I am fed up...with hyphen Americans.

[sam]

My great-grandfather (mother's father's father) was a son/grandson of Norwegian immigants. He forbid the speaking of Norwegian in his house. His line was apparently, "we're Americans."

My maternal grandfather lost his inheritance for marrying my grandmother, who was born in Minnesota, that spoke Norwegian.

[mekender]

btw, the woman above is a true african-american.

[Wrenchbender1]

I remember some SrA that was ranting about this once. "...I'm tired of mutherf***ers saying that they're "African-American" or people calling me an "African-American". F*** that! I was born and raised here so I'm a f***ing American! Hell, I've never even been to Africa....." and so on. The dude had me in stitches.

[First Shirt]

A favorite line, that I stole from my son, just before his third trip to The Sandbox: "I'm Irish by blood, American by birth, and Southern by the grace of God - there ain't nobody luckier than I am!"

[Jericho941]

Yeah. On one hand, it's nice to know your roots. On the other, it's silly (at best) to pretend you're anything but American.

What's funny is that people from their "home countries" think second-generation Americans and above are complete idiots when they refer to themselves as anything-American.

[Frosch]

I yield the floor to Teddy:


There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
Theodore Roosevelt, addressing the Knights of Columbus in New York City
12 October 1915

[First Shirt]

I yield the floor to Teddy:

Amen, Brother! Preach it!

+1

[mekender]

I yield the floor to Teddy:

Amen, Brother! Preach it!

+1

any man that will give a campaign speech with a bullet hole in his chest is a man that i will respect a lot!

[Netpackrat]

I'm Alaskan, beyotch. I don't need your stinking hyphens.

[dfwmtx]

Well, if you're going to believe in all this human evolution stuff, technically we're all African-Americans since the homo sapien species came out of Africa. Why are all these hyphenated-Americans prejudiced in favor of the last place their ancestors lived before they migrated to America, and ignoring the other places their ancestors came from before that?