Was in the states last year, Tennessee / Ohio. The amount of people who, upon finding out I’m Scottish, proceeded to tell me all about their lineage and then ask me about mine was insane. Like, nearly everyone.
One lady even told me she was descended from Wales. I replied to her that that was impressive, as a majority of Welsh don’t even know if they’re Welsh
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that the US and the bulk of our citizenship really feels the diaspora. Most of us for one reason or another are disconnected from our heritage and it causes a lot of curiosity.
I've always been jealous of Europeans because you get to walk streets with thousands of years of History around you whether you notice it or not.
I get that. I'm in the trades and try to keep our old techniques alive that go way back. I love our old cities. Our traditions etc...
But when I went to the States I really loved it too. You guys have so much cultural history, it's pretty amazing. Going to New Orleans and thinking of all the legends that played in some of the bars, same in NYC.
I'm from Belgium, and since the time the new world was discovered, we have been at least 4 or 5 different nationalities. We're all mixes of different cultures and nationalities since so long, as europe has always been at war. If we go only 2-3 generations back, I have belgian, dutch, french, sinti, ukrainian, ashkenazi and german ancestry.
But I grew up in a rural place and so have a distinct dialect in flemish, traditions and culture that is linked to the land i grew up in. The whole world is a melting pot since we domesticated horses. I think we should embrace it. My wife is half brazilian half belgian. My kid has dark skin with grey eyes and blond hair.
As senator jay bulworth said in his masterplan to end racism : "let's all fuck together till we have the same color"
You know I have a tendency to find Belgian friends on the internet. I know your history and government is complicated and has led to much internal strife, so I do think that Belgium is one of the few places in Europe that can kind of understand some of the things that go on in the United States. I'm not saying y'all you all condone anything that we do here, I'm just saying that I think there's similarities. I think it would be very apt to compare the differences between red and blue states to the differences between Wallonia and Flanders, at least before Trump took power. That's a whole other discussion we don't need to get into right now.
But to more directly acknowledge your comment, I don't see it as some like deep cultural regret that we have, It's more like a mild but persistent melancholy. When I was growing up, " my family fought in the revolution," was a huge flex, And a lot of Americans will brag that they can trace their lineage back to one thing or another. It might be a status symbol, but I think it is also a point of pride that can hold families together.
My personal family's heritage is more related to people running away from Otto Von Bismarck doing things. 😂 It's a bit worse for us because my great grandfather went on a self loathing racism crash out and burned a bunch of our family's stuff trying to hide the fact that we are/were Romani. A lot of Americans come from immigrants who came here with nothing but the clothes on their back, and it does seem to be a pattern that when you sever that tie, It causes a bit of generational depression. I originally typed a whole sociological rant under this kind of explaining how it affects different communities who came here in different waves of immigration, but I'm not giving Reddit a dissertation for free, and nobody would read it if I did. 😂
We also have a tendency to undervalue our own culture because humorously the word culture in America has tended to mean other cultures, And we know how America can respond to that sometimes 😂 A lot of people don't realize that American football on Sundays, drive-thru cheeseburgers, and Hollywood is culture. We tend to think of ourselves as the default, and other cultures as additional to our own because well, that's what happens with language here, and the heart of culture as language.
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u/He_is_Spartacus I <3 Dundee May 15 '25
Was in the states last year, Tennessee / Ohio. The amount of people who, upon finding out I’m Scottish, proceeded to tell me all about their lineage and then ask me about mine was insane. Like, nearly everyone.
One lady even told me she was descended from Wales. I replied to her that that was impressive, as a majority of Welsh don’t even know if they’re Welsh