Talk:American ancestry

Poor citation practices, unsupported assertions, imprecise language, failure to address controversy and present a neutral point of view

Resolved

version prior to this talk - --Moxy (talk) 08:29, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the edit. I was actually editing it back before being told it had already been edited so you were pretty quick. I thought the information was incorrect until I then went back and read your citation. Paddy234 (talk) 11:26, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

The opening sentence of this article asserts that "Americans are a North American ethnic group." That assertion is not sufficiently supported by the citations provided. The citation for Albion's Seed, for example, points to the entire the book when it should point to specific page numbers or at least specific chapters or even a specific, quoted passage. Albion's Seed never uses the term "American ethnicity" or argues for that concept within its covers. Instead, Albion's Seed uses terms such as "cultural heritage" (p. 133). Albion's Seed uses "American" in a way that contradicts this article's claim that the word "American" functions today as reference to a specific ethnicity: "Today less than 20 percent of the American population have any British ancestry at all. But in a cultural sense, most Americans are Albion's Seed, no matter who their own forebears may have been" (p. 6; Albion is the first recorded name for the isle of Britain). This article focuses heavily on ancestry, but Albion's Seed presents "American" as wholly divorced from "ancestry": "most Americans," no matter their ancestry, are considered culturally connected to Britain. In its current form, this article does not follow Wikipedia policies for controversial articles and neutral point of view. This article needs to be thoroughly revised or deleted. As it stands, it's not suitable for wikipedia. Jk180 (talk) 03:19, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Partly done: .....I hope the lead with its sources makes the scope of this article more clear and balanced.--Moxy (talk) 03:21, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Moxy. I think your rewrite is very good. Now the "History" section needs attention! Jk180 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:11, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Should we be using the term "hyphenated Americans" to talk about ethnic identities today? That's a historical term used nearly a century ago to accuse new immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe, of divided loyalties. The terms used today (African American, etc.) are not hyphenated in most style guides. The Wikipedia entry on "hyphenated Americans" covers this information, and I think the link to the Wikipedia entry is good to have, but I don't think we should use the term itself to talk about ethnic identities today. Link it, but use another term to link it? Maybe "compound ethnic identity"? Jk180 (talk) 14:20, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I see your point....but all we can do is regurgitate the sources. --Moxy (talk) 19:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

 Done added all the sources I know of.....changed text to correspond with them.--Moxy (talk) 23:51, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 16 April 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Dane ^talk 23:11, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

---

American ethnicity → American ancestry – After seeing the current and now archived talks I decided to clean up this article with sourced content ect... After do so I think the article would best represent the content, scoop and it's sources if this was moved back to American ancestry where it was at one time. Finding an ideal title for this symbolic or self-proclaimed group is difficult but I think American ancestry is best.....as "Ancestry" is a specific US Census question in 2000. Moxy (talk) 03:44, 16 April 2017 (UTC)--Relisting. Yashovardhan (talk) 11:32, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

Support This article is talking about ancestry, or at least people's perception or concept of it. Of course there is a distinct American culture and identity which, BTW, is shared by Americans of all races and backgrounds. But an article on that would have a different focus than this one which seems to be focused on white people only.BigJim707 (talk) 16:12, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

It really should be added that African Americans and even more so American Indians are more distinctly American than the people this article talks about.BigJim707 (talk) 16:13, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Support The article name should be changed from American Ethnicity to American Ancestry. The article should be based on data, including analysis by experts, and that data points to an emerging sense of "American" as an ancestry that is freed from conventional explanations of ancestry. (The data certainly does not point to an uncontested white American ethnicity that is truly grounded in western white Anglo-European ancestry, as was claimed in earlier versions of this article.) The article should be expanded to explore usage of "American" as a term (sometimes contested) of ancestry by different groups and different ethnicities. For example, the reference to "Native American" should be restored, I believe. Jk180 (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Move instead to American ancestry (United State Census), as this is a census phenomenon.--Pharos (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"multitude"?

The top section includes the sentence

This response is attributed to a multitude or generational distance from ancestral lineage.

What the heck is "multitude" supposed to mean here? The word means "a large number (of ...)", or "the people, the masses". Here, it is opaque. Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 04:11, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Means those with a multicultural or convetuted background.--Moxy (talk) 05:59, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Questions?

I must admit I'm slightly confused by this article. Is this article about responses by White Americans (who in reality are of European ancestry) who identify as American or all American people irrespective or race or ethnicity who identify as American? If this is only about White Americans, then perhaps the article should made this clear in the lead so not to confuse the reader, and perhaps a renaming is in order so that we all know what this article is about. If on the other hand it is about all Americans irrespective of race/ethnicity who identify as just American, then it begs the question why aren't those ethnic groups represented in this article and why do we only see white/Europeans in the related section of the infobox?Tamsier (talk) 16:52, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

@Tamsier: Every ten years Americans are asked fill out forms mailed to them by the United States Census (last in 2010, next in 2020 – and those who don't respond can expect a knock on their door by a Census worker who will verbally ask the questions and fill in the form for them). But not all Americans are asked the full set of questions. I believe most are only asked the "short form" questions. A stastistically significant sampling of Americans are asked additional "long form" quesitons in addition to the "short form" questions that everyone gets. Ancestry was a "long form" question. The Census Bureau currently collects ancestry data through the American Community Survey.

You can see the results of the aggregated question about ancestry in many Wikipedia articles. For example, Clinton County, Ohio § Demographics. I believe there are separate questions for race and ancestry. So, from the responses to the race questions:

• The racial makeup of the county was 95.99% White, 2.19% Black or African American, 0.26% Native American, 0.38% Asian, 0.20% from other races, and 0.97% from two or more races.
• 0.66% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

and the ancestry question:

• 29.3% were of American, 22.2% German, 12.1% English and 10.9% Irish ancestry according to 2000 census.

If you know this background, I think the article should make more sense (the article should probably do a better job at explaining this). "The majority of these respondents are White Americans, who however no longer self-identify with their original ethnic ancestral origins or simply use this response as a political statement." That doesn't mean that they are all white. Remember that the majority of Americans are all White, though that may change in the future.

It's easy for those whose parents both arrived on boats or snuck across a land border where there isn't a fence or wall to specify their ancestry. As several generations pass then people may lose track of their ancestry. Or it may be easier to just say "American" rather than "German-English-Irish-Swedish"... melting pot. Ancestry.com runs television ads promoting their servce where Americans discover ancestry that they didn't even know about before they mailed in their DNA sample.

By the way, I'm here because I just discovered this article after fixing a miscapitalization and then finding that there was actually an article on this topic. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:48, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

And now I've found some more more specific links. That diff should make it more clear how this fits in. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:19, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Not sure how we can word it better as we dont have stats that compare who said what.... did the guy who said African for race say American for ancestry? Probably not but we cant say for sure ....but we do know that groups of whites from the south that in the passed said German or Irish etc....now are saying just American. I think the last sentence in the lead examples the problem a bit more and think the body covers this well.--Moxy 🍁 16:02, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Heres a link to the US Census FAQs about the "ancestry question"

"We code up to two ancestries per person. If a person reports more than two ancestries, we generally take the first two. For example, if a person reports German, Italian, and Scottish, we would code German and Italian." So if you're one-fourth German, one-fourth Italian, one-fourth Scottish and one-fourth French, then you might just say you're "American" rather than arbitrarily pick two of the four. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:30, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the info (above and below). That makes more sense, and I agree with the below.Tamsier (talk) 21:33, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Related ethnic groups (infobox)

I don't follow the rationale for inclusion in this section of the infobox. It all seems rather arbitrary. Should probably just remove that part of the infobox. wbm1058 (talk) 14:07, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

There are a lot of articles in Category:Ethnic groups in the United States. We can't cover them all in the infobox. So I replaced that mixed bag of random links with a single link to American ancestries, which just happens to basically say what I said above off the top of my head (before reading that section on Wikipedia). – wbm1058 (talk) 15:50, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Agree ...!!--Moxy 🍁 15:54, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

And not all of the articles that should be in Category:Ethnic groups in the United States are! wbm1058 (talk) 16:02, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Agree. That sounds better.Tamsier (talk) 13:06, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Naturalist

I removed the phrase "a prominent [[Natural history|naturalist]]," as it means nothing in this context. I searched the "Natural history" article, and the disambiguation page and could find nothing that gave a usage for the word "naturalist" that makes sense in the context of the sentence in this article. If you know of a meaning that does make sense, then replace the phrase with one that uses that definition, or links directly to that definition. Thank, Nick Beeson (talk) 14:14, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Odd the link got changed Naturalism (philosophy).--Moxy 🍁 21:44, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Content and source removal

Think best bring up proposed changes here first. Not sure why this choice is a political statement was removed. Also wondering why what most belive the term means was removed. Why was the academic analysis section blanked...... not sure how anyone can say an Oxford University Professor would be a bad source. Do some not have access to sources? Not seeing how removing racial views of the earliest 20th century is helpful either.Moxy- 23:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey Moxy! sure thing. Your second sentence doesn't read very clearly, could you clarify that, I wonder? " Also wondering why what most belive the term means was removed." Again, the linguistics here are opaque, but it looks like you may be asking about some of the information in the insufficient sources I'd excised. If you take a quick look at the edit note I'd provided, it reads, roughly: "‎These are incredibly poor citations, expressing inherently subjective, unfounded, and unsourced material from laughably poorly-conducted white papers that are riddled with unfounded and profoundly ignorant assertions." Was there something about this explanation that you had questions about?

You've got a third question there:

"Why was the academic analysis section blanked...... not sure how anyone can say an Oxford University Professor would be a bad source. Do some not have access to sources?"

If you're unsure why a work by a person employed at Oxford, or any other academic institution (independent of one's personal view on the prestige or lack thereof automatically and in theory conferred upon such an institution) would not be a good source -- Well, I'll attempt a short explainer here for you: Professors and other academics are not inherently correct in their assertions, nor in the products of their work. Typically, an academic's work is reviewed for, chiefly among other things, rigor. Should a given academic's work fail to pass standard or even light applications of testing for rigor, then the work is not considered, by other academics, professionals, and by extension the general populace, to be sufficiently truthful, expository, or -- in a word -- rigorous. I hope this has helped with your question.

It looks like you may have been trying to ask by implication if I have access to academic journals -- Yes, as the journals cited are publicly available. Were you able to look at those citations? They are likely still public. If you're having trouble, I'm reasonably familiar with primary research, perhaps I could be of assistance?

I see you've edited your entry to add: "Not seeing how removing racial views of the earliest 20th century is helpful either." Again, I'm going to parse out the grammatical issues here and I'm guessing you mean "Early 20th century". We've got some semantic issues here as well. "Racial views of [X] century" is not what was changed. I removed a misleading partial quotation from historical figure Theodore Roosevelt, which constitutes one person speaking or writing, and thus the views of the person speaking or writing, which is largely what a quotation is, in most applications. The quotation expressed is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, an individual person.

Eager to know your thoughts!

--Royal2Real (talk) 00:37, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is to not blank fully sourced statements. If there are disputes take them FIRST to this talk page. the issues should be explicated cites to other reliable sources. Unsourced commentary is not very helpful. Theodore Roosevelt was a prominent historian in the late 19th century and his books were quite influential. (His frontier model is cited--it was later replaced by scholars with Turner's similar but more sophisticated model.) Rjensen (talk) 00:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Not seeing and vaild reason for removal here. Wikipedia will default to academic publications over the view of an anonymous editor and attributes quotes followed by qualifiers. Why would Roosevelt's and National racial views not be relevant here.Kathie Friedman-Kasaba (1 February 2012). Memories of Migration: Gender, Ethnicity, and Work in the Lives of Jewish and Italian Women in New York, 1870-1924. SUNY Press. pp. 95–. ISBN 978-1-4384-0338-0. OCLC 1152989041..Moxy- 01:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Rjensen "Wikipedia policy is to not blank fully sourced statements. If there are disputes take them FIRST to this talk page." Hello, I know this, and only attempted it with the first edit, as has been mentioned above. Thank you anyway though!

" the issues should be explicated cites to other reliable sources." I think what you mean here is the same thing that you wrote on your revert of my work, yes? The idea being that one should not remove a perceive unreliable source or badly contextually-presented source, without replacing it with a different citation. This is not necessary, as a bad citation can indeed be removed if it fails to meet Wiki standards, though I will agree that the proper thing to do as per protocol is to bring it to the talk page, which is what we're doing! So great. Now we should talk about the citations.

"Unsourced commentary is not very helpful." I did not write "unsourced commentary" The source of my commentary is WP:RS and Wiki's guidelines and advisements in general.

So again, one citation/quote was presented out of context, misleading the viewer about Roosevelt's views (I'll dig up my copy Morris' work on the subject and see if I can replace that with something less choppy, short, and out-of-context, since that would be the more clarifying option for the audience anyhow)

"Not seeing and vaild[sic] reason for removal here." Amongst, perhaps, other things you're not seeing, I wonder.

"Why would Roosevelt's and National racial views not be relevant here" Moxy, I can only do this so many times. I'm going to try again: The quote was presented in a misleading manner. Nobody said his views on the topic were irrelevant. You seem to have also inserted your own personal historical assessment, and claimed that one man's personal views are inherently reflective of the entire country in his time. This is not only inaccurate about Roosevelt, but is a pretty outlandish assumption without citation to begin with. The only citations floating around that might give one that impression would be ideologically-soaked hack work from university professors whose papers don't pass muster by a mile. Surely we can do better than that. Please pay attention to the bolded wording above, Moxy.

--Royal2Real (talk) 20:07, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Any sources you have would be great.Moxy- 14:14, 23 November 2021 (UTC)