An Open Question for 'Jock Scot' (and Scots)

[BCAC]

I for one found nothing the slightest bit offensive in your post.



I think this perspective is one of the most difficult bridges we try to cross on this forum. Would you say that the culture is significantly different in the South of France, where you are now, from that of the Highlands of Scotland? I note the distance from Nimes to Inverness to be just over 1000 miles. How many cultural differences in that span? Highland Scot? Lowland Scot? English? Parisian? From where I grew up in North Carolina that same distance would get me up to the northeast corner of the United States or, heading west, about halfway across the country.

This sheer size difference makes,..., well, a difference. Scotland will fit into the United States more than 125 times. It will fit nearly twice into my home state of North Carolina, which has nearly twice the population. If you accept that there are differences between Highland and Lowland Scots, surely it must be more than evident that there are probably differences between Eastern North Carolinians (by the beautiful coastline) and Western North Carolinians (in the beautiful mountains), and then it must be really, really evident that there must be cultural differences between those same North Carolinians and the rest of the United States. We share a national identity, but the very idea that Americans could share a cultural identity is downright silly.

Additionally, much of North American is not populated by families who have been here for many generations. Sure there are parts of the country where this is true, but there are a great number of people who's immigrant ancestors came just last century. And the way the country was settled, even from the beginning, there were pockets of people from the same country living together. They lived in the same neighborhoods in cities or started churches in more remote, rural areas, continuing parts of their cultural heritage. Just because by the time our ancestors arrived, the people living in Scotland no longer thought of themselves as Picts, Normans, etc., doesn't mean that those who left Scotland no longer thought of themselves as Scottish. You yourself say you couldn't do it. So they saw themselves as Germans, Irishmen, Italians. And their children then though of themselves as German-Americans (i.e. Americans of German descent) and so on.

You might just have hit the nail right on the head, there.

I've lived in France for a while now and it's difficult here as well to find someone who will say he's FRENCH first and foremost. They're all fiercly proud of their region or town but most of them have an independance mouvement (even the regions smack in the middle of the country).

One instance comes to mind. When the French football team won the world cup in 1998 there were thousands (if not millions) of people on the main street in Paris to celebrate and in the middle there's this one guy waving his Brittany flag. He couldn't even be French that day!

I was just thinking that someone should say "I'm from xland (wherever xland may be), my parents are from xland, my grandparents are from xland so I'm a proud xlander"