Ethnic/national identity, culture, language, and ethnicity/genetics - How these things often relate and contrast

[Iwasamwillbe]

I have been looking at the ethnography of many groups, and what strikes me is that many contemporary ethnic groups have ethnic and national identities that conflict with their actual ethnic origins, or are of clearly mixed ethnic origins primarily united by a single common language and culture.

Take for example, the ethnic group living in Xinjiang that we refer to as "Uyghurs". These modern Uyghurs have no almost relationship to the Tiele people who originally formed the Uyghur Khaganate (aside from slightly descending from a relative few of them), instead being a Karluk-speaking people who had absorbed the Indo-European peoples of that region and who didn't even identify as a single ethnic nation at first (most often referring to themselves as Sarts/Turks/Turki/Chantou to foreigners [they were also called "Taranchi" by the Qing dynasty], or by the oasis they originated from, or even merely as "Muslims"). Their entire "Uyghur" identity came from a conference attended by Turkic Muslims in Soviet Tashkent, where the name was chosen for them.

A similar example are the ethnic "Macedonians" who live in North Macedonia, a South Slavic people who used to identify as Bulgarians, only to identify themselves as having continuity with the ancient Greek Macedonians during the rise of Macedonian nationalism (and let's not forget the Illyrian movement either). Another example are the Levantine (Jordan/Syrian/Palestinian/Lebanese), Iraqi, Berber, Sudanese, and Egyptian "Arabs", who often have minimal (if any) Arab blood in them, and have ethnic origins from peoples who were primarily native/indigenous to the lands they currently live in (e.g. the Syrian's descent from Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Canaanites, all peoples native to the region of Syria; the Iraqi's descent from Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, all peoples native to Iraq), and not the Arabian peninsula, which is the homeland of the Arabs.

An example of an ethnicity of mixed origins united solely by a common language would be the Crimean Tatars, who are of Pontic Greek, Armenian, Scythian, Ostrogoth, and Kipchak Turkic origins, yet identify as a unified people due to their unified Crimean Tatar language and culture.

The ethnic identification can go different ways as well. It is almost a certainty that most American whites are ultimately of at least partial British ancestry, but relatively very few of them actually identify themselves as such, leading to relatively few being counted as such, as they instead prefer to merely identify themselves as having "American" ancestry.

What intrigues me is how exactly these kinds of things come about, and in how many ways they can come about. Nationalism and acculturation obviously play a big role, but there is likely more to it than that.

 

[Dutch Courage]

It is untrue that most American whites have British ancestry. There are more with Irish or German ancestry (and Irish/German is the most common white "mixed" ancestry). However, to bolster your point, there are some (not many, and certainly not I) who maintain that the Irish are not white...

 

[Easterling]

Egypt's ethnic history is pretty complex but intresting, what ever constituted for the original inhabitants of the region has been lost due to the history of invasions from the Greeks, Romans, Vandals and finally the Arabians. With Eygpt and much of the islamic world its nationalism derives from its relgion or branch of Islam.

 

[snailslime]

well historically people have moved around and exchanged genetics with each other. most people are pretty mixed; especially those from the middle east. before the islamic conquest the region looked way different. there were the canaanites/phoenicians/hebrews, the egyptians, the assyrians and akkadians, babylonians, philistines, arabians, arameans, sumerians, etc. back in those days ethnic identity was pretty different than what it is today. i don't even think ancient people had a concept of race/ethnicity.

europe is also very genetically diverse. vikings took slaves and spread their genes around a lot of places. southern europe and the ancient levant had a lot of ties, the greek and roman alphabets were adopted from the phoenician one (which was adopted from egyptian hieroglyphs). the romans also colonized and mixed with much of the middle east.
the name "europe" was actually coined by greece in honor of phoenician princess europa, who came to crete and was the mother of king minos (in greek mythology). the romans also spread their genes and christianity around the entire continent of europe.

i think people should learn more about how every modern ethnic group came into existence, and how nuanced the topic of ethnicity is. history is important.

this is evident to me because i'm naturally very pale, blonde and blue eyed and everyone assumes i'm ethnically dutch or northern european, despite my ethnic makeup lol. (once a japanese guy asked me if i was a hafu tho)

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

Egypt's ethnic history is pretty complex but intresting, what ever constituted for the original inhabitants of the region has been lost due to the history of invasions from the Greeks, Romans, Vandals and finally the Arabians. With Eygpt and much of the islamic world its nationalism derives from its relgion or branch of Islam.

You forgot the Kurdish Ayyubids, the Kipchak Turkish and Circassian Mamluks, and the Ottoman Turks and the Albanian Khedive Muhammad Ali Pasha.

Either way, I wouldn't say that modern Egyptians are mostly mutts, although I did believe that recently before. In fact, I'd say that modern Egyptians are mostly the same genetically as the indigenous Egyptians of ancient times.

 

[a6h51]

It is untrue that most American whites have British ancestry. There are more with Irish or German ancestry (and Irish/German is the most common white "mixed" ancestry). However, to bolster your point, there are some (not many, and certainly not I) who maintain that the Irish are not white...

Can confirm, there's some American whites that are European Hispanic, Iberian Peninsula, Eurasia, Ashkenazi Jewish, Scandinavian, Baltic, Mediterranean etc. Most of my ethnicity, comes from all over Europe, but most of it comes from Scandinavia, Baltic, Mediterranean, Iberian/European Hispanic, British Isles (Ireland and Northern Ireland mainly), and German. I have a teeny bit (like 1-2%) of Eurasia, and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, and even a teenier (like really small percentage 0.25%) of African and South Central Asian. So basically I'm white.

well historically people have moved around and exchanged genetics with each other. most people are pretty mixed; especially those from the middle east. before the islamic conquest the region looked way different. there were the canaanites/phoenicians/hebrews, the egyptians, the assyrians and akkadians, babylonians, philistines, arabians, arameans, sumerians, etc. back in those days ethnic identity was pretty different than what it is today. i don't even think ancient people had a concept of race/ethnicity.

europe is also very genetically diverse. vikings took slaves and spread their genes around a lot of places. southern europe and the ancient levant had a lot of ties, the greek and roman alphabets were adopted from the phoenician one. the romans also colonized and mixed with much of the middle east.
the name "europe" was actually coined by greece in honor of phoenician princess europa, who came to crete and was the mother of king minos (in greek mythology). the romans also spread their genes and christianity around the entire continent of europe.

i think people should learn more about how every modern ethnic group came into existence, and how nuanced the topic of ethnicity is. history is important.

this is evident to me because i'm naturally very pale, blonde and blue eyed and everyone assumes i'm ethnically dutch or northern european, despite my ethnic makeup lol.

People usually assume I'm from Europe, and the like, but I have no idea what they would think I'm from. I have hazel eyes (people would confuse them for either light brown, green, or hazel) and a Black Brown hair color (people confuse it with either Black Black or Dark Brown) I also have thick hair, but I'm not sure if it's curly or wavy. My dad described my hair as coarse, so it could be either wavy or curly. My skin undertone is neutral, but I have a light-medium skin tone. I tan very easily, but can burn easily sometimes.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

People usually assume I'm from Europe, and the like, but I have no idea what they would think I'm from. I have hazel eyes (people would confuse them for either light brown, green, or hazel) and a Black Brown hair color (people confuse it with either Black Black or Dark Brown) I also have thick hair, but I'm not sure if it's curly or wavy. My dad described my hair as coarse, so it could be either wavy or curly. My skin undertone is neutral, but I have a light-medium skin tone. I tan very easily, but can burn easily sometimes.

They'd probably think you came from Southern Europe, Albania, or the Balkans.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Since you mentioned British Americans, I have some demographics spergery for you. @Coleslaw should be excited.

I want to draw your attention to three areas on the map. One of them is upper New England, labelled "English." Another is Utah and Southern Idaho, labelled "English." The third is the "Americans" across the South.

All of these groups represent the descendants of English in the Americas, but with various distinctions between them.

Most significant to me is the "Americans." Is it not interesting how it syncs up so perfectly with the South? You can even look up maps of dialect and religion and politics and other shit and it matches near perfectly. The reason for that is because these Southern people were descended from a mixture of English and Scottish, with small amounts of other early colonial stock (like Irish and Germans), but most of them came into the country in colonial times and not long after. The South didn't ever get much immigration, or even in-country migration, until the late 1900s; a lot of the migration to the Deep South came after the introduction of air conditioning.

Being that the Southerner remained a majority in his lands, he never saw himself as hyphenated all that much, and over time he came to forget his European heritage. That he was English or Scottish didn't seem terribly relevant to him when his people had been in the United States for longer than the United States existed. He has mixed somewhat with Blacks, but not near as much as people accuse him of. He, and the Yankee, are both about the purest stock in the United States, closest to the "Old Stock" or "Pioneer" Americans. There are still subtleties, though, which the map doesn't reflect. The Deep South got a heavier does of England, Appalachia and the Upper South a heavier dose of Scottish. Texan was primarily of that more Scottish stock since it was primarily settled by Tennesseans and the like; so would be the Ozarks, I'd say.

Now, the Yankee, in its strictest sense of an actual ethnic group of the original Puritan settlers of New England, is self-explanatory. These Englishmen dominated New England, and while the Irish tide flooded Massachusetts, the Italian tide flooded Connecticut, and curiously enough, many Portuguese went to Rhodes Island, the Yankee clung on to the more northern states. The Yankee and the Southerner are both the "American" man, in ethnicity, but they are still of different origins. The Southerner was more Northern English, Scots-Irish, and Southern English gentry. He was either genteel or impoverished. The Yankee was generally bourgeoisie, middle-class, Southern English and cosmopolitan. They are separate nations that formed ON THEIR OWN in the colonies, and only later federated.

The last group is the Mormons. Most of the Mormon migration came in the time of Brigham Young and came from three groups of people. After the initial missionary zeal that accompanies a new religion, they floundered a bit and, in their desert isolation, developed into a distinct ethnic group. Mormons are overwhelmingly blonde and blue-eyed. You can't guess what subnation an American is from with any reliability at all, but you can often see the tendencies in populations. The Southerner, or more specifically the Appalachian, really does often have red hair. The Mormon very often is blonde.

The three groups were New Yorkers, English (from England itself), and Scandinavians. This is very interesting to me, as Colin Woodward, in "American Nations," pointed out that wherever Yankees settled, Scandinavians tended to as well. This predominated in New York, the banks of the Great Lakes, and up into the Old Northwest of Minnesota and Wisconsin. The two were presumably attracted to similarly familiar cultures and lands. Did the Scandinavian tradition of community-minded democracy match well with Yankees? Do they both like snow and large trees? Outside of the city itself, New York has always behaved like a New England state, even though it's not traditionally considered one. The states to their west resembled them became something like colonies of them, developing a distinct culture, but remaining similar, somewhat like how Appalachians created the culture of the Ozarks, or how Yankee colonists settled up the Pacific coast.

The New Yorkers were the core of the Mormon converts; Joseph Smith was from the New York/Vermont border area. For whatever reasons (again, I think it's cultural similarity), they appealed greatly to English and Scandinavians, who often immigrated to the US for the explicit purpose of making their hand-cart journey out to Utah. The Mormons found unfertile ground for conversion among their other "Americans." Now you find English and Scandinavian names predominating and that distinct blonde hair. The culture they created in the desert, so distinct from the Westerners, is a consequence of their Yankeedom.

So those are the great three English-American peoples of the United States. The Southerners, the Yankees (New Englanders), and the Mormons. The Southerner is caught between two contradictory identities. He feels himself to be the truest expression of America, but also like an outsider, because the America he founded changed around him. Although his culture is declining in purity, he still influences the national culture, and while he loses lands in the Atlantic Coast and his great cities, he conquers new land in Southern California (Okies), the northern banks of the Ohio, and Dixietowns scattered across the land. The Yankee is the consequence of his self-destructive immigration. His southern brothers have mixed themselves up, but they still rule the continent, in alliance with their colonies. But the purer Yankees of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are not themselves an influential people; they are a forgotten remnant in, probably, terminal decline. The Mormons are an extremely hardy and cohesive lot, but threatened by their own preference for Latinos (Lamanites), which threatens to destroy their distinctive culture and racial characteristics if they breed too much with them.

 

[Coleslaw]

Goddamn I'm excited. Don't you wish the Census covered religion?

What ethnicity is the West Coast?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Goddamn I'm excited. Don't you wish the Census covered religion?

What ethnicity is the West Coast?

Well, on the map it's all German and Latino. In Woodward's "American Nations," which is what a lot of my understanding of American demographic history comes from (but there's also a lot of legitimate criticism of the book, including from other users here), he claims that the original founding stock of the coastal cities were New Englanders who went by sea. But, that doesn't mean that they're still a plurality (the census map is only pluralities, so it also gives the impression of the regions being way more homogeneous than they are; a you could have a plurality with 1% if everybody else has less than a percent each).

Woodward's theory is based around the idea that the first group to effectively settle the area dominates the culture even if they're replaced. I don't believe this is true in general (tons of examples of cultural changes in history), though I'm willing to concede it for the case of American history specifically.

Basically, the West Coast is plurality German, but it has an extremely diverse group of peoples who reflects the diversity of American pioneers at the time. Settling the coast was mostly a Yankee operation. Settling the backcountry was more of a commercial operation of prospecters, farmers, and the like. Not really monopolized by a single group.

That said, California still has some distinct groups, as well as groups which are not based around an ethnic background but more of a common way of life. Okies were the Oklahoman (which ultimately means Southern; a lot of people don't consider Oklahoma Southern, but it is) settlers in the Great Depression who became dominant in one of the big valleys in the south of the state. They developed to be mildly distinct from the others, but that was also around the time that mass media put a big pressure on people to conform to a national culture, so they didn't differentiate as much as earlier migrations did. They still leave a linguistic trace of their existence in the pin=pen merger, being on the same side of it as the South, and they have lots of folkways that, while vanishing quickly, connect them back to the Plains.

The Californios were a distinct people who, like Tejanos and Neomexicanos, existed in their land, separate from any "Mexican" culture, before Mexico formed. They are not the same as the mass migrations of Mexicans and other Latinos into the territory now. But, there's so few of them that their identity will probably just end up getting submerged in the brown flood.

Plenty of Chinese, of course.

The rest of California is a standoff between the mass migration (I like to think of it as "Aztlan," after the Chicano nationalists' theoretical nation-state) and the coastal fags against the interior of the state. I've heard it said that there are three states in the US which still identify more with their state than with the nation: Texas, California, and New York. When the Governor called California a nation-state recently, that was an affirmation of that, and even of how California continues to drift more and more out of the American mainstream, just like Dixie was doing back in the 1850s. But, also like Dixie, just because the hotheads are driving it forward, that doesn't mean the bulk of them want it. You could say that the South was a nation, but it was only the Deep South that really had a strong national sentiment; the Upper South didn't join in until they were forced to by the War. Similarly, I would say that inland California is part of the Californian "nation," but it doesn't have national aspirations, whereas the coastals do.

Spoiler: religion

Religion map from the Census. It's also plurality-based, but this one has the decency to show where majorities exist.

Notice how the Baptists are kinds of the South. There's lots of Catholics only because Catholics are a single large bloc, instead of being split up like Protestants are. If the map only showed Protestants, I have no doubt that Methodists would rule the Midwest. The Lutherans dominate the much more Scandinavian-influenced upper Great Plains. Mormondom rules Utah and Idaho, same as where the "English" live. The Catholics, of course, dominate the Southwest, South Texas, South Louisiana - there is a cut across Louisiana that makes the difference between Cajun/Creole culture and Southern culure - and South Florida, though clearly a Baptist interior still controls Florida.

Pentecostals, although often associated with Appalachia, make no appearance because there's just not many of them. Snake handling is a distinct local feature of the culture, but it is not a mainstream even within it. Similarly, the Mennonites don't really make much of an appearance in Pennsylvania Dutch country (though they do get two counties) or Ohio. Texas does show a little nub of Lutheran around where the Germans settled the hill country.

Reformed reflects Dutch enclaves in Michigan and around there. For some reason they were attracted to that region, possibly as part of New Yorker expansion into the Great Lakes.

You forgot the Kurdish Ayyubids, the Kipchak Turkish and Circassian Mamluks, and the Ottoman Turks and the Albanian Khedive Muhammad Ali Pasha.

Either way, I wouldn't say that modern Egyptians are mostly mutts, although I did believe that recently before. In fact, I'd say that modern Egyptians are mostly the same genetically as the indigenous Egyptians of ancient times.

I recall reading that, compared to Ancient Egyptians, Egyptians have been BLACKED. Which is pretty funny; they found out that Ramses had red hair or some shit, and Cleopatra is supposedly a redhead (we know for sure she was a Greek woman). Basically, fine Egypt of pyramid days was Whiter in its glory days than now...

But yeah, on the whole, I don't think it's a huge difference between then and now. The Blacker traits came in from Nubia, supposedly, and also maybe kinkier traits from Arabia too. It really takes some catastrophic changes for a group of people to just up and be replaced, or drastically changed.

 

[mindlessobserver]

The biggest fallacy of the genetic determinist crowd has been that who you are descended from is the most important factor. IMO though the most important factor is your Personal History (caps relevant).

Let's take the Dutch. Are they Norse, French, English, German rape babies? Or are they a country that for almost a thousand years punched above its weight and carried its flag and local language around the world? The genetic heritage of the Netherlands is a silly mess. But its cultural heritage is not. And the cultural heritage is what defines the country.

This incidentally is why I find efforts to "subvert culture" to be so pernicious. Our culture and our historical memory is what truly defines us as a people. If we break that we have to fall back on individual genetic groupings, and that is both unclear and dangerously dividing even in an ostensibly homogeneous country.

 

[Coleslaw]

Is the Missouri Synod the largest denomination named after a geographical location?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Is the Missouri Synod the largest denomination named after a geographical location?

lol bruh I think that'd be the Roman Catholic Church

 

[Coleslaw]

lol bruh I think that'd be the Roman Catholic Church

Damn, I mean a location in the US then.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Damn, I mean a location in the US then.

Southern Baptists? Probably bigger in population.

Also, when I said "refrigeration," I meant "air conditioning."

 

[Coleslaw]

Southern Baptists? Probably bigger in population.

Also, when I said "refrigeration," I meant "air conditioning."

When did mass migration to the South start?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

When did mass migration to the South start?

1950s, 1960s roughly, is when it supposedly happened. It shouldn't have made any real impact on the more northern Southern states, but in the Deep South it made a significant enough impact both on the feasibility of industrialization (creating more jobs to attract people back) and made life tolerable for people not already accustomed to the brutal Summers.

 

[Coleslaw]

1950s, 1960s roughly, is when it supposedly happened. It shouldn't have made any real impact on the more northern Southern states, but in the Deep South it made a significant enough impact both on the feasibility of industrialization (creating more jobs to attract people back) and made life tolerable for people not already accustomed to the brutal Summers.

Didn't North Carolina get a lot of northern immigrants?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Didn't North Carolina get a lot of northern immigrants?

Yeah. I don't know much about that, but it, like Florida and Virginia, is rapidly losing its Southerness.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

If we break that we have to fall back on individual genetic groupings, and that is both unclear and dangerously dividing even in an ostensibly homogeneous country.

Most genetic groupings exist in clusters too, exacerbating the lack of clarity.