Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT Strips 3686-3690 (26th February to 2nd March 2018)

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jesslc:

--- Quote from: efindumb on 05 Mar 2018, 21:50 ---
--- Quote from: jesslc on 05 Mar 2018, 21:36 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 05 Mar 2018, 21:22 ---
--- Quote from: cesium133 on 04 Mar 2018, 09:37 ---I find it interesting whenever I see that map that the South seems to have decided that 'American' ancestry means 'White.'

--- End quote ---
If I recall correctly, most of those regions are of largely English descent.

--- End quote ---
If so, why aren't they marked with the colour that's listed for English ancestry (light purple)?

I am also very puzzled by what "American" ancestry is meant to mean...?? (Since it apparently doesn't mean American Indian or English or any of the other ancestries that have a distinct colour). Although I note the image does say US Census bureau so if that's anything like our census, all it means is that the majority people in those areas report that their ancestry is American.

--- End quote ---

It means they identify as American rather than another country. It could be people not having a national identity or not knowing their family's national origin or they could be people who simply identify with American and American alone. It's not had to grasp, if you are having an issue with it maybe you have a bit too rigid of an idea of national origins.

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Well I don't know how the census worded the question but the graph does say it's about ancestry, not identity. I identify as Australian (and Australian alone) but if you ask me about my ancestry, that's different question with a different answer. Most of the Australians I know would make a similar distinction between their identity/nationality and their ancestry.

I am puzzled by it (which is not the same as having an issue with it). I guess not knowing their family origins could explain it. Or maybe their understanding of what ancestory means is different to what the rest of the country understands by it (where the majority in each county has listed German or English or African American or American Indian, or...)

Zebediah:
It’s self-reported, so it means whatever the respondents believed it to mean.

It’s a known quirk of lower-class white Southerners to respond “Murrican!” when asked what their ancestry is. It’s not that they don’t know where their ancestors came from - it’s that they don’t think it’s relevant.

I speak as someone who grew up as one of them.

ckridge:
If your family has been here more than three generations, you are likely to be something like German/Irish/Italian/Black/Mexican/Sami, and to have no idea what to say your ethnic heritage is.

A lot of the the original settlers of  Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee were Scots-Irish, that is, Scottish Presbyterians who went to Ireland to farm land taken from Irish Catholics, and who then, finding that the English treated them no better than they did the Irish, emigrated to North America. They had a confused ethnic background to start out with.

sitnspin:
I know mine primarily because one half has been here for thousands of years and the other has only been here since the 1940s.

Historically, a big part of the US cultural narrative is that once you become a citizen you cease to be what you were and just become "American". Even if it doesn't actually play out that way, there was a strong push to promote that narrative.

ckridge:
Something to that, too. I used to say I was Irish, meaning Irish-American, because the Irish parts of my family talked family history more than any of the other parts, by dint of talking more than any of the other parts. Then I wound up working with recent Irish immigrants, and it came to me that, no, they are Irish, and I am American. It's not a big deal, but there is just no question about it.

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