"Full Blooded"

[Peter Crowe]

There have been a few threads on this and related topics. My summary of those threads is:

Scottish = Born in Scotland or a vote-eligible resident, or a citizen of the country.
Scottish decent, Scottish ancestry = those descended from Scots, but not "Scottish".

In the US, people frequently say they are "Irish" or "Scottish" or "fill-in-the-blank" and they mean "of that ancestry". They are actually "Americans" not Scottish at all! When someone asks if I'm Scottish, I reply with "I'm from California, but my ancestry is Scottish" or something similar.


I think you can appreciate and participate in another culture, but you really aren't part of that culture unless you are living it. My 2 cents! I know there are many varying opinions on this point.

It is a tricky thing to navigate without hurting peoples' feelings about their identity, but when I first visited America (Massachusetts) as an adult, I was a little taken aback by people who came up to me and on hearing my accent immediately claimed to be Irish or Scottish without ever having been in either country.

I have come to the conclusion that I can only be clear about my own identity and lack the personal knowledge to define how others perceive theirs, I am a Scot from Scotland, but my paternal grandfather was an Englishman from Hampshire albeit with a Scottish maternal grandfather from Paisley. The point being that genetics can only ever be part of what makes someone Scottish.

I grew up in Scotland, was educated there, came of age there, and in truth the mixture of my family heritage, socialisation and education in Scotland is what makes me Scottish.

I have lived in America for 12 years and became a US citizen almost eight years ago (I am still also a British citizen under UK nationality law), and while I have never felt foreign or 'other' here, I don't feel American in the same way as someone who was born here or grew up here.

Identity is complicated and deeply personal, but I believe that we are all part of the same human race, and what separates us is primarily cultural and linguistic. The experience of the Scot from Scotland and the American/Canadian/Australian/New Zealander etc. of Scottish descent is different, however, that does not mean that the latter group cannot or should not honour their Scottish heritage. Equally it should be appreciated that those whose ancestors remained continue to live in that living culture tied to a particular geographical location with it's own historical development, but also with all the cultural. political, economic and social influences of the wider world acting uniquely upon it.

No people, culture, nation or society in the modern world can ever be set in aspic or be an anachronistic theme park for tourism.

At the end of the day people have to live with differences great and small all the time, and should be aware that social reality is constantly evolving whether in ways we like or not. Scotland is no different from most anywhere else in that regard.