I don’t have a single drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in my veins (that I know of anyway). We’ve been solid Italian for centuries.
But because this country welcomed my parents and this is where I was raised, I need to speak up in defense of a people whom I love, and who the politically idiots have despicably trashed.
It royally ticks me off when people in this country whose ancestry is of the British Isles think they need to go chasing after some pseudo African/Native American/Asian because they are just “boring old white people” or whatever. Like these Elizabeth Warren types. Who go chasing after a 1/64th blood quantum to hold on to some tiny scrap of being Indian as if all the Northern European didn’t matter.
Are you kidding me? Seriously? I’d count it an honor to be descended from the Anglos who founded this nation or to those literary or cultural giants who shaped it, like Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The AngloAmerican culture is not some cultural null value whose only purpose is to make you feel bad about yourself for not being something else. There is some great heritage there...and folks I am saying this as an *Italian*....and we don’t take a backseat to anyone in that respect! My parents learned your language, they became citizens, they love this country. My dad grew up in Italy loving stories of the Old West, which he finally had the privilege to visit himself some years back.
Don’t apologize for being Anglo. Be proud of it. Work to weed out the bad and cultivate the good, yes, but be proud of who you are.
I am proud for you. And I am not the only son of immigrants who is, that I can assure you.
One branch of my family settled in New England in 1624. That means we have been here 376 years. I think that is long enough to make us Americans. The rest seemed to have settled in the 1830s from Wales, Scot-Irish Antrim Co Ireland, Scotland, Germany and Bavaria. They brought with them no etnic language, food, holidays that have survived.
The one thing they did bring with them was the English law, the traditional notion of the rights of Englishmen and a history of fighting to wrest those rights from an oppressive monarchy. They brought a strong notion of individual freedom and responsibility, an ethic of hard work and entrepreneuralism, a Christian morality and a direction toward self government. Those are my traditions, my ethnic identity and ones that I will not easily give up.