Re: CHAT: Race, ethnicity, and hyphenization (was Re: PC terminology)

At 12:01 on 26.12.1998, Tom Wier wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > list James E. Hopkins wrote:
> > > I am an Irish-American (that is an American citizen of Irish
>descent). I have
> > > never been to Ireland but my heritage is important to me and I have no
> > > objection to the term :Irish-American.
> >
> > That I also have trouble with, any hyphenated American, for that
> > matter.  To me, a better term might be American of Irish descent or
> > Irish American (no hyphen).  Why?  It seems to me that if you're an
> > American citizen, especially if you were born in America, that part is
> > more important.  The Irish should be an adjective, or better yet, in a
> > prepositional phrase like "of Irish descent".  I'm descended from German
> > and English ancestry, but I wouldn't call myself German-American or
> > English-American, or German-English-American.
We don't, yet, have this terminology problem in Sweden, but there are now
many young people whose parents came here as labor immigrants or refugees,
and they would probably describe themselves as Swedish Finns, Swedish
Assyrians, Swedish Latin-American (sic!), Swedish Iranian and so on.
Everybody here knows that there has existed a community of Finland Swedes
for centuries, but still not everyone on this side of the Gulf of Bothnia
appreciates the distinction between a Finlander (a citizen of the Republic
of Finland speaking whatever language) and a Finn (a native speaker of
Finnish, of whom about a million have had their ancestors living within the
present borders of Sweden, Norway and Russia since the Middle Ages, and
another half million have immigrated from Finland to Sweden this century).
As yet there is no similar term distinguishing citizens of Sweden from
ethnic Swedes; it would be very hard to coin suitable derivatives from the
adjective "svensk", and IMO it is probably not desirable.

> I question why anybody feels the need to label themselves as somethingat
>all.
> I mean, I surely think it's important to know your roots, and what
> kind of culture you have traditionally celebrated, but at base each person
> is a unique individual, without parallel... so why pretend otherwise?
Indeed.  I feel exactly the same, and not only because my own heritage
serves as an illustration of how this hyphenation-business may easily get
out of hand. I'm aware of all my roots, but does it make sense to call me a
"Ukrainian-Polish-German-Norwegian Swede"? (And with my son you could add
"Finnish" as well!)  If we take the different faiths of my ancestors into
account I could be called a "Ortodox-Jewish-Catholic-Lutheran Buddhist"
(still leaving it ambiguous if "Orthodox" refers to the X-ian or Jewish
variety!)  Obviously this gets patently absurd after a few generations of
migration and intermarriage.  I have a stronger sense of affinity with the
places where I have lived (including Iceland, where I have no "roots",
except for the linguistic affinity between Swedish and Icelandic), and
would describe myself as "Gothenburger" more readily than anything else.

I think I should not enter on the subject of my lack of identification with
"the disabled community", which some people have held against me...

/BP