Where is your family from?

[chalgaryn]

Inspired by a comment thread over on Facebook, I've started thinking about where my family is from.  I don't actually remember how many generations back I need to go before I find an immigrant (all of my great-grandparents were born in the US), so my entire family tree has lived in the US for 100+ years and at least 4 generations (~350 yrs for one

Comments

[ukelele]

I think of my genetics as being primarily from Germany and Ireland and England, but I think of myself as being American-full-stop; hyphenations don't sit well with me because my family is similar (most recent immigrant that I know of was 1839, and the ancestors who brought my surname over did so in the 1600s; relatives fought in the Revolution, both sides of the Civil War...For me, genetic heritage is something that's important to how I look -- with all the admittedly important ramifications thereof, in this culture -- and to genetic testing concerns when I was pregnant

[pmb]

Being in a similar situation, I just say "America". When they try to get more specific, I say "No, seriously. We've been here for a long time. It's no longer germane. I don't actually know, except for the one who was on the Mayflower - he came from England." It's a very weird game that people play when they try to get at your "real" roots as if hundreds of years is not enough time to become American.

[kirinn]

While some people are assholes (as has come up in the Facebook version of this same conversation), I doubt most people who ask such questions are trying to prove someone isn't American. You can certainly be plenty American and still have additional cultural heritage that people might find interesting. (Heck some people point to the commonness of it as a defining characteristic of America - which is probably why people feel free asking.) Now, if said pre-American heritage is so far back that you hardly know anything about it, it admittedly doesn't make for much of a conversation.

[pmb]

That's very true, but it has most recently been happening when I was in the company of various europeans who wanted to place me "in the old country", which is a whole different social ball of wax than what you describe. I think largely because I seemed polite, thoughtful, and genteel (STOP LAUGHING! I CAN BE IF I'M TRYING, DAMMIT!), so they kind of wanted to make me one of their own, and were a little weirded out when they couldn't. They sort of had to come to terms with the fact that an actual American could be polite, thoughtful, genteel, and fit in when traveling abroad.

They actually got a little freaked out. :)