Will being American ever be considered an ethnicity?

[Lamb Boy]

I've been thinking about this lately because hardly anyone is like "I am 100% American" unless they were Native American in which case they just see themselves as belonging to a tribe more than the name we coined for this chunk of land.

Anyhow what I am trying to get at is this ... at what point in the development of a country do the ppl start feeling like they are from that countries ethnic background? In that same light have all the ethnicities for this planet already been created/divvied up so that any emerging country (<--if that's even possible as well due to the fact that all the land is accounted for roughly speaking ... maybe volcanic islands) would only be seen as a cornucopia of different cultures like America?

Will being American ever be the same as telling someone you are Italian or Russian, Armenian or whatever? I realize that some ppl already see it that way but that point is contradicted by the fact that when, in America, you ask someone what their background is most ppl refer to other cultures. I don't think this is a bad thing I'm just wondering how much time do you think should/needs to pass before another culture/ethnic group is developed and ppl stop seeing themselves as being part of another ethnicity.

I personally don't really believe that we Americans have our own culture ... there are things I could mention but I don't feel they are worthy or deserving of a sort of cultural divergence from anything else that's already out there. Sure there is "Americana" but these are all silly and trivial things about our culture not really anything worth mentioning.

What do you guys think? At what point do you think a countries culture is truly defined?

[winoman]

yes and no. We have become a global species - and one day will perhaps be an interstellar species...the meaning of being x or y group will likely only be a footnote in the future. It is the likely way of things (unless we somehow manage to plunge into a rhetrograde dark ages in the meantime). Obviously we loose much with the diminishing of ethnic/cultural distinctiveness - and as Armenians we understand the value of (uniquely) who we are...however in time as humans continue to integrate worldwide and join the dominant (European/Western based) culure (which obviously is evolving [much to the fears of the Aryan racists [{rodents and such} amongst us...] - particularly considering demographics)...these distinctions/differentiation will become much less an issue

[TomServo]

No. Americans don't even have their own language.

[Lamb Boy]

Still I can't help thinking that every other ethnic group out there had to start somewhere so I wonder if ethnic groups can still develop from scratch.

It's funny the similarities b/w America and Rome in regards to their policy of making ppl from different cultures their own citizens. What I mean by that is no one claims to be of Roman decent, or if they do I am totally unaware (Italians consider themselves Italian), so perhaps America is destined to be the same way regardless of time ...

[Otto3]

yes and no. We have become a global species - and one day will perhaps be an interstellar species...the meaning of being x or y group will likely only be a footnote in the future. It is the likely way of things (unless we somehow manage to plunge into a rhetrograde dark ages in the meantime). Obviously we loose much with the diminishing of ethnic/cultural distinctiveness - and as Armenians we understand the value of (uniquely) who we are...however in time as humans continue to integrate worldwide and join the dominant (European/Western based) culure (which obviously is evolving [much to the fears of the Aryan racists [{rodents and such} amongst us...] - particularly considering demographics)...these distinctions/differentiation will become much less an issue

so you say that in the future there will be 3 races on the world... j ews turks and humans.....

[Anonymouse]

yes and no. We have become a global species - and one day will perhaps be an interstellar species...the meaning of being x or y group will likely only be a footnote in the future. It is the likely way of things (unless we somehow manage to plunge into a rhetrograde dark ages in the meantime). Obviously we loose much with the diminishing of ethnic/cultural distinctiveness - and as Armenians we understand the value of (uniquely) who we are...however in time as humans continue to integrate worldwide and join the dominant (European/Western based) culure (which obviously is evolving [much to the fears of the Aryan racists [{rodents and such} amongst us...] - particularly considering demographics)...these distinctions/differentiation will become much less an issue

Such self-hatred is only exhibited by guilty white liberals, and quarter breed "Armenians" who parade themselves as supposedly being Armenians.

I don't know about you, but I for one, would not welcome a world in which diversity is stamped out. I love diversity just as much, and that is why, I, unlike you and your prurient interests, will guard it, whereas you have no sense of preservation, or culture, or anything else beyond your limited self-gratification. All you can do, as liberal zealots do, is proclaim tolerance and diversity, but only with those who agree with your utopian racial program of hybridization.

And when in a thousand years the world is nothing more than a racial mix of brown people within a spectrum of light and dark, then we will be no better than a mixed dog with little or no capabilities beyond dumpster diving.

[Anonymouse]

Still I can't help thinking that every other ethnic group out there had to start somewhere so I wonder if ethnic groups can still develop from scratch.

It's funny the similarities b/w America and Rome in regards to their policy of making ppl from different cultures their own citizens. What I mean by that is no one claims to be of Roman decent, or if they do I am totally unaware (Italians consider themselves Italian), so perhaps America is destined to be the same way regardless of time ...

You will notice alot of similarities between America and Rome, both with respect to their birth, existence, and their path to decline. Of course, many historians like to claim that history doesn't repeat itself, but it most definitely does. While history does not obviously repeat the exact same thing, such as another Rome, but it does repeat the patterns. Because history is about humans, and human action, and is made by humans acting, it is by the fact itself, guided by purposive behavior of humans. In other words, there is a rhyme and reason to history. And what do we know about humans? They tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

I suggest you really take a look at Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[armenianteen]

(ok first off this is from a 1/2 armenian descent 1/2 irish descent american who looks armenian except my nose isnt huge, and im pale, no olive coloring for me unlike my mom.) on the whole american culture thing, i say that america is 2 big for just one main culture, i mean go 2 any of the major regions (mid west, north east, south east...), and u will c a western culture except its been mixed w/ the ethnic groups' traditions making a modified culture for that area, and if that area is urban or rural that changes things 2, but in the end the US is basically like the rest of the western world, except we r a copy of europe that modified that culture and made it its own with the cultures of all out people

[Lamb Boy]

See I was thinking of how different ethnicities develop in the first place (In a sociological sense more than an actual historical account).

In your example you stated that America is too big to have a single ethnicity, which I totally agree with for the present time, and probably the rest of our lives. However let's scale the size down a bit. Instead of America let's see this on a tribal level where perhaps over time several tribes merge into one ... by force or whatever. I imagine they might also think along the same lines that the distinctiveness of each tribe will remain and persevere. So totally hypothetically speaking over time perhaps that distinctiveness is diminished and they just see themselves as one unified culture.

For a futuristic example imagine our own planet over time ends up having a unified culture and over population is at the point that colonization of Mars is already real. So would people just start to see themselves as a culture/ethnicity from one planet or another? This is different then the tribal example as it raises the point that perhaps our ethnicities are partially governed by how we perceive the "usable" universe around us. By that I mean if we only have a one planet to divide up then we partially define our ethnicity by our ethnic groups location on that planet. If we have multiple planets then our usable universe grows beyond what we had been used to so perhaps we would start to define and classify our cultures and ethnicities in a different manner. For example if we actually were to colonize Mars do you think we would define territories on the planet to be governed by different countries (i.e. Earth 2) or would colonists just say "We're Martians ..."

lol It's like I made one of those jokes that starts out as a serious story and ends abruptly with some stupid punch line. Seriously though what do you guys think other than I'm an idiot? lol Just a thought ...

My girlfriend says that new ethnicities begin when we stop identifying with the cultures of our roots. Seems pretty fair ... she also finds it strange that we here in the U.S. always define ourselves, in terms of ethnicity, as being from one or all of our rooted cultures, but everybody else in the world just calls us American. I just thought of this, we as Americans really only breakdown our backgrounds for one another while we're still in the U.S. As SOON as we enter another country and ppl ask us where we're from we'll be like "America ..." [Like they don't know ] Sort of contradictory ...

[One-Way]

White people are Americans.