#americacentrism
becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:
There’s a trend on TikTok about white Americans fighting back against white Europeans who say they’re not allowed to claim their European backgrounds and while I’m all about about white Americans getting in touch w/ their ancestry…
I become incredibly frustrated at how uneducated they are about that alleged ancestry. Every time I see the term “Scots-Irish” I can feel a blood vessel pop because they think that means Scottish and Irish and it’s like they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about or the history or geopolitics involved. That’s Ulster Scots and they’re colonizers in Ireland. ❤️
I got blocked on TikTok for pointing out Scottish colonialism LMAO
Like this is precisely the problem. It’s an ethnonationist historical pity party. You don’t actually want to learn the history of the places you supposedly hail from. It’s pathetic
A lot of US citizens are not willing to understand that to speak about heritage as if its nationality (for example saying someone is Scottish when no member of their family has left Idaho in the last century) is DEEPLY insulting in a significant number of European countries.
We saw this a lot after the last World Cup. Lots of people were talking about how the French football team was “really” African and US tv shows made fun of the French Ambassador for correcting this and saying “no, these men are French”. None of them realising that by calling the French football team African they were, in the eyes of French people, invalidating the Frenchness of these young men. “They’re African” is the language of the French Far Right, in fact it is the language of the far right in many European countries, aiming to invalidate the contributions of immigrants to our various societies.
I get pissed off when US-ians say Chicken Tikka Masala isn’t British or was “stolen” from India because to me that erases the contribution to British culture of the person who invented it. Don’t tell me that someone who moved here and created a dish that was so popular that it changed our entire nation’s relationship with food ISN’T British. I will fight you over it. That person is arguably far more British than I am.
When challenged about claiming national identity from countries that they are in no way a part of many US-ians will make the argument that they are “more Scottish than you” or something similar. This is almost always an argument based on blood quotient or them partaking in two or three stereotyped activities that are associated with the culture, ESPECIALLY heavy drinking or violence. It is not a good way to endear yourself to members of a culture you are trying to ingratiate yourself with by calling them all wife beating drunks and claiming that your own drunken violence makes you a member of their community.
And as for the blood quotient, many of us Europeans who have had unfortunate encounters with people like this take great offence to people who have never set foot in our country claiming that a 23% DNA match from one of those fraudulent genetic heritage tests (seriously, literally all their data is fake and you’re paying them to steal information about you, stop using them) makes them a more valid member of our community than our Polish neighbour who has lived here for the last 15 years.
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS POST TRYING TO EXPLAIN THE US POINT OF VIEW ON HERITAGE.
I KNOW the US view on heritage. I hear it all the damn time. What US people need to hear is just how insulting the way they speak about heritage is to those of us who live in these countries. When you speak to us remember that these words have different meanings to us and you are being incredibly disrespectful to valued and loved members of our communities and invalidating their identities as members of our communities in order to set yourself in their places.
Also anyone who claims the US “doesn’t have a culture” so you have to claim ours gets an instant block. Please consider just how privileged you are to have your national culture dominate international life. What you see as “default culture” is YOUR culture. You’re buying into Imperialism when you see US things as the default and anything else as “other”.
TL;DR: When people from the US speak about their heritage from other countries they are often unknowingly using language that people from those countries find insulting and is often used to attack immigrant groups within those countries. People from the US need to be more thoughtful in their use of language and make an effort to speak about cultures they wish to claim membership of in ways that are respectful of those cultures and their current members.
I do not have big enough hands to give this the round of applause it deserves
