How Polish am I? What is the correct formula?

I think people are arguing one of two things. Some are arguing ethnicity, while some are arguing nationality or citizenship. If someone was born in the US and their "blood" is 100% Polish, then their nationality or citizenship is American and their ethnicity is Polish. Meaning depending on the question he/she can say he/she's American or Polish without anyone getting upset.

What is an American ethnicity? Unless you're Native American your family immigrated to the US from somewhere else. Meaning that Native American is an ethnicity, while American is not.

Ethnicity is a lot of hot air if you think about it. After five generations you are talking about 30 + 1 ancestors. After 10 generations that number increases already to 1023, and after 20 generations you are at a whopping 1048575. Now imagine that every generation a new ethnicity joins your family tree. How far back will you go to define your ethnicity, and which line of your family tree will you use to determine what you are? Despite: what makes people think that ethnic Poles 500 or 1000 years ago are even comparable to the ones alive today? They have nothing in common, so what is ethnicity really?

Same thing can be said about nationality, all of it is hot air, lines on a map that don't exist exsept in our minds

An new poster with family living in Poland chooses to refer to their abode as a "homestead" and this it the obnoxiousness she is subjected to. That really is too bad.


You are 1/8th Polish.


You are right.


Ethnic Poles today are descended from ethnic Poles of previous generations. They have their genetics in common and anyone who has ever witnessed family resemblances knows that this is not nothing. What makes you want to believe that large branches the human family tree cannot be described in terms of ethnicity? You are aware that we all ultimately trace our roots back to Africa:


I hope she is too and I also hope that she is proud of her Polish heritage. Her great-grandmother was Polish and her exponentially great-grandmother was African. There is nothing wrong with being proud of one's family.

The members of the Polish diaspora that come to this forum are often quite surprised to be met by this weird gauntlet of people telling them Polish descent is a myth. It isn't.

You misunderstood, Des. Of course you can describe local groups of people based on ethnicity, but in my opinion the term 'ethnicity' becomes meaningless the further you go back in time or the longer someone's descendant is separated from the original group. Ethnicity in the genetic sense and in most cases also in the cultural sense is lost over the centuries for various reasons. One being that people tend to mix.


So you are not a Polish American, but an African American. That's what I meant: where do you draw the line?


In the vast majority of cases, it's either Americans or Canadians who come up with this idea of an invisible bloodline/ cultural tie to the old countries (not only Poland) that they, their parents, grandparents, great grandparents (...) have never seen in their life. I know that people here in the US tend to define themselves through heritage, but for me personally that's a strange idea - much like these weird questions about race in the census forms.

Ethnicities are branches of the human family tree and everyone's descent goes back to a time before current ethnicities existed, but that doesn't makes the term "Polish" meaningless for a person coming on to this forum with a Polish great-grandmother.


Ethnicity in the genetic sense is never "lost" as long as the bearers of the genes continue to reproduce. Mixing doesn't negate ethnicities just as marriage doesn't negate families. I fear you are trying to understand ethnicity with some sort of creepy fixation on "purity". Are you of German descent? Maybe it is in your blood......


Why do you think that one cannot be both a Polish-American as well as an African-American? Why must a line be drawn? If lines are necessary then of course they are drawn nearer one's immediate descent just as is done with terms like "immediate family" and "distant cousin".


Bloodlines are not "invisible" nor are cultural ties. People of Polish descent have ancestors that participated in the Polish experience and thus being interested in Polish history and culture is a completely reasonable thing for people of Polish descent.


People in the USA define themselves in myriad ways. For most of them their ethnicity is just one aspect of who they are. Pretending that one's ethnicity, such as "Polish-American", is somehow the be all and end all of one's self-identity is a severe misunderstanding of the role played by ethnicity in America and elsewhere.


You set up false dichotomies, build straw men, and goosestep.

I simply fail to understand why a person should take pride in something over which they have no control. Do you blame yourself when the weather is bad? No? Why not?! You have more control over the weather than you do about where your great-grandparents were born (you can move to a place which has weather which is 'better').


It's from this film (although it doesn't work now you're revealed yourself as being female):
youtube.com/watch?v=wI7RIRQvEXs


Unless I'm much mistaken, Florian is a Roman name.


Anybody who has even been near the Polish border with Belarus knows that some lines on maps very definitely exist.


Your first post for several weeks and you start it with an off-topic personal attack; I do hope you remember that your protector is no longer a mod here and thus the same rules apply to you as to everybody else.


A Polish name does not necessarily make a person Polish, neither does having family born in what is now Poland. Just look at that Zalewski scumbag who led the Nazis during the murderous suppression of the Warsaw uprising and oversaw the destruction of the city afterwards: Polish name, family born in what is now Poland (for many generations), most certainly not Polish.


But then a lot of such people have never seen much in their lives at all.

Why is this so difficult for people to grasp?

If you are born in America, you are American. If you are born in England, you are English. If your family came from different places then they would have belonged to a different social group who had a common national or cultural tradition. That would be their ethnicity, seeing as they did not originally inhabit the country in which they now reside.

E.g. my dziadek was from Poland and settled in England, my Grandma was from Italy and settled in England, they would be recognised as Italian/Polish-English due to their roots and where they reside. My mother was born in the UK so she would be defined as English but with having Polish/Italian roots. For me this only truly works if there is just the single generation gap.

The same applies for the term African American. If you, or your parents were not born in Africa then you are not African-American. You are American with African family somewhere down the line.

Wanting to promote your cultural identitie(s) is fine, but having to come on a forum where you can work out whether or not you are 1/32/64/128 of a certain ethnicity is ridiculous.

cant people just be what they like? It is called 'self identifying', what is the problem?

I couldn't agree more. Some of us just like winding up the types who weep into their Vodka/Guiness/Malt whisky and declare undying love for a place they've never been to. Especially when they tell us they know more about the place than those of us who live here because they feel it deep in their ancestral souls.

I'm just telling you that ethnicity is meaningless after a certain time. Why is it even important for people who have never been to Europe, have never experienced Polish culture first hand, don't speak the language, to identify as "Polish"? They are American, not European.


Ethnicity and race is not important in the US? Well, then why are you pretending to be Polish...? ;)


The Polish experience? LOL! My ancestors participated in the African experience of killing a lion. Beat that!

If you do the math I'm 3/4 Polish, I also try to learn the culture and the language for the sole purpose of being able to visit Poland. I'm also in contact with some of my family still in Poland. Am I wrong in saying I have Polish ancestry or should I just forget about my heritage and say I have an "American" ancestry. I accept my nationality is American and if I do go to Poland I won't be claiming that I'm Polish to everyone who asks.

I live in an area where there are descendants of Native Americans. By the standards of some here they are just Americans. They were conquered, slaughtered and sent to "reservations". They were stripped of their national identities and national status. They considered themselves Native American. In 1982 they were given their Sovereign Nation status back by the citizens of the United States because it was recognized that it was unjustly stripped from them. There are few of them who are more than 1/8 blood. Now they are once again a Native American tribe with all the rights and privileges of an independent nation. They hold duel citizenship but hold their alliance to their Sovereign Tribe first and foremost. There are those among the natives that refuse to acknowledge any citizenship other than the Sovereign Nation to which they belong. This place is not America to them. I am a non-native European American in their eyes. I am a descendent of Europeans in their eyes. The distinctions are real.

The above explains why ethnicity is important. I firmly believe that ethnicity and nationality are two very distinct and important aspects of an individuals identity. I can change the nation in which I was born or live in but I can not change my ethnicity. To ask why a person could be proud of their ethnicity is like asking why a person could be proud of their handsomeness or beauty. Another example might be in the case of a Jew born anywhere in the world. They are accepted into Zion if they are ethnically a Jew or religiously a Jew. This is not hard to understand.

I come from an entirely Polish family. My dna tests declare me to be entirely Eastern European. I grew up in a Polish home with Polish traditions, language and culture but was born in America. My relatives in Poland believe I am Polish. My grandmother took trips back to Poland during the difficult times there with clothing and money to help her family. They are my family also. I live in America as an American citizen, served in its military during war and currently have a very comfortable life relative to the rest of the world. I am Polish through and through. I was born in America.

Some people like to argue. Generally they are considered sick and difficult to be around. That's easy to understand.

Let the flames begin.

singingfalls. Could you give more details about your DNA being "entirely Eastern European"? DNA testing is an inexact science, and as far as I'm aware, nobody in Europe is entirely anything, genetically.

A cursory examination of Polish history is enough to know that there are very very very few people who are entirely Polish.


Interesting, given that Poland isn't in eastern Europe.

Yes and no. The further you go back, the less the increase in number of ancestors per generation. Not necessarily incest or inbreeding; that's just the way it is.

Hahahaha. You all make me laugh.

Roger 5. I was actually quite surprised at the results myself. I marveled that after so many invasions there was nothing to indicate that Russian, German, Roman etc was in the mix. The average Pole is 82%. Mine was 99%+. Your statement that dna analysis is not exact science belies the fact that people go to capital punishment or are freed from prison based in it.

Also, I found strong influences of Ust' Ishim. I told my wife that we either carried large clubs, were to ugly to breed with or hid very well in the swamps.

More Polish than the Polish, then. Congratulations.


That would be in the other one per cent, presumably.

Roger5 :) According to my grandmother I was a Polish prince. Hahahahaha. We come from a very long line of surfs. Actually the 82% figure is average "Eastern European" which includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. So some could be less and others more. It just so happens my families have been in Poland for many generations.

What has happened? Are you a Polish princess now?


Wow! Generations of surfers, have they been surfing on a long waves of a different dimension?

Vox Yes, The spiritual dimension that fears God.

What site did you have your DNA test done on?

Ancestry and FTDNA. They are very close for autosomal. I am currently waiting for my full mtDNA and Y-67. Supposedly due between the 5th and the 5th. I am considering Big-Y. Are you familiar with it?

I never used any of those sites. I have used 23andme though. I was just curious because I found it on that you're 99+% Eastern European. I have never seen anyone on 23andme have such a high percentage of anything. Were your ancestors Slavic inbreds? (Just kidding)

Yes, that's called implex, pedigree collapse or Ahnenschwund.


Ethnicity is meaningless after a few generations. People mix.

AmericanPatriot:


I seriously asked that question myself and did a series of dna analysis tests to find my closest was 5th cousins a couple of generations back. Ancestry and FTDNA had me up there. I didn't do 23andme because of the software issue being proprietary and unusable with the algorithms associated with A, Ft and Gedmatch.

TheOther:


I could agree to a degree but that was the point of my statement regarding the Native Americans in my area. Many have French surnames because of trapping in the 1700s.

If they were 1/8 and can trace their families back to the remnant then they were registered officially and accepted as ethnic Native American. Though they were mixed, the fragment of their ethnicity that remained made a difference to them and the USA government. But I do agree heartily with you that it can get complicated. (In particular, here in the US). For the record, I place personal character and wisdom far beyond ethnicity in my scale of importance.

The case of the Native Americans and Alaska Natives is a little different because they are officially considered a race and not an ethnicity (see iowadatacenter.org/aboutdata/raceclassification for example). Neighboring tribes mixed as well through 'intermarriages', so again: after several generations ethnicity (or being the offspring of a member of another tribe) becomes meaningless.

See, I can;t let a sleeping dog lay. My apology for the misspelling. Stuff like that eats away at me.