage still resonates strongly. That certainly true in my dad's family, so I get what Bitter is talking about there, even though I, too, am American mutt.

    Quote Originally Posted by NGS View Post
    I hate how people call black people here African-American. I always insist that I be called German-Russian-English-American when someone insists on saying AA. They're black, I'm white, we're both Americans, on with the discussion. It's so absurdly overused (AA I mean) that I've heard people refer to full-blooded Africans living in Africa as African-Americans. THEY'RE BLACK. THEY'RE AFRICAN.
    As for African American, there's a helluva lot more going on there than with other groups, like German-American or Greek-American. I think denying this is just being insensitive and clueless. What do you make of yourself when you grow up with the heritage of slaves? Worse, what if your parents grew up in Jim Crow South, or fled Jim Crow South in the Great Migration? These are people whose heritage was stripped from them by force, and then almost all of them have rapists' genes in them. Furthermore, a much larger fraction than any other ethnic group feels abandoned by the US, so I'd guess that the relatively pure patriotism that most of us can feel is sullied by something dirty. Their grandparents were forced to fight in segregated outfits in WWII. Judging them for calling themselves African American is really low. They carry baggage that we on the outside cannot actually imagine. To blithely dismiss it really is asinine. Pop your head out of your ass and try putting yourself in somebody's else's shoes for a change. Maybe their life experience is radically different than yours, eh? So stop making assumptions that your lily white life is the same as their black life. Probably more than 90% of the time it ain't. A little respect for their different heritage goes a long way.

  22. #22
    Everyone gets to interpret identity how they want. They do so within a social context though, which means that certain claims are more likely to be accepted by the wider society than others. Unlike most European countries, the US has historically been a very homogenizing society (at least partly due to the distance between America and the homelands of the immigrants), which severed most ethnic connections. With urbanization, people started looking for ways to claim a unique identity, which led to the German-American, Irish-American, etc. phenomena. Push comes to shove, most of the hyphenated Americans have very little ties to their ethnic homelands (this hasn't been as true over the last 10-20 years), which means the main purpose of the identities (except for the federally-recognized "minority" groups) has been little more than gossip fodder. We do get some active ethnic lobbies, but they generally limit themselves to a few foreign policy issues and sending some money "home".
    Hope is the denial of reality

  23. #23
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    Dutch on both sides and that for a long while, though there are some suspiciously dark (spanish?) genes going around in my family that I think got mixed in on the side of my maternal grandfather in the 16th century. The other tree quarters are Dutch all the way till the 14th century. Before that things appear to point to what is Germany now.

    I feel like I'm an Amsterdammer though. Born and raised. And that's after only 2 generations on one side (mother)
    Congratulations America

  24. #24
    Do the Greeks here celebrate stuff like Name Day? And is there always a grandma (widow) around wearing black, making Greek foods, and putting doilies on all the table tops?



    Quote Originally Posted by earthJoker View Post
    Oh BTW, my heritage up to my grandparents, 50% Swiss, 25% German, 25% Dutch.
    My ex's mom traced her paternal roots to Switzerland. Maiden name Robinson She married into an Austrian/German family.
    My sister's first husband was Dutch, a Van Ryn.

    Seems to be a lot of German and Greek roots in this forum.
    Last edited by GGT; 11-18-2010 at 05:00 PM.

  25. #25
    I think this is really what you make of it. Most Americans do share some cultural and language (sometimes religious) peculiarities from their countries of origin, but normally it's subsumed under a vast amount of American culture, even after a single generation. It's also a little disingenuous to believe that our ancestors didn't move around their regions of origin before immigrating to the US. I think that ethnic or religious identity might be tied to country of origin more than national identity, though, with some exceptions (and those are generally binational identities with American).

    I suppose I'm some combination of Polish-German-Russian-Danish-Scots/Irish (that last is Ulster Scots for those of you unfamiliar with weird Americanisms), but since all of my grandparents were born here (and some of my g-g-grandparents) it's a little silly to keep track. I certainly share no national identity with any of those countries, though I'm certain I have some cultural/ethnic things in common. I might be a weird case, though, since many of my ancestors never were real citizens of nationals of their home country, so they had different national ties.

    My wife's case is both simpler and weirder - she's a first generation American, but her parents are only nominally Israeli - they are also first generation, and their parents are from some combination of Hungary, Romania, and Germany with a stopover in Argentina (I think?) on the way. Who knows where their families were from - at least one side was living in Budapest but probably hadn't been there for more than a couple of generations. The point is, though, that despite her much more recent American vintage, she has a much stronger American identity than I do, and it's much less diluted by other affiliations.

    Bottom line: it's relatively meaningless.

  26. #26
    Do you think Jews have less connection to their country of origin because they're usually not ethnically from that country?

    I got the no connection thing. My wife goes back on both sides to earlier European settlers of the New World.

  27. #27
    How do you determine whether someone is ethnically from a certain country? Half the English are not descendants of people who lived in England before the 5th century. The figures are probably even higher for Iberians and Maltans. A large chunk of Greeks are descendants of various Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire. Quite a few current Germans are descendants of people who didn't consider themselves Germans as of a century ago. Etc.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  28. #28
    Sure, but if they've been there long enough to identify with the country and it's prevailing culture....

    Are you saying that different countries don't have prevalent cultural traits?

  29. #29
    We're all just Rift Valleyans at the end of the day ...
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    It's actually the original French billion, which is bi-million, which is a million to the power of 2. We adopted the word, and then they changed it, presumably as revenge for Crecy and Agincourt, and then the treasonous Americans adopted the new French usage and spread it all over the world. And now we have to use it.

    And that's Why I'm Voting Leave.

  30. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by ']['ear View Post
    As for African American, there's a helluva lot more going on there than with other groups, like German-American or Greek-American. I think denying this is just being insensitive and clueless. What do you make of yourself when you grow up with the heritage of slaves? Worse, what if your parents grew up in Jim Crow South, or fled Jim Crow South in the Great Migration? These are people whose heritage was stripped from them by force, and then almost all of them have rapists' genes in them. Furthermore, a much larger fraction than any other ethnic group feels abandoned by the US, so I'd guess that the relatively pure patriotism that most of us can feel is sullied by something dirty. Their grandparents were forced to fight in segregated outfits in WWII. Judging them for calling themselves African American is really low. They carry baggage that we on the outside cannot actually imagine. To blithely dismiss it really is asinine. Pop your head out of your ass and try putting yourself in somebody's else's shoes for a change. Maybe their life experience is radically different than yours, eh? So stop making assumptions that your lily white life is the same as their black life. Probably more than 90% of the time it ain't. A little respect for their different heritage goes a long way.
    Awesome argument, tear, and in letting you know it's a strawman I've uncovered some implicit racism in me. I wasn't talking about how black people call themselves African-American, I was talking about how white people overdo it. Of course in saying "people" and meaning "white people" I've clearly got other problems going on...

    Oh and while we're emotional and swearing, fuck you for making assumptions about my "lily white life." Don't claim to know me.
    Last edited by NGS; 11-19-2010 at 02:00 AM.

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