Athena's American Conversation: Ethnicity.: The conversation about ethnicity and whether ethnicity can be a choice or not is heated because it can be interpreted many ways from differe...
Since our in-class conversation about ethnicity and race and since reading this post from Athena, I've been pondering two sorts of "American ethnicity."
One sort would be identified by characteristics most Americans share (these would be common values such as freedom as choice or character traits such as a mingling of dissatisfaction and optimism or the tendency to speak loudly and take up lots of space) and that non-Americans easily recognize. In addition this sort of ethnicity might be grounded in the powerful mythology of a shared ancestor, namely someone like Washington who obviously is not everyone's biological forefather, but is referred to as the "father of the country".
A second sort would be regional. This might be the "federation" model via the melting pot model. So that over many generations the residents of each geographic area meld into distinctive groups that obscure the particular mix of folks who were their earlier. One recognizes the Pacific-Northwesterner (or more narrowly the Portlander, see Marissa's post) or the New Englander or the Texan by style and sometime substance.
I'm not sure that I'm convinced that either of these two sorts of American ethnicity has overcome the older notion of the hyphenated American who claims both an identity based in origin prior to residence in the USA and an American identity. But, as a though exercise they help me to think about Athena's assertion that she can recognize Americans as being such.
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