No, he's English. Though according to Wikipedia his mum is Jewish and born in South Africa and his dad is protestant and born in Northern Ireland, which I guess to an American is "half Irish and half Jewish" because of their weird way of describing their ancestry like it's their nationality.
More just "America odd". From a British perspective Americans seem to be very obsessed with their ancestry and talk about it like it's their nationality. Just a culture difference.
Also be careful about assuming a Northern Irish protestant identifies as Irish!
That’s what happens when almost everyone in the country had ancestors who only came here in the last 200 years. The “American identity” is founded in the idea that either we or our ancestors were born somewhere else and then came here. It’s much different than someplace like the UK where so many are probably within a days walk of where one of their 10th great grandparents lived.
Nah bro. Elsewhere in the Americas people identify with the country they were born at. It’s a cultural trait. When you start justifying with fake exceptionalism is when you make it weird.
Not sure what your point is. The US is incredibly diverse, and that diversity has very modern roots (when compared to many other diverse countries). That’s not exceptionalism, that’s just demographics. It’s not a competition. Combined with large internal migrations over its history and its large size, many Americans live in cities and regions they have no historical family connection to. So when answering a question about why “Americans seem to be very obsessed with their nationality” it seemed relevant.
No, thats not just a British protective, that all of the world.
It is well known how Americans use their ancestry, just as you described.
And yes, it's just odd, perhaps irritating (for Europeans), but it's just how they decided to (self-?) identity, let them express themselves. And it's not like they are keeping it a secret :).
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