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The main reason people call themselves $HYPHENATION-americans is because they want some free stuff from the government for their particular $HYPHENATION

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What free stuff do Jewish Americans, Italian Americans, Asian Americans, get?

Spare a thought for the poor Scots-Irish who didn't think to add American to their hyphenated identity. I'm sure they're missing out on so much free stuff.

This is absolutely the reason. Except in the case of black people, for which it was something imposed by white people during the Clinton administration as a sort of twisted apology for destroying the Rainbow Coalition (who popularized "African-American.")

Once people saw that slaves and their descendants might be compensated in some way, or treated in a special way by government in lieu of compensation, they all wanted to become black. So after 1965 (the end of legal segregation in the US) they started hyphenating their ethnicities, or in the case of "hispanic," making up new ethnicities from whole cloth.

Compensation for slavery isn't "free stuff." You should give up your inheritance.

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