I’ve never, ever, heard anyone refer to themselves as an English-American. (Irish-American, often. Scottish-American, rarely, English-American, never.). I wonder why that is.
This thought was inspired by this post. If you read the aformentioned post, you may get some insight into the odd tangents my mind gets off on.
3 Comments
Kathy, my guess is that hyphenated ethnic identity is tied up with immigration patterns.
My sense, anyway, is that the most common hyphen-American usages, with the exception of the politically correct African-American, date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when immigrant groups had to retain their identity yet find a way to assert their Americanness. Groups that mostly came earlier (English), or who didn’t form urban ethnic enclaves (the filthy Scots), didn’t have to assert a dual identity, and therefore you don’t hear the hyphenated usages too often.
Up until the Revolution, Americans referred to themselves as “English,” and thought of themselves in that way. It’s sometimes said that colonists spent their lives with their backs to the interior of America and their faces to Britain.
After 1776, this all changed. There was a deliberate attempt by Americans to break with England and English identity. Initially, people defaulted to state designations– “I’m a Georgian”, “My countrymen are in Massachusetts,” and so on, though over time the generic “American” gained favor as the Federal Government became more accepted as the unifier of the states.
Americans were by default mostly of English descent, and the common thought of the day excluded other immigrants, and slaves, from the calulations of who was American. Hence, no need to hyphenate.
In the early 19th century, Germans, Irish, Scots-Irish, and so on who came to America retained their identity as Germans, Irishmen, etc., settling in Irish and German enclaves, or living out on the Frontier where names didn’t matter. The real crises that led to hyphenation happened later.
I suspect that the rise of the mindset behind hyphenation coincided with the rise of ethnic voting blocs in the late 19th century, such as Boss Tweed’s machine in New York. Tweed relied on the Irish to vote as a bloc, and Irish immigrants quickly discovered that by acting as a group to achieve the trappings of citizenship, they could gain for themselves the benefits.
As anti-immigrant sentiment became more pronounced in the US in that era (that Scorsese film Gangs of New York is an early though accurate representation), nativists tried their best to restrict voting rights to only English-speakers, only native-born Americans, etc.
The push-pull between nativists and immigrant groups created unity among immigrant communities, heightened their senses of both and led to the hyphenated labels we have today, or at least the right mindset. “We’re Irish, and Americans, dammit!”
The same thing happened on the West coast with Japanese and Chinese immigrants, though the story there was much different.
So, English people have been here too long to hyphenate. Irish immigrants retained remarkably close ties with Ireland while also perfecting the machinery of voting, hence the hyphenated “Irish-American.” Other groups integrated more successfully into American society (you don’t hear German-American or Scandanavian-American too often). You hear “Mexican-American” from time to time, but most newer immigrant groups are just “Dominican,” “Hmong,” “Sudanese,” because the way that America and Americans deal with immigrants has changed.
African-American is an exceptional latecomer to the game.
At least this is my theory. I could be wrong; happens a lot.
It seems quite plausible to me. You’ve got a good point about the Scandinavians, too, though I have heard German-American a fair amount.
Another one I’ve never heard is Australian-American! (Though I’ve only met one of those, it’s not a fair sample…).