"What happened in the past should remain in the past - and that should be the case the world over."
Well said. I have seen people who carry "baggage from the past" and I tend to dislike it. I have seen people carry baggage from the past, who don't really have much reason to be doing so (one person whom I know is convinced that he is Irish despite being born in America, to American parents...who for some reason thinks it's a grand idea to take up the "get the Brits out of Ireland" torch... even though he has never been out of the USA)... just drives me up the wall, and is insulting to those who may have more, shall we say "defined" connections to any number of random causes or whatever you wish to call them. Sorry, just had to get that sort of thing off my chest. If in some magical way, proving the genetics of the region to be very similar would fix anything, this is the sort of guy who would just ignore any rational evidence.
So, I don't really know where I was going with that. I think there was some sort of random point in there.

I identify myself as Scottish. Hell, I was born there, and lived there for a few years before my family got stationed elsewhere. My father is American born, with largely Scottish ancestry (although the family has been in the USA for many generations, genetically speaking things probably haven't changed much). My mother is German born, her mother was German, but her father was Czech. There may even be a little English in the mix somewhere too (wouldn't surprise me, given the usual cross pollination that happens between nations, and when a new nation is forming).

I guess the point of that one was that most people are a mix of a few different national origins. It wouldn't surprise me to see very similar genetics now. However, people still often try to identify themselves as one particular nationality or ethnicity, eventhough they may be much more than that. I've known plenty of guys who were half Caucasian, and half African-American. What did they call themselves? Black. Because they had the darker skin tone, almost all of them (many were co-workers who I razzed on all the time for it...in good humour, of course, they usually had something equally silly to throw back) identified himself or herself as one ethnicity, despite the fact that there was much more to each person's genetic makeup.
I don't entirely know why people do this sort of thing..perhaps it's so they have a brief answer when someone asks "What are you?" or "Where are you from?" It saves people from having to give the long answer?
Dunno.
Rant done.