Amaros
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross
quote:
ORIGINAL: Iskander
I'm not knocking the habit, just trying to understand the hows and why's of something that is uniquely american...
Iskander...
It really is just that- an American cultural quirk. Probably partially due to how the society and overall culture has been shaped over the past 300 years and its overall present identity built on the idea of total immigration to somehow make an amalgam of international cultures who feel tightly bound to their "new world."
It is "very American" to highly value being "American."
Good answer, I think, cultural diversity, as opposed to racial identity is just that: it's a way of preserving cultural identity in homogenizing culture, which happens to be predominantly English/German - there are a lot of Germanic undertones to the dominant culture, a certian chauvinistic jingoism, unfortunately happens to be part of both English and German cultures.
Maintaining cultural identities, and preserving culturla diversity within the dominant culture, can help mediate some of the underlying tensions, and promote tolerance and acceptance - if the Irish or Scotch can preserve the aspects of their culture that they cherish, so can the Native Americans, and that allows some of those cultural values that migh otherwise vanish without trace, to percolate into the common culture.
It's really not much different than Europeans, it's just that our cultural borders are more fluid: i.e., there is a distinction between Serbs and Germans, and Afrikaner connotes a distinction between White South Africans and Blacks, or at least is seems so to me, but I'm no expert.
There are some distinct demarkations in terms of neighborhoods in larger cities here, but it would be hard to find a particular state, or even city where one culture predominates over another in any highly visible way - save perhaps Texas, which has a very distinctive Anglo-Saxon/Germanic culture - (an Anglo Saxon tendency to lump together in under almost slumlike conditions, even when surrounded by open land, and a punitive, almost sadistic legal culture, reminicent of both Anglo-Saxon medival despotism and Teutonic strictness) but even that has been somewhat mediated in recent decades, and a certian degree of liberalism is evident even in some smaller communities - liek everybody else they have eperienced the demographic changes brought about by proffessional migration from urban to rural areas.
Minnesota is full of Swedes and Norwegians (where my paternal immigrant ancestors are from), California full of Oakie refugees form the dust bowl (Anglo-Saxon, mixed), etc., but even in these places, there is a vibrant cultural diveristy openly evident.
In other words, our divsions tend to be cultural rather than geographic - ulike the French, who are from France, the Swedes, who are from Sweden, etc, to say in America you are from Chicago for example, conveys a certian amount of information about your cultural identity, in terms of how Chicagoans act (tough, don't take any shit, but generlaly freindly, or at least neutral - think Sam Spade), or New York (pushy, verbal), but nothing really about your subculture: a Black man from Chicago doesn't act significantly different from a White guy from Chicago, with minor deviations, i.e., either might be yuppies, or hood rats, republican or democrat, independent, etc., which are still more layers of identity.
So if you hyphenate, you are simply adding a bit of extra information concerning your cultural identity, which mostly might boil down to whether you prefer lefsa, motza, or tortillas, and it's not all that common to hear and individual hyphenate; it's generally reserved for groups, and group activities: Irish-American parades, etc. - come to think of it, I've rarely head anybody describe themselves as X-American, it's usually an abstraction used in the third person.
Is that uncomplicated enough for you Iskander? Lol.
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RE: Sick of PC - 
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niger (1758), prob. a borrowing from English (although this may perh. represent a borrowing of NEGER n.).
forms and etymological note s.v.
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