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I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

theatlantic.com

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Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#2
> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III)

This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#4
post #3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

An Irishman of the hundred years centered on 1900 would have responded with amusement or indignation at being called "Anglo-Saxon", a term referring originally to the peoples of Great Britain east of Wales and south of Scotland. The Irish regarded themselves rather as Celts, and ones that I had received bad treatment at Anglo-Saxon hands.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#5
post #3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

Assuming they are relatively pure-blooded Irish, they'd more accurately describe themselves as Celtic. In theory, Anglo-Saxon has a somewhat specific meaning (descended from the Angle and Saxon tribes). In practice, the term is often generically used for descended from northern European white people (as in WASP).

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#6
post #3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

Generally speaking, Irish people would be of Celtic or Norman (Which I'll still probably get some pushback for saying.) ancestry. Anglo-Saxons settled the rest of the area and ever since there's been some type of issue between the groups. An Irish person describing themselves as Anglo-Saxon is entirely divorced from the roots of where many Irish people are descended, there has always been a lot of trying to erase and assimilate that history and culture.

This is a somewhat tenuous topic too because there's a whole lot of history and bad blood after the times I'm speaking of and there's a different but similar issue currently brewing over there as well.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#7
post #3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

[deleted]

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#8
post #3

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

The Anglo-Saxons inhabited England, not the rest of the British isles. The term more-or-less corresponds to racially English, or culturally English.

The people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland were the Celts, with some subdivisions (Picts etc).

But it looks like both terms are more loaded in the USA [1], so I don't want to speculate on the intent of the comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Legacy

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#9

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? I don’t bother to call myself anything other than white, Anglo Saxon, European, Caucasian. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. I have Irish, English, Italian, and post world war 2 immigrated Polish direct ancestors. I don’t know what else to call myself nor do I particularly care. I don’t have a strong personal sense of identity tied up with any of those things. They are just words I assume apply to me when people use them.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#10

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

1 man => 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents. He could just be 1/16 Irish and 15/16 English.
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