Wasp

[motatalea]

I know that USA and Britain are proud of being Anglo-saxons and the best example on that is mostly presidents of USA most be of anglo-saxons descent where they represent the upper class in american society,and I know also that germany are proud of being Teutonic people who originally came from modern day northern denmark that is why germany in german means Deutschland which does mean the land of Teutons ,Now my questions are:
1-In USA ,do they consider the person of french heritage to be an anglosaxon or only people of English,Dutch,German ,Scandinavian descent?
2- In France ,do they proud that they are descented from franks like england from anglo-saxons or the ideology is different there?

 

[Minty]

I know that USA and Britain are proud of being Anglo-saxons and the best example on that is mostly presidents of USA most be of anglo-saxons descent where they represent the upper class in american society,and I know also that germany are proud of being Teutonic people who originally came from modern day northern denmark that is why germany in german means Deutschland which does mean the land of Teutons ,Now my questions are:
1-In USA ,do they consider the person of french heritage to be an anglosaxon or only people of English,Dutch,German ,Scandinavian descent?
2- In France ,do they proud that they are descented from franks like england from anglo-saxons or the ideology is different there?

French are not Anglo Saxons at all! Not sure about the US, but the Germans during the second World War thought their Germanic race was first, then the Anglo Saxons and French were both next, after that the Scandanavians, then Southern Europeans then it was the East Asians' turn ( when I heard this I felt ecstatic, we were considered to be above the slavics and the Jews?!!)

Also they put Jews above the blacks?! For me, up until Obama came along, blacks were always the ones who were seen at the bottom of the scale.

Dutch, Germans, Austrians and Belgians are Germanic people but they are close cousins to the Anglo Saxons.

Scandinavians are also closer to Anglo Saxons than French, Italians or Spanish too.

I just know the French are proud of who they are, but I am not sure whether they need to be descended from the Franks.

But I think Maciamo would answer this more thoroughly than me, after all I am a foreigner who married French, I am still learning about them in University.

 

[Maciamo]

1. French people never refer to themselves as Anglo-Saxon. In fact they use the term to describe all English-speaking countries (but strangely not the Dutch), which is technically wrong.

2. The French tend to think of themselves more as Gauls/Celts or Latins/Romans/Italians than Franks. The only exception is the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, where people usually think of themselves as Latinised Franks or Saxons.

This is normal as the biggest part of the French ancestry is not Germanic/Frankish, but Gaulish and Italian.

 

[Sirius2b]

1-In USA ,do they consider the person of french heritage to be an anglosaxon or only people of English,Dutch,German ,Scandinavian descent?

Actually this is a question that will be answered somehow differently by different persons.

What follows, have to be considered exclusively as my view of the issue in the "average" USA, and do not include Canada (The implications of speaking English with a French accent, are very different in Montreal than in Texas).

This thread has as title WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). In a very strict sense, a French do not enter that definition. And by the way, neither Irish or Catholic Germans, that were heavily discriminated when they began to arrive massively to the USA between, say 1840 - 1870.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_American#Discrimination
http://www.directessays.com/viewpaper/56174.html

Beyond the strict WASP term, however, there is what nowadays is called the "Anglo" culture. Here suffice that a person (sometimes) "anglisize" its name, be white, and speak perfect english. In this sense, it is much "the eye of the beholder". Here even a person of Russian, Italian or Spanish decent, could fit within the "Anglo" culture... and of course, people of French decend.

Even in academic papers, USA population is divided simply like that: Anglos, Blacks and Mexicans.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPorta...&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED041975

Inside the "Anglos", you have not only people of say, British, Irish, Scottish origins... but Germans, French, Russians, etc.) or simply, "white christians".

Therefore, definitely outside the "Anglo" culture, are Blacks, some Latin Americans (specially Mexicans) and Asians.

Here, by the way "Asians" are people that more or less have what we could call "Han" or "Mongoloid" features. Hindu, Iranians, Turkish or Middle East people, are not seen commonly as "Asians".

What I mean, is that in reality, many of the ethnic or national divisions valid in Europe, cese completely to have relevance in the USA, once the immigrants have been absorved by the US culture... in general.

However, when you look very close, you could find exeptions. For example, there are French speaking communities in Luisiana, that try to keep their traditions, and deliveratly they put themselves ouside of the reach of "Anglo" culture.

http://www.codofil.org/english/links.html

2- In France ,do they proud that they are descented from franks like england from anglo-saxons or the ideology is different there?

Whatever I say will be much less informed, compared to that Maciamo knows about the subject. I could say that I believe they are proud of their Frank component, and that they see themselves (in France) as completelly different culture, even somhow oposed to the Anglo-Saxon world.

 

[Invictus_88]

The confusion here arises from the common current use of "Anglo-Saxon" as a cultural rather than a historical or ethnic term.

French Culture (by which most French will mean post-revolutionary Republican culture) is distinct from "Anglo-Saxon" (a strange French euphemism for British-American) culture, but this sort of thing should be kept absolutely distinct from discussions of a genetic/ethnic nature.

 

[Hus]

Pride in one's culture is one good thing (ie. Yorkshiremen and Normans, amongst others), but when we get hateful idiots and/or nationalists- even intelligent and literate ones who can spell- that twist history and denigrate every other culture as if they shouldn't exist, it becomes a boring and disturbing diatribe.

There are many on the internet, polluting the place with overblown rhetoric and laughable hyperbole. 'Brothers of my kin, Alfred the Great' went one I remember! )

The right-wing types that usually hijack this topic elsewhere, and that of race/genetics etc and espouse a dangerous cocktail of perverted hate and clumsy propaganda, are hopelessly lost in their own embittered and blindly hypocritical world.

Calling themselves WASP's (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) suggests that people who use this term identify themselves as Christians, when the nazis whom many of the people of a right-wing persuasion admire, actually destroyed churches and called Jesus- the religion's figurehead/deity- the "bastard son of a jewish whore"?
Other nazis were [former?] Catholics...or were themselves jews?

 

[Aristander]

SiriusB is right about non-Protestant non-English speaking ethnic groups being discriminated against in the 19th and early 20th Century in America. My Grandmother was born in 1897 and she was from a English/Scottish protestant family.
Her first husband died in 1918 from the influenza epidemic and in 1920 she married my grandfather. He was from a first generation German speaking Catholic family. His parents had immigrated from Böhmisch Budweis (now České Budějovice in the Czech Republic) in 1880.
When she married my grandfather she was shunned by her friends and even members of her family. One of her cousins told her that she'd marry an Irishman, Mexican or even a Negro before she would marry a German.
I don't know if that was because of the hard feelings against Germans because of WWI or just blatant ethnic hatred.
My Mother-in-law was also from an German immigrant family when she started school she spoke no English. She told me that her and her brothers were beaten by the teachers for speaking German in school. It wasn't easy being a non-English speaking person in America back then.

 

[LeBrok]

Wow, that's an interesting part of not so far history, Aristander. I didn't have a clue about this.