I’ve been trying to pin point exactly why I find Americans asserting “I’m Irish” etc to be so weird and I think the issue for me is that America treats genetics as identity.

Like, it treats genetics as culture. It reduces ethnicity to a question of genes.

To be fair, if your grandmother spoke Italian at home and you have a family recipe for pasta sauce then yeah sure you can celebrate that and that does form part of your identity.

But the “my great great great great grandfather came from Ireland therefore I support the IRA for reasons of tribal loyalty” that’s the part I find weird. It reminds me of supporting a football team.

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

In that our experience of identity though whiteness is superficial it makes sense we have no innate ability to comprehend identity as anything other than that kind of superficial.

Conversely we are trained to treat blackness as all encompassing. So I guess the synthesis of irishness is to assume it is all encompassing but also have no idea what that is so we just replicate whiteness but again.

I wonder if we have any data, cause when did the Irish become white? I know the Italians got accepted into whiteness in the 70s-80s. I can't think though when the Irish became white

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

I would set the timing to be JFK becoming president and the Catholic Church being usefully anti-communist.

Maybe the civil rights era? For the progressives, it’s a logical extension of civil rights. For the conservatives, they’re a welcome ally against other even less white groups?

Guessing.