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Originally Posted by pantophobia
it is weird, i forget who it was either but someone here doesn't like irish-americans to call themselves irish either, some weird thing
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I think it's a bit silly as well. It doesn't bother me in the slightest whatever people want to call themselves, but it does make me chuckle sometimes the way Americans or Australians (let's just say white people descending from European colonists or even convicts) seem so keen on claiming some distant heritage... or even being proud of it.
While I was in Australia a few years ago I was working at some dude's sugar cane farm for a while. His grandfather had emigrated from Italy to Australia after world War I(!) and had never gone back. His father was born and grew up in Australia and had never been to Italy and neither had this guy himself, but he couldn't stop talking about Italy-this-Italian-that-blablabla. I just couldn't understand why someone would cling so much on to a heritage that was so distant in both time and space. But what amazed me even more is how proud he seemed to be of that as well. I don't know why anyone would actually be proud of their heritage anyway. It's not an achievement to be born somewhere, neither is it an achievement that your grandfather was born somewhere. I'll never take pride (or embarassment) in "being Dutch" or "being born in the Netherlands". It wouldn't make sense.
One of my uncles traced my family tree (mother's side) back to the 17th or 18th (I don't remember) century somewhere in Germany. I don't know how many generations that goes back, but I'd feel really dumb when I'd start calling myself partly German because of that.