Ethnicity
Most Americans I know divide their ethnic origins into fractions. Someone might say, for example, that he or she is 1/2 English, 1/4 Scottish and 1/4 German. The Europeans I’ve talked to think this is a very odd idea, because the person is simply American.
I’m always intrigued by these ethnic percentages. Americans are so mixed that a person’s ancestors came to America very recently it’s not likely that family lore would accurately separate English from Scottish, and perhaps not even from Welsh, French and German.
I have a friend who can say he is 1/2 Danish and 1/2 German. His father was the son of Danish immigrants, and his mother came from a Mennonite family that is German in all its branches going back to colonial Pennsylvania. That kind of break-down is easy to accept.
I thought it would be interesting to calculate my own ethnic percentages. Because of ethnic mixing in my ancestry, even in colonial times, I had to set a cut off point after which I would regard an ancestor as belonging to a particular ethnic group despite fractional portions in his or her ancestry of some other nationality. I set the cut-off at 5th great grandparents.
According to my parents, I should be 1/2 English, 1/4 Swedish, 1/8 Scottish and 1/8 Pawnee. My calculations show that I’m 61/128 English, 1/4 Swedish, 17/128 German-Swiss, 3/64 Scottish, 1/16 Pawnee, and 1/32 Dutch. Pretty close to family lore, but not exact. The English has been rounded off in family lore, the German-Swiss and Dutch have been forgotten, and the Pawnee and Scottish have been exaggerated.
Looking more closely at lore versus calculation, I’ve come to the conclusion that ethnic percentages are more a simplified view of a person’s immediate ancestry than a genuine reflection of ethnic origins.
For example, my mother is said to be 1/2 Swedish, 1/4 English and 1/4 Scottish. My calculations show she is 1/2 Swedish, 13/32 English and 3/32 Scottish. The difference is basically the cutoff point chosen. I went back many generations, family lore looks only at her grandparents. She had two Swedish grandparents, one who identified as English, and one who identified as Scotch-Irish.
A similar process exists for my father’s ancestry. He is said to have been 3/4 English and 1/4 Pawnee, but the Pawnee element is exaggerated, while German-Swiss and Dutch have been lumped in with the English. Why? Because his family divides everyone into Indian and non-Indian, and the non-Indians are all “English.”
I would arrive at a very different result if I set the cut-off differently. For example, if I take only the ethnic identity of my parents’ grandparents, I end up as 1/4 Swedish, 1/4 German-Swiss, 1/4 English, 1/8 Pawnee, and 1/8 Scottish.
It seems that ethnic identity is more a function of how a person’s views his or her ancestry than of actual ancestry.
