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What exactly is "white heritage" anyway? Precisely. The breadth of Native American genetic and cultural diversity was every bit as large as that of Europeans,
by causi 5y ago
What exactly is "white heritage" anyway?
Precisely. The breadth of Native American genetic and cultural diversity was every bit as large as that of Europeans, and compressing it into a single category has the same problems as compressing all the cultures constituting "white" into a single category. If your connection to your tiny fraction of native ancestry is so insubstantial you can't be more specific than "someone from north or south america", you're unfortunately just not a member of that culture.
Many white Americans are unsatisfied with not having a specific ancestral identity and hence play these games with distant ancestors.
- vanderZwan 5y agoI don't know if you realize this, but complaining that "compressing all the cultures constituting "white" into a single category" is a problem, and then talking about "white Americans" in the next sentence as if that is a single cultural label is a self-contradiction. The complaint two comments up about the "mild but persistent impression that white heritage isn't something to celebrate or positively self-identify with" is an even stronger one. EDIT: downvote all you want, it doesn't take away the contradiction of insisting on hanging on to an identity of "whiteness" while denying the history behind it.
- causi 5y ago"European" isn't a culture but that doesn't stop Europeans from being a definable category of people. "Blue-eyed people" isn't a culture either but I can refer to people with blue eyes as a group.