What an irony - the once European colonies which depended on their motherlands to defend them in an alien land, now become a menace or estranged godfather to Europe.
African Americans make up around 15% of the US, Asian Americans around 7%, Arab Americans around 1.5%, and Native Americans around 2%.
That percentage is likely much higher when you factor Latino Americans - the plurality of whom either have indigenous or African ethnic origins. And some of America's richest and most politically powerful states like California and Texas have some of the lowest rates of European heritage in the nation.
This whole "America is European" mentality reeks of West European supremacy and fails to recognize how diverse America is. The only European ethnic groups who still have active blood and ethnic ties with the old country tend to be Central and Eastern Europeans or Irish Americans - large pluralities of whom were forced to leave the old country due to colonial reasons (the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and British rule in Ireland was equally destructive as colonial rule outside Europe).
Alternatively, the only reason Western Europe didn't have a Park Chung Hee, Suharto, or Zia was because Europeans who were naturalized Americans like Brzeziński (Poland), Kissinger (Germany), and Albright (Czechoslovakia) ran policy during the Cold War era.
The modern equivalents of Brzeziński, Albright, and Kissinger are all either Heritage (ie. Pre-Civil War), Latino, Asian, or Arab American.
Why should European states be given privileges that Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and others weren't extended until the last 30 years?
We are not a European ethnostate. We are America.
Am I wrong? Is the child of a white person and a black person not considered black in the US? Is that not the case form the other groups too?
Either way Europeans overestimate American ties to Europe. If you actually visit America in 2026, most culture is either domestic, Asian, or Latino.
Heck, the majority of Americans began viewing Asia and not Europe as America's most important partners back in 2009 [0].
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/americans-turn-their-backs-o...
So the OPs point is internally consistent, even generalized past a mentality that 'reeks of West European supremacy'.
You guys don't actually understand how stuff actually works here or how we think. Our (Asian and Latino) ancestral countries economies are heavily tied with the US and leadership in our ancestral countries (excluding PRC ofc) remains either pro-Trump (look at the elections all across Latin America this year) or pro-America but Trump ambivalent (eg. Brazil and India).
And unlike Europe, at least in Asia all the states began arming and building strategic autonomy all the way back in the Obama 1 admin as part of the "Pivot to Asia".
You guys also don't seem to get the fact that the plurality of Americans have viewed Asia and not Europe as our most important partner since all the way back in 2009 [0].
We (the non-Europe aligned Americans) are increasingly climbing the rungs to become the decisionmaker's now in both parties.
Benign Atlanticism is dead in 2026. All that matters now is G2.
If that means both us and China squeezing Europe until it pops, so be it - when elephants fight it's the grass that gets stomped on.
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/americans-turn-their-backs-o...
Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to view the world in terms of race, tribalism, and might-makes-right: even if those you accept to be the unfortunate bystanders are different from who they were historically, I'll concede that you are fully in line with the American tradition.
And same as with the pre-2008 (per your comment) American tradition, it's an ideology that will make the world a worse place. Shame.
When I hear this, I think of the philosophy, system of laws, language, etc. in America - and not the percentages we get when we segregate the American population by their ancestors.
After 1945, Western Europe got Pan-Atlanticism but now much more dynamic South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc got dictatorships, military rule, and single party rule.
Now that we are pivoting to our Hemisphere and Asia due to G2, the gloves have begun to fall off with regards to Europe.
US-Asia trade already dwarfs US-Europe trade, and Europe is a secondary concern compared to G2.
> African Americans make up around 15% of the US, Asian Americans around 7%, Arab Americans around 1.5%, and Native Americans around 2%.
Those are cultural identities. The average African American has ~20% European ancestry. Latin Americans vary by country and region of origin, but on the average, they have more European than Native American ancestry.
OP's comment represents a very common sentiment and implication I've noticed amongst Europeans:
1. That America is inherently "European" and always will be
2. America has an obligation to Europe over other regions of the world
3. Americans view Europe as more important than other regions of the world
4. That Americans from non-European backgrounds are not in policymaking positions or that our opinions don't affect American political discourse
The Atlanticist world that existed from 1945 to 2008 only existed because the older generation of national security advisors and foreign policy hands in the US were first-generation European immigrants.
Their era is long gone on both sides of the aisle. Culturally, America is much closer now to Latin America or Asia looking at music, television, and fashion. Economically (based on bilateral trade flow), America is much closer to Asia and the Americas than Europe. And even demographically, those with living blood ties to Europe are a fraction of those with living blood ties to Asia or Latin America.
And the rise of "Heritage Americans" as an ethnic identifier also highlights how the one subgroup of white Americans who might have been open to keeping ties with Europe is turning their back on the continent as well.
Asia and the Americas are prepared for such a world, but Europeans still think America has some obligation to help them or treat their states as equals when they are at best junior partners.
That's an interesting statement. From my perspective, Latin America is clearly European, in the sense I understand the concept. It feels much like Russia. Major cities and densely populated regions are European, with local characteristics. But there are other cultures around, and they are dominant in some regions. And if you travel in fringe areas, you often find peoples that have not fully accepted the European cultural package.
I don't see Europeanness as something associated with specific ethnic groups or states. It's a cultural package that started spreading from the Roman Empire and was imposed upon different peoples at different times. Where I'm from, that happened ~800 years ago, though rural areas often kept to the old pagan ways until the 17th century. That time frame is not too different from what happened in the Americas.
But depending on where you are in Latin America as well as their familial background they may or may not associate with a European identity.
The LatAm states who associate the most with Europe are also the most racial homogenous (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) because of mass European migration in the late 19th and 20th century.
Other larger states like Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Dominican Republic, etc do not associate with Europe because these were highly mixed societies with large indigenous or African populations, and anti-Europeanism is almost as strong as anti-Americanism for historical reasons (eg. The French invasion of Mexico in the 1860s, the Mayan genocide in 1980s Guatemala led by white Guatemalan leadership).
Most Latinos know they aren't viewed as kin by Europeans and don't view them as kin either.
> I don't see Europeanness as something associated with specific ethnic groups or states. It's a cultural package that started spreading from the Roman Empire and was imposed upon different peoples at different times
But you need to accept you are European to truly be European, which we do not - look at the rise of "Heritage American" as an identity amongst White Americans.
Europeans are invalidating almost 400 years of domestic American cultural development as well as minimizing African, Native, and Asian American influences - which is a major cultural influence in vast swathes of the US - by pushing this notion that America is "European" and as such has an obligation to Europe.
We aren't European. We're Western.
The US has had it's own culture and European influence waxes and wanes depending on region, and most Americans simply don't view Europe as important anymore since 2008-09.
From my perspective, as someone from the Northern fringes of Europe, Latin American society and culture feel fundamentally familiar, while Middle East and North Africa don't. Out of the Latin American countries I'm most familiar with, Peru feels more European and Chile more American. Peru feels more like an Old World country, while Chile used to be a sparsely populated frontier.
Europeans definitely don't view other Europeans as kin. They are foreigners with a lot of shared history and culture. Both World Wars were fought because Europeans saw other Europeans as fundamentally different.
Yes. And Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are viewed as "Western" in American discourse as well. The Russian Far East isn't though.
> From my perspective, as someone from the Northern fringes of Europe, Latin American society and culture feel fundamentally familiar
> Out of the Latin American countries I'm most familiar with, Peru feels more European...
Frankly, a Finn isn't the right person to make this distinction. And if you've been to Peru you most likely spent the bulk of your time in Miraflores and other European parts of Lima, and not the majority indigenous hinterland. The European-Indigenous fault line is a major faultline in Peru going back to the Shining Path days.
Almost all African Americans have some European heritage by blood. If you go to Africa you will see some truly dark skinned people, who haven't any European ancestry. How can you not have noticed this in a world of global broadcasts?
A lot of Latino Americans and indigenous people are Roman Catholics, so part of European heritage.
I don't understand why you mention "never had blood .. ties" when at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842245 you reject the relevancy of blood ties. Wouldn't your argument make more sense as just "never had ethnic ties with Europe.
As a reminder, Obama, African-American son of a white woman, once visited Moneygall, where an Irish ancestor lived, and said "My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas."
Lastly, I see you switched from "blood or ethic ties" to "heritage". Could you elaborate on what that means? Must I be Greek inherit some of the intellectual heritage of Ancient Greece? How is my claim to the traditional European liberal arts education heritage any stronger or weaker than that of W. E. B. Du Bois?