Your Ethnicity DNA (Americans only) min % to identify with that ethnicity and call yourself Italian-American, Polish-American, Irish American..etc.

[oc16]

Most Americans are White Europeans who have a mixture of usually 2, 3, 4 and more European ethnicities in them.

I know this is silly, but what is the minimum ethnicity % of a particular European country that one should be in order to identify with that culture?

In my opinion, it should be close to half and more. I am half Italian and I look it, so I think I can identify as Italian-American and can say I am Italian.

Conversely, I have a very Irish surname, but I am only about 12.5% Irish and don't look it at all. Can somebody who is only 1/8th Irish or even 25% call themselves Irish American? In my opinion, NO!

For example, look at somebody like Robert Deniro. Sure, Deniro has the Italian surname and says he identifies as Italian American. However, he is only 1/4 Italian. How can somebody identify as Italian-American when 75% of their ethnicity is NOT Italian.

Thoughts?

 

[MatureDJ]

You're generally not going to look like a specific ethnic group unless you have a high portion of heritage in that group. And in any case, there has been a lot of mixing of ethnicities within Europe, even in Europe (certainly within North America).

Identity is strongly related to the identity that the parents took, and of course, if there are 2 different identities, generally only one will predominate, and it is more likely to be that of the father's, for the simple reason that it's his surname that gets passed on, and because facial features are much more correlated to the father - an evolutionary adaption that helped men answer the existential question, "is the baby that has come of out the womb that I've been depositing into mine?".

I'm culturally Pan-European, so it doesn't matter so much, although it is interesting to know.

 

[corrector]

I'm half Italian, and have a Jewish surname but identify more as Black / Mixed. As long as you have some Black, then the other identifies are flushed down the toilet because the Europeans tend to be prejudiced/racist, especially Italians. Although I visited Italy and all that, I probably had some bad experiences with members of the Italian family that rubbed off the wrong way.