if none of your close relatives were born and raised in that place.
if you have no, or only superficial, cultural connections to the place.
if youve never been to the place.
If you have no Connections to people living in the place.
if you do not know the language, history or politics of the place.
It's funny, I don't really disagree with you at all. And yet every one of these applies to me, but...I actually have a valid passport from the other country in question. I could go there tomorrow if I wanted to. So uh, yeah, the list above isn't entirely comprehensive.
I understand the point and am sympathetic to it, but I'm just a bit cautious putting that into practise. Identity is a tricky thing and tightly defining it like that isn't often easy. A lot of immigrants saw assimilation as the peak goal so that their children wouldn't face the racism they did, so some of the latching onto identity is a form of resisting that racism from some people. Further, some oppressed minorities that fit into your definitions; for example, African Americans who still identify strongly with West African or Caribbean connections that fit your description but, due to their non-whiteness, wouldn't be considered fully American for most of America's history.
Again, not to say you aren't correct, but that identity is really slippery and the material reasons for why Americans are that way can make some sense in historical context.
Yeah, again, not disagreeing with you necessarily, just spitballing about identity formation and how it's claimed in various ways. I wrote on this in uni, so got to thinking about it again. All good
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It's funny, I don't really disagree with you at all. And yet every one of these applies to me, but...I actually have a valid passport from the other country in question. I could go there tomorrow if I wanted to. So uh, yeah, the list above isn't entirely comprehensive.
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How would you define this?
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I understand the point and am sympathetic to it, but I'm just a bit cautious putting that into practise. Identity is a tricky thing and tightly defining it like that isn't often easy. A lot of immigrants saw assimilation as the peak goal so that their children wouldn't face the racism they did, so some of the latching onto identity is a form of resisting that racism from some people. Further, some oppressed minorities that fit into your definitions; for example, African Americans who still identify strongly with West African or Caribbean connections that fit your description but, due to their non-whiteness, wouldn't be considered fully American for most of America's history.
Again, not to say you aren't correct, but that identity is really slippery and the material reasons for why Americans are that way can make some sense in historical context.
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Yeah, again, not disagreeing with you necessarily, just spitballing about identity formation and how it's claimed in various ways. I wrote on this in uni, so got to thinking about it again. All good
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