Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:

Yes of course that can be, but not always, evident. Precisely because this is in a model thread I thought it worth raising; without any crit of the op; as did you.

It is also valid to express why one does not wish to divulge ethnicity without any implied criticism of those who do.

Caitlin and Erlinda however have made some nasty personal attacks against me calling me a prude and saying I am bitching and odd. I am innocent of both those charges and I would suggest they are the ones derailing the thread as those have nothing to do with ethnicity. I shall not enter further discussion with them.

I sure hope you don't mean this Caitlin.

River Li wrote:
I am Vietnamese and Italian :]

that sounds like a really interesting mix!

PigeonFoo wrote:
I'm so white I glow on my own.

My heritage is a lot of European, Irish, some Cherokee... but the Cherokee is not very prevalent in my physical genes. I'm pretty standard Caucasian.

Do you glow in the dark too?

Risen Phoenix Photo wrote:
I am all Sicilian

The way I understand it, Sicily has one of the most ethnically diverse histories in Europe.

Call Me Caitlin wrote:
I'm half Malaysian and half German.

Portuguese with some Spanish and little Italian on my mothers side.

K I C K H A M wrote:
My background is Irish and Native American

Same here. I am 50% Mohawk Indian, and almost half Irish, with a dash of Scottish in the mix.

Josie Lee wrote:
Filipino and Korean

wow . you are gorgeous! For a second I seriously thought your avatar was a drawing of an asian barbie

Call Me Caitlin wrote:
I sure hope you don't mean this Caitlin.

No of course not. Apologies for any confusion. And also I did not mean that I minded you asking the question either. Just that why I don't like being asked it on forms etc and am reluctant to give my ethnic group

Amul La La wrote:

I depise the online application process, asking you what you're "ethnicity" is, they have to know because....

A) It helps them do their job better.

no wait,

B) It helps you do you're job better.

Both statements are bull****.

You only have to looked at history, pretty much every race has felt the wraft of this alarming pre-occupation with colour.

Indeed. I raised it for this reason. Not that it is a problem here - I hope. But just in case I am not giving mine.

Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:

I am chilled thankyou. I become chilled when I deal with stuff that winds me up
Every form in the UK asks this question and I find it offensive. I don't like being put in boxes. Neither I fear do most Britons unless it's to demonstrate their difference from the English (Scots, Welsh, Irish) . It appears an American pre-occupation. That's up to you if you want to divulge not having a go at you!  I am saying why I object to people asking. No good can come of it except discrimination for good or bad.

Many Americans are proud of their mixed heritage. I know I am, An American mutt as my son says.
I just had a DNA done and found out the supposed American Indian wasn't there. We have been laughing about ever since because East Indian DID show up. As did Turkish Italian German Spanish Finnish but the majority is English Irish Scottish.   
If you try to discriminate against me Ill laugh at you.

Mike Hemming wrote:
Many Americans are proud of their mixed heritage. I know I am, An American mutt as my son says.
I just had a DNA done and found out the supposed American Indian wasn't there. We have been laughing about ever since because East Indian DID show up. As did Turkish Italian German Spanish Finnish but the majority is English Irish Scottish.   
If you try to discriminate against me Ill laugh at you.

I am not discriminating against you! Just pointing out that Amercians always seem to say they are an 8th this and a quarter that and so on. Not putting any value judgement on it either but one rarely hears British people say it. We are all mutts too anyway! And many of us don't know our roots or are particularly interested to find out. I don't know anyone who has traced their origins beyond 150 years or so and nobdoy who has done their DNA. Though there is a tv program where celebs trace their roots and they too are nearly always finding different to what they have been told....

Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:
I don't know anyone who has traced their origins beyond 150 years or so and nobdoy who has done their DNA. Though there is a tv program where celebs trace their roots and they too are nearly always finding different to what they have been told....

Well..., my family is traced back for about 300 years because of military and nobility registers in Russia (St. Petersburg archive and family tradition).

I am starting with my great grandfather, who was born in 1856 ('54?), because he is the most direct physical link to my own father, since he raised my father (family tradition) who was born in 1925 in the Ukraine. My ancestors had been military at the court of the czar since the early 18th century. My ancestors before that, were said to be Greek physicians who came to the court as doctors and their sons joined the military, starting generations of soldiers. My brother and I are the first generation of hippie-pacifists in a few hundred years...

                        Yeah... Go PEACE!!!   

My great grandmother was Polish and the curious thing about my blood-type is that it's predominantly found in East Asia, which leads me to believe that there are some influences from the Mongols or Huns over the ages.

About 140 years ago, there was a major political split in my family and one branch moved to Odessa, and the other branch remained in St. Petersburg and Moscow area... until we got completely separated during the October revolution, Stalin and WW2.

Now, so, despite being born in Germany, I have not a drop of German in me...

That's all I know.

Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:

I am not discriminating against you! Just pointing out that Amercians always seem to say they are an 8th this and a quarter that and so on. Not putting any value judgement on it either but one rarely hears British people say it. We are all mutts too anyway! And many of us don't know our roots or are particularly interested to find out. I don't know anyone who has traced their origins beyond 150 years or so and nobdoy who has done their DNA. Though there is a tv program where celebs trace their roots and they too are nearly always finding different to what they have been told....

wife's side goes back 500 years in England Mine goes back to 1712 when my name sake came here as an indentured servant. Another came here to escape being forced into the British army but later fought in our revolution against the Crown, different people have different things they will fight for. We are more interested in our past, maybe because its shorter than yours. I admit to being awed by being in one of your cathedrals that was 900 years old, far longer than America has existed. Anyway genealogy  interests us.

Mike Hemming wrote:
I admit to being awed by being in one of your cathedrals that was 900 years old, far longer than America has existed. Anyway genealogy  interests us.

History is pretty amazing...

I got spoiled growing up in the city of Mainz, in Germany, which started as a Roman garrison over 2,000 years ago and you find still ruins from that time and artifacts and ruins from it's 2,000 years old history, with medieval cobble stone areas in the old part of town, etc.

Gutenberg invented the printing process with moving letters in Mainz, and other interesting things happened there too...

Call Me Caitlin wrote:
I'm half Malaysian and half German.

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree...!  :-)

udor wrote:

Well..., my family is traced back for about 300 years because of military and nobility registers in Russia (St. Petersburg archive family tradition).

I am starting with my great grandfather, who was born in 1856 ('54?), because he is the most direct physical link to my own father, since he raised my father (family tradition) who was born in 1925 in the Ukraine. My ancestors had been military at the court of the czar since the early 18th century. My ancestors before that, were said to be Greek physicians who came to the court as doctors and their sons joined the military, starting generations of soldiers. My brother and I are the first generation of hippie-pacifists in a few hundred years...

                        Yeah... Go PEACE!!!   

My great grandmother was Polish and the curious thing about my bloodtype is that it's predominantly found in East Asia, which leads me to believe that there are some influences from the mongols or Huns over the ages.

About 140 years ago, there was a major political split in my family and one branch moved to Odessa, and the other branch remained in St. Petersburg and Moscow area... until we got completely separated during the October revolution, Stalin and WW2.

Now, so, despite being born in Germany, I have not a drop of German in me...

That's all I know.

Don't get me wrong I think it's cool you know your family history. I know mine too. But I was simply saying there us nit the interest in the UK there is in the USA in finding ones roots. No value judgement; just it's not usual whereas Americans appear to go to great effort.

Mike Hemming wrote:
wife's side goes back 500 years in England Mine goes back to 1712 when my name sake came here as an indentured servant. Another came here to escape being forced into the British army but later fought in our revolution against the Crown, different people have different things they will fight for. We are more interested in our past, maybe because its shorter than yours. I admit to being awed by being in one of your cathedrals that was 900 years old, far longer than America has existed. Anyway genealogy  interests us.

Actually that is interesting you say that. I have been looking at Clovis artefacts from c 12000 bp from America recently.  So this idea that there is no history there is quite false.

But yes I think the British are perhaps not so obsessed with genealogy because it may be easier for us to find out through census records and family memory. So because it's at hand maybe we don't value it as much. Or maybe like myself we do; but don't like discussing it with others so much.

Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:

Actually that is interesting you say that. I have been looking at Clovis artefacts from c 12000 bp from America recently.  So this idea that there is no history there is quite false.

But yes I think the British are perhaps not so obsessed with genealogy because it may be easier for us to find out through census records and family memory. So because it's at hand maybe we don't value it as much. Or maybe like myself we do; but don't like discussing it with others so much.

As I sort of mentioned before, some areas of this country, especially very rural ones, did not do a good job keeping records of birth, death and marriages, and life could be highly mobile for families who took part in westward expansion, and pioneer homesteading in this country. Where my mother grew up, people were born, lived full lives and died without ever "existing" on a census anywhere. Some parts of the region she grew up in did not even have homes with electricity until the late 1960s, and she remembers her people going to public hangings, where the executed criminals were basically apprehended through vigilante justice, then executed without formal dictates of the law, because their community was so isolated from court systems, police officers, etc. Even if they'd been close to those services, no one trusted them. That was in the early 1950s. She also grew up with kids who'd just been "given away," or raised by people other than the family; they did not engage in formal adoption processes. If you didn't want your kid, you gave them to someone else to raise, and that was that. No one investigated, and people were highly suspect of any authority figures, so they took care if everything at home, in private.

so, what this boils down to, is that it's not a cut and dried process for people in the US to figure out their heritage. In many cases, it's damned near impossible. People in other countries often lived far more urban lives, from many generations back, where records keeping was easier to enforce and regulate, and people had much more cultural respect for doing things in a structured way.

Koryn Locke wrote:
As I sort of mentioned before, some areas of this country, especially very rural ones, did not do a good job keeping records of birth, death and marriages, and life could be highly mobile for families who took part in westward expansion, and pioneer homesteading in this country. Where my mother grew up, people were born, lived full lives and died without ever "existing" on a census anywhere. Some parts of the region she grew up in did not even have homes with electricity until the late 1960s, and she remembers her people going to public hangings, where the executed criminals were basically apprehended through vigilante justice, then executed without formal dictates of the law, because their community was so isolated from court systems, police officers, etc. Even if they'd been close to those services, no one trusted them. That was in the early 1950s. She also grew up with kids who'd just been "given away," or raised by people other than the family; they did not engage in formal adoption processes. If you didn't want your kid, you gave them to someone else to raise, and that was that. No one investigated, and people were highly suspect of any authority figures, so they took care if everything at home, in private.

so, what this boils down to, is that it's not a cut and dried process for people in the US to figure out their heritage. In many cases, it's damned near impossible. People in other countries often lived far more urban lives, from many generations back, where records keeping was easier to enforce and regulate, and people had much more cultural respect for doing things in a structured way.

Yes I think that may be true as I implied.
However, I dont think rural - urban comes into it in Europe. The Normans were pretty fastidious of course.  In fact it's probably easier to be transient, lose touch with tradition and family  and fall off the grid as it were in cities these days; rural records in Europe are good generally and parish/church records in particular can be exceptional sources of information especially when many families have lived in an area for generations. Once people move to cities for work they often lose touch with this 'rooted' community stuff. Because the US has a recent history of epic migration and the idea of the emigre finding a new life I think certain hardships from earlier may have been  forgotten in search of the American dream. Subsequent generations once settled may then be more inclined to trace their origins.

Josie Lee wrote:
Filipino and Korean

Anna Adrielle wrote:
wow . you are gorgeous! For a second I seriously thought your avatar was a drawing of an asian barbie

What she said
Cause Im not allowed to say that

Eliza C  new portfolio wrote:

Don't get me wrong I think it's cool you know your family history. I know mine too. But I was simply saying there us nit the interest in the UK there is in the USA in finding ones roots. No value judgement; just it's not usual whereas Americans appear to go to great effort.

I think we go to so much effort and take so much pride in it is because our country is young and we are a melting pot. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the owner came from China. He even went back to China to find a wife. I had a customer give me a Chinese coin. My boss was not impressed in the slightest. I said but it's several hundred years old! He said those are like your pennies. We leave them in the gutter. What is a big deal to some is meaningless to others. Don't knock it. I have that coin on a silk cord and cherish it.

Isis22 wrote:
I think we go to so much effort and take so much pride in it is because our country is young and we are a melting pot. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the owner came from China. He even went back to China to find a wife. I had a customer give me a Chinese coin. My boss was not impressed in the slightest. I said but it's several hundred years old! He said those are like your pennies. We leave them in the gutter. What is a big deal to some is meaningless to others. Don't knock it. I have that coin on a silk cord and cherish it.

I have at no point knocked it, and what you say is valid.

And I don't think anybody doesn't value their heritage.
It is simply that it is notable that we in Europe are less likely to discuss ethnicity and deciding what portion of us is what. Whereas you may seek your lineage because you feel alienated from your roots, we do not I guess; whether we know them or not. I am not saying one is right and one is wrong; though I do think ethnicity should not matter in the way people are judged. So for example you'd never hear someone here say they are black or Afro British. They'd either say they are British or for example Jamaican. But that doesn't mean that I think it wrong to say Afro American - it is just different. You in the USA may identify more with ethnicity than we do. Equally it is perfectly accepted here for a UK citizen to say one is Italian or Bengali ; or a French citizen to say they are Algerian, rather than identify with being British or French but some would equally prefer to identify with their country of domicile; yet others prefer to keep it to themselves. Whereas it appears to me there is in the USA more allegiance to being American though to highlight ethnic origin. Again no value judgement. We are a 'melting pot' in Europe too btw the USA is not alone in that; and we are just as likely if not more to keep our cultural integrity and it makes for richness. After all many Americans to refer to London as 'Londonistan' presumably because of that.