Is - "So your paternal grandparents are/were lineage wise Italians themselves?
What about the spouse, is she of European descent?
When you say you identify as an american, I take it you mean by that no racial affiliation, probably not even a set of particular values, so what does this american identity mean to you?"
Yes, my grandparents were Italians. My wife is portuguese, french canadian and english/scotch/irish.
I’m not sure I have a racial affiliation because I don’t know what that means, but I am aware that I am, by all measures, a caucasion. Race itself, like all taxonomy, is a convenience. Useful in some ways, an easily perverted and misused concept and useless for some purposes.
I do have a set of particular values. And a particular set of values. Most of them, I am quite certain, are not racial or even national values. There are too many to count. The american identity that I speak of is that i was born in america and have lived here all my life. I wish some basques would move in around here. We could use a basque restaurant.
And cubans. Same reason. And I wish the sole local radio station that plays latino music played more salsa.
I value the fact that women of portuguese lineage can be very beautiful and that there are many living here.
We finally have a good mexican restaurant nearby.
Yeah, a lot of this will be about food.
I value that we have a lot of good economists in america who will tell you that you’re wrong about immigration.
Why is it that the people who blame illegal immigrants for taking their jobs never seem to blame the good ol’ americans who pay illegals illegal wages?
We do not have a moral obligation to receive refugees. We need to better regulate the O1A program. It’s being abused. We need to give the government flexibility to vary the immigration limits to reflect the demand. We need to operate our immigration policy with more economics and less moral righteousness (in both directions).
We need to stop subsidizing corn.
We need to raise the minimum wage in a more timely manner. We need workers who understand that maybe sometimes you have to do a job that sucks just to get on a payroll.