Our family was Quaker after my mom burned all her bridges with the Catholics and then the Jehovah's Witnesses.
I've never been "patriotic," never said the pledge in school, which added much to my reputation as a weird kid.
My ancestors ended up in the U.S.A. because European patriotism and nationalism were not working for them.
To them the U.S.A. wasn't so much about opportunity as it was escape from poverty, war, or the hangman.
I can't find immigration records for most of my ancestors. They jumped off ships and swam and ran into the Wild West. I have no proud heritage. My surname was adopted by some immigrant Gaelic bastard who was hoping to escape troubles with the English, and he did well enough here to reproduce, even though he was as crazy as half of us. That crazy seems to be a dominant gene.
One of my few officially recorded ancestors was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran away with a U.S. government surveyor and they established a homestead in a place that is still remote from any WalMart.
My wife's ancestors are American Indians and various Catholics who resisted the genocides of White Protestant U.S.A.. Some of them sought refuge in Mexico and later returned as "immigrants" even though they'd been Americans for centuries or tens of thousands of years. One of my wife's uncles died fighting Nazis and is buried at Arlington, relocated from a temporary repose in France.
My own ancestry is not so proud. During World War II one of my grandfathers was a non-combatant Army Air-Force officer charged with keeping scientific eccentric people deemed essential to the war effort out of jail, and my other grandfather was a conscientious objector who chose to weld together Liberty and Victory Ships over jail.
Nevertheless, even as a multi-generation dissident, I've been automatically granted white male privileges.
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