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Why so many white Americans claim to be native? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 day ago by choihanna@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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For some reason when I'm talking to an American from the North East and the fact that I'm mixed comes up they always say they aren't white they're actually native because his grandpa once mentioned something about a Cherokee ancestor.

It's always Cherokee, no other tribe but that one. And it's always the whitest looking person ever, straight up 6ft tall blue eyed and blond guy.

I get it, I'm mostly white too, Spanish and Slavic. But even tho I'm not mostly native American I still look native enough that people think I'm Asian.

But when your ancestry has been so diluted over the generations... You're not native. It's not just that you don't look native, it's also that you don't even participate in the culture.

Dude you're just a farm boy from Philadelphia you're probably more Amish than Cherokee, if that supposed ancestor is even real at all and not just some random claim by some of your ancestors to have a "right over these lands".

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[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

The American identity sucks if you're white skinned, because of the whole genocide thing, also it's too new, too cosmopolitan, and not real to most other people.

I dunno American Identity sometimes seems more real outside the US.
There's the fact that we constantly tell americans who don't speak a word of german or french that they are neither, they are american to us, no matter where their great-great-grandparents were from.
And then there is the time when an aquaintance of mine one day seemed very happy and I asked him why he was so chipper. He said he'd figured out that over here, he wasn't "african american", he was just seen as "the american" and that had never happened at home. Yes he clearly was recognized as black, but it never once came up as a qualifier on his identity.