Both my parents were born here, they've explained our lineage, but I literally don't care. I'm an American, America is my culture and country.

A hell of a lot of people want to "just be American" and a lot of Americans won't let them.

People who are "just angry and will direct it at whatever" can be very dangerous, as we've seen in the US even this week and in every school shooting and terrorist attack for years.

This is, terribly, the American experience. It used to be the Irish and the Italians before we decided they were "White enough." It doesn't mean we should just ignore it and accept it. If you're mad, that doesn't give you a pass to be a racist asshole to the first person less pale than a porcelain plate you see.

If anything, the fact that people have to know and cope with random Americans being this exact sort of racist asshole to them is the reason they form their own communities and see themselves as Black Americans or Asian Americans or any other sort of national or racial group.

The label “X-American” (replace X with a foreign country) should not exist. If you identify as this you are marking yourself as different from Americans. Take this article for example:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/world-news/six-ind...

Why do they need a coalition? The Motte is “they’ll be discriminated against if they don’t stick together”, but the Bailey is they will push for pro Indian initiatives (see H1B abuse, etc) at the expense of Americans. Ironically, this is also the cause of the discrimination they’ll face. It’s a healthy response to people who don’t care about Americans.

That's okay, more varied culture enriches, and I enjoy the added richness.

>...and have a “what’s in it for me” view of [insert anything here].

That unfortunately describes a huge share of human beings on this planet.

> The label “X-American” (replace X with a foreign country) should not exist

I disagree: I think it's totally okay for people to recognize a part of their identity (key words: a part of, since a person's identity comes from many sources), rather than being forced to hide it.

> If you identify as this you are marking yourself as different from Americans.

Each individual (Americans included) is different from all the other billions of individuals on this planet (other Americans included), and that's okay. It would be weird to try to be forced to deny that totally-okay fact. Thus, a self-described Hoosier or Floridian or Cheesehead or Californian or Plumber or Texan might differentiate themselves similarly without renouncing any "American-ness". Adding one of many possible identity labels (whether race or origin or sports team or profession etc) doesn't negate all others.

> They will push for pro Indian initiatives (see H1B abuse, etc) at the expense of Americans. Ironically, this is also the cause of the discrimination they’ll face.

Ironically, this claim is itself racist: Asserting that people of a certain race are coming to get you because of their race, and thus discrimination against that race is justified, is racist (and a tired racist trope at that).

Unfortunately though, most racists I have seen are racist simply because they feel the other race is different from them, and feel that their victims are bad and/or deserve less than themselves. I've seen racists remark with nothing less than anger and disgust at baby pictures of children of other races. Babies, dude.

For another example, I'll open up and share an unfortunate case I had with a family member when we were visiting a science museum: Upon seeing how many non-white people were there, said family member made several off-color remarks to me. But these people (many of them children) weren't abusing anything, they weren't doing anything "at the expense of Americans". They were just normal people, many of them likely citizens, learning and having a good time. Them being interested in science isn't a problem, and they weren't stopping anyone else from coming to the museum. It's just that they were disproportionately represented among the sample of Americans interested in science. Good for them, science is good.

Except it doesn't. Look at the places that have the "happiest" people on earth, e.g. Denmark. They are monocultures where nearly everyone has the same traditions and history.

And in recent times they have had a lot more immigrants, and it's causing a lot of chaos.

Varied culture divides. It creates "us" and "them" groups, this is baked into our tribal psyche as humans.

> Except it doesn't

I'm sorry to hear that you personally don't like the richness that other cultures add, but on the plus side, I do! :)

> Varied culture divides. It creates "us" and "them" groups, this is baked into our tribal psyche as humans

It takes someone seeking to divide, to divide. Embracing your culture and a part of your identity doesn't inherently divide anything. Ironically, the division often happens when someone says 'THEY embrace a culture I don't embrace, that must mean THEY are dividing us".

I recently went to an Ethiopian restaurant, enjoyed it, chatted with the owners, and didn't feel like they were dividing themselves from me, despite them embracing their culture. It'd be a shame for most restaurants to shut down because they embrace a culture that you don't embrace.

Have you considered the possibility that you are the one dividing people based on the components of their identity and culture and deciding which components are okay for them to have (because they match yours) and which aren't? Removing all culture but yours would be pretty boring (nothing personal, this goes for any monoculture).

My take on the comment was that so long as a trait is relevant to some people, it will be dispised by some other people. Either it's completely benign or it's somewhat polarizing. There are few things that only range from neutral to positive without detractors.

A person describing themselves as being Christian is only signaling that they are a follower of the Christian faith to some degree.

They are different for that reason. Christian doesn't have a physical appearance associated with it (well, other than say vestments or pendants).

All Christians are Christian.

Not all Asian-appearing folk are culturally Asian, not all culturally Asian folk are Asian-appearing. Even the concept of "Asian culture" (I do of course accept that such a concept exists) is super general in a much wider ranging way than the Christian faith. Maybe that explains it better.

To illustrate it in another way, imagine some LLM prompts:

"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a Christian about their faith?"

"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a White person about their culture?"

There is just a fundamental... grammatical wrongness(?) about the last one in my mind, I'm not sure that I can explain it if it's not already obvious.

That’s your racism.

Also, poetry is, mostly, white culture. You probably think that statement is racist.

(Shrug) If you didn't build it, what could possibly justify taking pride in it?

Pride in inborn cultural identity gets you things like Nazi Germany. It's not a win for either individuals or societies, only for intermediate subgroups whose interests rarely coincide with either.