Just something I wanted to share...

[Peter Crowe]

Meghan, What an interesting question you pose? I will try and offer a few thoughts as a native born and raised Scot who immigrated to the USA at the age of 37 and became a naturalised American (US citizen) at the age of 41. I feel more Scottish (also British, and European) than I do American, however, I don't feel unwelcome or excluded (at least not here in Massachusetts).

I sometimes feel that because I check all the 'right' (by 'right' I mean belonging to the dominant group in society) boxes (white, male, middle class, protestant, university educated) that there is an assumption that I am exactly the same, share the same social, political, moral outlook and world-view of native-born (white caucasian) Americans. However, I often find myself having to avoid conversations on politics or world affairs for the very reason that I don't. This is not because I am anti-American (far from it) but because I see those matters through a different (Scottish, British and European centered) lens, and don't want to get into unnecessary arguments where we each use different idioms, and start from different sets of assumptions about the world and our place in it, thus end up talking past one another.

I also find that there is a lack of esteem where I now live for the past, older people, or anything perceived as lacking in modernity. Not to say you wouldn't find that attitude amongst adolescents in Scotland, but you wouldn't expect to find it so much from as many people aged over 40 as you do here in eastern Massachusetts.

By the way, I value and respect all types of people regardless of their age, sex, gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, or marital status.

I will say that personal identity is complex, and that I believe it is always evolving. Our perception of ourselves changes as we experience more of an ever changing world and life. I am not the same at almost 45, as I was at 37 when I left Scotland. In those eight years I got married, started new employment (more than once), became a father, became a citizen of the USA, discovered I had a hereditary health condition for which I had to undergo major heart surgery, and adapted to new friends and a new environment. I haven't lost sight of where I came from, and it is a fundamental cornerstone of my identity, but my life (and aspects of my identity) has diverged from the paths of my peers who remained back in Scotland. It's kind of like the simplistic explanation of 'Hegelian' or 'Marxist' dialectics where the acorn and the aged oak tree are paradoxically the same but different, or a six year old boy eventually becomes a 60 year old man (essentially the same but very different).