Originally Posted by DontRunMeOver

I second that point.

My best friend at uni is Irish and she finds it kind of ridiculous that an American would actually insist they were 'Irish'. If you haven't grown up in a certain country and absorbed the cultural values and behavioural patterns of that place then it seems a bit naive to associate yourself so closely with the people there. In terms of physical appearance, there is nothing much to differentiate between and Irish-American, a German-American, a British-American, a South-African-American, a French-American...

African-Americans, Asian-Americans and possibly 'Hispanics' have much more reason to identify with each other, as their physical appearance means that they will inevitably be grouped, by other people and themselves, into certain categories which are seperate to those which white americans are grouped into. By this I mean the same mental seperations we might make between thin and fat, tall and short etc. Everybody you meet (apart from blind people) notices your physical appearance and makes some kind of judgement. When you are visibly a member of a ethnic minority - in America this means 'not being white' - you have to be aware of it and you have to accept that this will inform a lot of what people think of you on first impressions. Part of accepting this involves describing yourself as Whatever-American. You will be asked it on all kinds of forms, from dating agencies to college applications, and it probably becomes almost as essential as knowing if you're male or female.

I take this to be pretty true, don't know about you.

My OPINION is that white people, american or otherwise, who live in a place where white people are in the majority have no good reason to care about their specific origins, beyond realising that other people will describe them as white. Thus, terms like Irish-American etc. just seem pretentious. Why? Because nobody else cares!

Ok, that wasn't really a point, but I see what you're getting at. I'll ask all of my German friends about this next time I'm in Germany. See what they think and then get back to you... Maybe you can ask your German friends about it too.