Tell me guys, what does the "plastic Pole" really stand for, a Polish-American or a green-card Pole? I'm asking because before joining this forum, I never came across this description.
Hmm - could be either, but I'd use the term more to describe those who aren't Polish, who don't speak the language, who make a big show out of doing "Polish" things and who tend to be very sensitive about Poland being criticised in anyway. They're Plastic - because - they're only Polish when it suits them. If they were forced to choose, they'd pick American. They're the ones who get upset with the term "Polak/Polack", because they're so ignorant that they don't know what it means.
It can also be used for those Poles who have lived in America so long, who have got American citizenship and who have absolutely no intention of returning - usually the ones who pretend that they've forgotten Polish and that they regard everything Polish as being inferior.
It's a PF invention I think, but it does describe them rather well.
Poles in general don't sweat the small stuff and its true Poles in Poland appreciate anyone who appreciates their culture.
That's why there was a significant amount of hostility towards the American Polonia interfering in the Polish Presidential election this year, then?
As I say - I'm on the ground and living here. You're not.
The thing that makes me laugh most of all is the way that the Polonia insists that they are TRUE POLES - yet many of them know -
a) nothing about the partitions
b) nothing about the difference between nationality and ethnicity (and how it's changed)
c) nothing about Poland apart from what "Busha" told them
d) nothing about being Polish
e) nothing about the likelihood of someone being 100% genetically Polish