ib@Indian_Bronson
A reporter working for a national newspaper has contacted me about my term 'Heritage American'.
I coined it intentionally because I think it's extremely useful as a term when talking about American ethnogenesis, which I think is an important issue.
Also I generally dislike public speculation or interest regarding my personal connections, friendships, or the extent of my 'ideological' influence beyond whatever exists should people just read the words I write in the context that I write them, which is really the most honest way to engage with any ideas.
Futhermore: I simply cannot control all possible uses of the term, or the other statements made by those who may adopt it as a fashion. Sometimes people say inflammatory things just to troll. This is the internet.
So, here are some scattered posts (I apologize, you will have to click on the links) which are instructive:
x.com/Indian_Bronson…
x.com/Indian_Bronson…
x.com/Indian_Bronson… + piggy backing off of that: indianbronson.substack.com/p/thanksgiving…
x.com/Indian_Bronson…
And then kind of a longer old thread about why I think American ethnogenesis is important to understand: x.com/Indian_Bronson…
Anyway, most simply understood: Heritage American refers to two ethnic nations whom I believe are national peoples just in the same way you might refer to the French in France or the Japanese in Japan: they are White (Americans) in America, or Black (Americans) in America. The fact of their ethnic demonyms being distinguished by racial appearance is a sui generis issue of the contact between two distant peoples (in fact with tertiary peoples, sometimes called 'Red') in the New World.
All to say; they are simply unanalyzable as Englishmen any longer (or even all the other European ethnicities admixed into the English, with curious little subtribes like New York and New Jersey's predominantely Catholic Neo-Hiberno-Romans), and not sensibly spoken of as Africans (particularly when you examine them alongside Caribbean origin persons like Eric Holder, or in comparison to modern immigrants from Nigeria - BTW, occasionally the term "ADOS" is used by certain Black Americans.).
They are now just Americans, Whites and Blacks.
People like me are American in the sense of socially being brought up as countrymen and legally as US citizens, but are simply not part of Heritage America. We don't have the same generations of bones in the dirt (or ashes in the river). And it's not our inherited culture which forms the basis of our common public culture. And that's fine! That's okay. There are many Polish Americans in Chicago who can be described in much the same way. Though over time, their descendants will likely more easily assimilate into the American nations, White and Black.
I think this provides anyone curious and honest full comprehension about the term "Heritage American" and why I think it's an important anchor for discourse about the evolution of the US polity.
And if you'll really indulge me, here is my re-interpretation of lines by Anne Bradstreet, one of America's first native poets, in whose own life the transition to being an American occurred: x.com/Indian_Bronson…
God bless the Americans, whose ancestors orphaned themselves here to make a new world
"In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam
In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou art not known,
If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none"
