Originally Posted by SoCalGirl (Post 1502581)

I agree with the thought that the longer your family has been in the states the more likely that you're not ethnic any more. But I do want to remind people that when your family has been in the states for a long time your last name is a less dependable indicator of ethnicity.

For example, my last name is English. Most of my ethnic heritage is actually German. Even then there's some fuzzyness if my great great grandfather truly was Bavarian or French. He was the last immigrant that we're aware of and he was still here in time to enlist in the Civil War! Most of his daughters moved to the South. One even ran off and married a Cuban before divorcing and settling in Atlanta! The point is, names mean nothing these days. :D

eta: Drole kind of beat to my point. :)

Originally Posted by bluefish81 (Post 1504513)

My mom does occassionally like to tease him about it since her family has been here so long.

Originally Posted by AKA_Monet (Post 1504499)

Another irony is that there may be 2-3 "lighter complexion" non-African ancestors that somehow co-mingled and produced offspring that wound up "darker hued". Then over time, that darker complexion became dominant in the rest of the progenitors... Then ever 1-2 generations, the lighter complexion pops up.

It is called Epigenetics and the generalized skin coloring genetics and systems may be under that level of control.

An interesting fictional account book is "Black Like Me" that all the current Black writers of the day severely criticized it...

Originally Posted by bluefish81 (Post 1504513)

I think this is interesting re: last names not being indicative of your hertitage. My last name is very German. My great-great grandfather came to the US in the early 1860s. (No, I didn't miss a generation there, my great-grandfather married later in life and then had 8 kids.) The name hasn't changed since then.
My heritage is actually over 50% German - my dad is 100% German - my mom is probably about 25%. About half of my mom's side of the family has been in the states since around the late 1600s/early 1700s. And the heritage on my mom's side is German/Scottish/English/Welsh.

Perhaps it's just that my dad's side of the family hasn't been in the U.S. long enough. My mom does occassionally like to tease him about it since her family has been here so long.

Originally Posted by fantASTic (Post 1504538)

Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, is non-fiction.

Originally Posted by AKA_Monet (Post 1504574)

Sorry, I meant "Black No More"... It is a sci fi/futuristic type book. :o

Originally Posted by AOII Angel (Post 1502399)

As someone raised in the deep south, not many people identify with anything other than being southern. I have German, Swedish, Italian and a small bit of English blood, but I and my family don't specifically identify with any of them.

Originally Posted by REE1993 (Post 1504763)

I agree with this statement. My husband is from "the south". Now, he has blood lines from all over Europe and even native American, but he grew up all over the south (military brat). I am in New England, and half italian, and a quarter each Hungarian and Lithuanian. But I grew up in an Italian household (my dad is off the boat). People ask - I say I am Italian.

Growing up, kids identified each other by their heritage. Even the Catholic churches/schools were different - you had the Italian, the Spanish, the Irish, the Russian.

Originally Posted by honeychile (Post 1504522)

LOL - my mother used to tell my daddy that she had ancestors in every war this country has ever fought. He would respond, "Yeah, they couldn't get along with anybody!"

Originally Posted by Sistermadly (Post 1504428)

It's nice to know I'm not the only one. :)

I remember when my husband (then fiance) saw my birth certificate for the first time. Poor little naive Canadian boy, he was so shocked.

Originally Posted by AOII Angel (Post 1502399)

As someone raised in the deep south, not many people identify with anything other than being southern.

Originally Posted by MysticCat (Post 1505488)

Although I do not live in the Deep South, I would agree that this is my experience. The one exception I see rather frequently with many Southerners is identification with Scottish heritage.