Josh wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 9:54 am
as I consider all humans to be of one human race, and in any case, I don't think government departments need to be gathering data to find out who exactly where is of what race - such information can only be used in order to enable discrimination.
I applaud and approve of your "microaggression"!
"Included on the long list of so-called microaggressions is the theme of “color blindness,” defined as “Statements that indicate that a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race.” The list includes statements that you shouldn’t say, such as, “I don’t believe in race,” or “There’s only one race, the human race.” Apparently refusing to acknowledge so-called “race” is offensive because it denies the individual “races” of people."
Josh wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 9:54 am
as I consider all humans to be of one human race, and in any case, I don't think government departments need to be gathering data to find out who exactly where is of what race - such information can only be used in order to enable discrimination.
I applaud and approve of your "microaggression"!
"Included on the long list of so-called microaggressions is the theme of “color blindness,” defined as “Statements that indicate that a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race.” The list includes statements that you shouldn’t say, such as, “I don’t believe in race,” or “There’s only one race, the human race.” Apparently refusing to acknowledge so-called “race” is offensive because it denies the individual “races” of people."
Our youthful U.S. culture is experiencing tortuous growing pains.
Rebuking Jesus Christ and Truth we’re gifted in scriptures (for flawed human reasoning) will not lead to good fruit.
i’m happy to see some effort made to these parts of history.
Amish and Mennonites are included, no time stamps.
The World Wars exponentionally altered life on earth. No reversing it. It’s well to recognize these parts which, by design, were intended to erase/deny facts. (For myself, i can’t tell the difference between most German versus English) IN THOSE TIMES, the difference was stark, there were harsh penalties .. Italians can be easier to notice, not always!
Today’s overall mentality ignores balanced history in favor of what serves preferred narratives. It’s about political power and access to the public treasury. A form of pecking order, i suppose. *Thomas Sowell’s research adds depth; he’s too often ignored. And worse.
angloorigins / The German-American Trait Test — Do You Have Any of These? / 25:30min
“German ancestry is America's largest self-reported group, over 41 million people, yet it nearly vanished in one generation.
This documentary traces why:
WWI-era language bans,
renamed foods,
a Supreme Court case,
and a real lynching that pushed families into silence.
Then it hands you 10 documented signs,
surnames,
church records,
food,
naming patterns,
migration waves,
and the German Belt itself,
to check against your own family tree. Verified sources and further reading below.”
SOURCES .. ..
(not sure about their math wrt documented signs)
23:00 Family Search genealogy (free records)
It’s funny how life unfolds.
*i hope to live to see Thomas Sowell become required study, Middle School through college.
He has many books, videos, lectures, interviews. Lots available.
He doesn’t take the position of, “i have THE result i want to justify”, but, rather, “what happened, what do facts say?”
Then he goes with those results. Convenient or not.
i’m happy to see some effort made to these parts of history.
Amish and Mennonites are included, no time stamps.
The World Wars exponentionally altered life on earth. No reversing it. It’s well to recognize these parts which, by design, were intended to erase/deny facts. (For myself, i can’t tell the difference between most German versus English) IN THOSE TIMES, the difference was stark, there were harsh penalties .. Italians can be easier to notice, not always!
Today’s overall mentality ignores balanced history in favor of what serves preferred narratives. It’s about political power and access to the public treasury. A form of pecking order, i suppose. *Thomas Sowell’s research adds depth; he’s too often ignored. And worse.
angloorigins / The German-American Trait Test — Do You Have Any of These? / 25:30min
“German ancestry is America's largest self-reported group, over 41 million people, yet it nearly vanished in one generation.
This documentary traces why:
WWI-era language bans,
renamed foods,
a Supreme Court case,
and a real lynching that pushed families into silence.
Then it hands you 10 documented signs,
surnames,
church records,
food,
naming patterns,
migration waves,
and the German Belt itself,
to check against your own family tree. Verified sources and further reading below.”
SOURCES .. ..
(not sure about their math wrt documented signs)
23:00 Family Search genealogy (free records)
It’s funny how life unfolds.
*i hope to live to see Thomas Sowell become required study, Middle School through college.
He has many books, videos, lectures, interviews. Lots available.
He doesn’t take the position of, “i have THE result i want to justify”, but, rather, “what happened, what do facts say?”
Then he goes with those results. Convenient or not.
(most of the links don’t work.) the topics can be searched.
I think there are a number of nuances here that makes what I think Temp might be trying to argue more complex.
1) It is true that German and German culture were suppressed during the two World Wars, especially during the first one. My own family experienced this. There was a deliberate and intentional erasure. “Americanization” can be coercive and my ancestors experienced that.
2) However. I also question pitting German ethnicity in America against others — I find the language of “pecking order” deeply uncomfortable especially as politicians like JD Vance are invoking “blood-and-soil” type language like “heritage Americans.” I do not want my own heritage weaponized in the culture war that some conservatives want to wage. I completely reject “heritage Americans” as a category, especially if it’s being used to claim that certain Americans are more American than others.
(I find Vance’s “heritage American” schtick to also be deeply cynical. He totes his Scots-Irish background, but as some his own relatives have argued, Vance might also a Melungeon — people of mixed-raced ancestry from Appalachia. Vance’s own mixed-race children with his Indian-American wife Usha do not fit the simplistic heritage story he’s trying to tell.)
3) German identity is complicated even in Germany. A large part of this is because of World War II. But even without that history, German identity is complex. There was no unified Germany until 1871 when King Wilhelm I of Prussia was pronounced emperor over what had been a loose confederation of kingdoms, duchys and free cities. “Germany” was a hodge-podge of identities — Bavarian, Saxon, Prussian, Swabian and Rhinelander. My ancestor Johann Martin Bornträger emigrated to Pennsylvania from the Palatinate region in the 1760s. A couple of centuries later, I grew up in the historic Prussian/Brandenburg capital of Berlin. My ancestor would not have understood himself belonging to the same unified German identity we project back on them. I also roll my eyes when people confuse Bavarian stereotypes about lederhosen and Oktoberfest with what it means to be German.
Even today, German identity isn’t monolithic because it can also include people with Polish, Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese and other backgrounds. In Berlin, I knew lots of Germans with Slavic last names. Language, culture, self-understanding and experience can matter as much to national identity as genealogy.
4) German migration to the US is also not monolithic. I live now in central Colorado near the Kansas border. My school district occasionally serves Bierocks at lunch, which is German immigrant food. However, it’s not the same German immigrants as my ancestors. Bierocks — hamburger and cabbage inside a bun — is associated with ethnic Germans who settled in Russia, in particular the Volga region. I’ve eaten something similar in Russia. This is food brought to America by Russian Germans in the late 19th Century, not Swiss-Germans in the 18th.
German migration to the US also has several cultural layers. It’s not a monolith or a monoculture.
Ethnicity and heritage are complex. While I’m proud of my own German heritage, I think it’s dangerous to weaponize it. America is an immigrant nation — we do not have “heritage” citizens. When we use heritage to rank national identity or political rank, we enter a very dangerous and toxic history.
I think the history of coercive Americanization that my family experienced during WWI was wrong. It does not teach me that we should coerce others into becoming whatever we think “American” looks like. The erasure of German-Americans doesn’t mean that everyone else should have their identity erased too.
0 x
"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless."
My younger daughter Greta is extremely interested in her own German heritage. I’ve taught her a little German and we use a particular set of German phrases with each other. I suspect she knows a bit more than I think she does. She’s a freshman in high school, but she’s interested in studying in Germany for a semester or a year in college.
She sometimes wears the dirndl dress my mother purchased when she lived in Bavaria in the 1970s.
She’s researching the history of her family’s migration history for school and we’ve been having conversations about our family history. Greta’s heritage is an opportunity for curiosity and research,
However, a couple of important nuances:
1) My daughter is not just German-American. From her mother, she gets the typical European immigrant range of ethnic identities — everything from Irish to Czech. Like a lot of Americans, she doesn’t just have one ethnic heritage — it’s a mixture, because assimilation is also a part of the American story.
2) My daughter’s ethnic heritage is not in competition with anyone else’s. She is free to enjoy her Germanness without weaponizing it into a grievance to be held against anyone else. It’s not zero sum. Greta’s appreciation of her heritage does not mean that anyone else has to appreciate their Mexican, Vietnamese or Indian heritage less or use it to claim a greater degree of Americanness than other heritages.
We can cherish and celebrate our heritage without making it a hierarchy.
0 x
"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless."
Taking a note from Ernie, Please do not comment in this topic before reading or listening to the shared sources. Also,
Please respond with respect to the OP.
Please recognize this is a HISTORY topic (not current events or politics.)
Please avoid presentism. “uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.”
- - - - - - -
See P.4: Previous angloorigins video ..
angloorigins / If Your Last Name Is on This 1727 Ship List, Your German Family Reached America Before It Existed / 42+min
“On 14 September 1727, Pennsylvania's governor told his Council that a shipload of Palatines had landed without the Crown's leave and formed "a distinct people."
His answer was a register:
every German man over sixteen had to sign for the King.
This video opens the five ship lists of that first year, the William and Sarah, James Goodwill, Molly, Adventure Galley and Friendship,
reads the surnames aboard, follows the Rhine-to-Delaware crossing, and shows why suspicion, not welcome, is the reason 36,000 German names survive.”
SOURCES: ..
22:45 names not on the list - including some Anabaptist names. Yoder, Groff, Shaffer .. [i appreciate how this source doesn’t overlook Anabaptists, Quakers, Huguenots.]
29:00 organist
29:20 book, “Journey to PA 1750 Return to Germany 1754” translated link below.
Internet Archive / Gottlich Mittelberger's journey to Pennsylvania in the year 1750 and return to Germany in the year 1754,
containing not only a description of the country according to its present condition,
but also a detailed account of the sad and unfortunate circumstances of most of the Germans that have emigrated, or are emigrating to that country .. .. by Mittelberger, Gottlieb; Eben, Carl Theodor, b. 1836 https://archive.org/details/gottlichmittelbe01mitt
^i’m on P.13 / 137
SOURCES:
Marianne S. Wokeck, "The Flow and Composition of German Immigration to Philadelphia, 1727-1775," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography – https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/ar...
Klaus Wust, "The Emigration Season of 1738: Year of the Destroying Angels," Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland – https://loyolanotredamelib.org/p...
Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 (Eben translation, 1898), Internet Archive – https://archive.org/details/gott...
Strassburger and Hinke, Pennsylvania German Pioneers, Volume I (Pennsylvania German Society, 1934), Internet Archive – https://archive.org/details/penn...
Gottlieb Mittelberger, Wikipedia (Enzweihingen origin, the Osgood, Stuttgart 1756 publication) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go...
^^the quoted links don’t work, the topics can be searched.
ohio jones wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2026 10:53 pm
And to steer back toward the OP a bit, what about the Mennonites of 100 years ago? Having lived in North America for 200 years by then, they nonetheless spoke German as a first or second language, maintained a distinctive culture, and did not go to war, recite the Pledge, or buy war bonds. Their neighbors accused them of being un-American. Were they American? Would Vance consider them "heritage Americans"? Why or why not?
i haven’t read all comments, but, if possible, i’d like current events and current politics to go elsewhere.
In this topic i’m attempting to get a grasp of what happened in context of those earlier times, history, which i believe were mostly different from the present for significant reasons. Not easy for me.
i understand most are really ramped up over politics right now, as a “gift” of excitable news reporting put on wings of tech.
i’m trying to not get sucked in during this short period now before midterm elections.
i haven’t listened to anything Vance has said on this, nor do i plan to.
0 x
i’m perfectly comfortable with an older, wiser, more docile Trump.
”Try hard not to offend. Try harder not to be offended.” Robert Martz
temporal1 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 06, 2026 11:18 am
A request for those posting:
would you please note whether you’ve viewed any of the linked videos, other sources before posting?
Which ones?
Esp starting with this week. P.4 The OP?
Nearly 4 pages to begin a new Politics topic! - i appreciate the effort.
Szdfan wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2026 2:11 pm
I wanted to add another point —
My younger daughter Greta is extremely interested in her own German heritage. I’ve taught her a little German and we use a particular set of German phrases with each other. I suspect she knows a bit more than I think she does. She’s a freshman in high school, but she’s interested in studying in Germany for a semester or a year in college.
She sometimes wears the dirndl dress my mother purchased when she lived in Bavaria in the 1970s.
She’s researching the history of her family’s migration history for school and we’ve been having conversations about our family history. Greta’s heritage is an opportunity for curiosity and research,
However, a couple of important nuances:
1) My daughter is not just German-American. From her mother, she gets the typical European immigrant range of ethnic identities — everything from Irish to Czech. Like a lot of Americans, she doesn’t just have one ethnic heritage — it’s a mixture, because assimilation is also a part of the American story.
2) My daughter’s ethnic heritage is not in competition with anyone else’s. She is free to enjoy her Germanness without weaponizing it into a grievance to be held against anyone else. It’s not zero sum. Greta’s appreciation of her heritage does not mean that anyone else has to appreciate their Mexican, Vietnamese or Indian heritage less or use it to claim a greater degree of Americanness than other heritages.
We can cherish and celebrate our heritage without making it a hierarchy.
ok. none of your fears are concerns in this topic.
if anything, the opposite.
0 x
i’m perfectly comfortable with an older, wiser, more docile Trump.
”Try hard not to offend. Try harder not to be offended.” Robert Martz
A good sign. 
angloorigins / If Your Last Name Is on This 1727 Ship List, Your German Family Reached America Before It Existed / 42+min 
i appreciate the effort. 