Sense of Identity
Americans of English heritage are often seen as simply "American" due to the many cultural ties between the two countries and their impact on the American population which has hardly disappeared. This is due to the fact that the non-English population did not arrive in full force overnight and implemented early on.
They are less likely to proclaim it in the face of the upsurge of ethnic pride and loyalties by African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Scottish-Americans, Italian-Americans or other ethnic groups. After centuries of intermarriage and internal geographic mobility, many are unable to determine a specific English origin. For these reasons, no other part of the pluralist American society is so difficult to describe as a separate entity as the English. English immigrants were and are often seen as an invisible ethnic group, due to the length of time their ancestors may have been in the United States with the founding colonists being English people.
There is little or no celebration of the English Patron Saint St. George's Day other than by the Boy Scouts of America.
Read more about this topic: English American
Famous quotes containing the words sense of, sense and/or identity:
“Then we grow up to be Daddy. Domesticated men with undomesticated, frontier dreams. Suddenly life—or is it the children?—is not as cooperative as it ought to be. It’s tough to be in command of anything when a baby is crying or a ten-year-old is in despair. It’s tough to feel a sense of control when you’ve got to stop six times during the half-hour ride to Grandma’s.”
—Hugh O’Neill (20th century)
“These were not men, they were battlefields. And over them, like the sky, arched their sense of harmony, their sense of beauty and rest against which their misery and their struggles were an offence, to which their misery and their struggles were the only approaches they could make, of which their misery and their struggles were an integral part.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)