I genuinely have no idea where the joke came from but it seems pretty big since I’ve heard it IRL a few times now. Where did this come from?
Lotta people on this site think people from New Jersey are Italian for some reason
Europeans love saying you can’t be their nationality unless you’ve lived there your whole life and have a thousand years of pure blood because they are all very racist
Well you can’t be Italian if you were being in new Jersey, you’ve never been to Italy, and you don’t speak the language. Europeans being racist doesn’t make this not true.
No, but you can be an Italian-American and feel a meaningful connection with Italy, even with all those being true. Usually these forms of admittedly (and understandably) far-removed hybrid nationality are passed down by older generations within their family, so they are really more familial than national. They are then reinforced by cultural institutions and in media. Its not like WASPs (which is what people mean when they say “you’re just a plain American”) wake up one day and decide they want to feel a connection with some random country they pick on a map.
I can’t really put to words why its such a bother to me, but I can say this. Reactionaries in the home country always shit on the diaspora for being no longer really an authentic part of the nation. Reactionaries in America often try to call for the same; “You’re American now, act like it! (Read: act like a white protestant anglo)”, while at the same time only really allowing ‘whites’ to do so. Its reactionary on its face to think of national identity as this immutable purely defined thing that you need the right blood and to be on the right soil for. Who cares if diaspora populations, even 4th gen ones, want to feel an identity they are maybe a little distant from? Let people live and don’t be like a reactionary!
