Identity in the Scottish Diaspora

[davidlpope]

Reiver you must understand that the number of 'Scots' contributing to this forum is ultra small; for the number who say anything critical about visitors to Scotland it is easy to walk into any village and find many more who love the funds visitors bring into the country.

The point of this thread is the question: how one can claim a nationality without being a national? American without being American, for example. Since Scots generally speaking don't hanker after being anything other than Scottish, some here are seeking to understand the reason behind Americans (Canadians, Australians, whatever) wishing to claim another nationality than their own.

Great question.

First, as Richard has previously pointed out, when Americans say they are "Scottish". They don't mean that they grew up in Scotland or their citizenship is the United Kingdom, resident in Scotland. It's a shorthand way of saying I am American with at least some Scottish ancestry. They say this because there is no such thing as being of American* ancestry. We are too young of a country and too varied in our ethnic make up based on region for that term to have any value.

As to why an American would make this distinction, I think it's because the term "American" is too broad to be of any real descriptive value. That's because the United States is too big and too varied and too heterogenous for nationality to communicate any useful information about person's ethnic or cultural identity. On the other hand, If someone tells me they are a Southerner, there's an immediate connection, regardless of other differences between me and that person. We share a culture. If someone tells me they're from North Carolina there's a sense of identity that person and I will share, even if there are particular differences between us. if someone self- identifies as a Scottish American or an American of Scottish descent, then they're providing useful description. They are telling me that, one, they know what their background is based on at least some preliminary research, and, two, that they value their history and heritage.

I don't think that Scots or Englishmen or Germans or Poles would be happy to stop at saying that they are Europeans. I think that they would want to say that they are Scots or Englishmen or Germans or Poles. When you consider the issue of scale, that's what we're dealing with.

*except for Native Americans/American Indians/First Nations People