What Percentage Irish Are You?
Answer: What a stupid question.
Okay so you say you’re 25% Irish. What does that mean? That you can divide your sense of nationality, of identity, into distinct parts? Or that one of your grandparents is Irish?
Saying 25% of your grandparents are Irish makes sense, but equating that to you being 25% Irish reduces the value of you to nothing. You don’t count. In your own nationality, you don’t count. All four grandparents are Irish, so you are 100% Irish.
Your parents don’t even count. Yes they do, you say. Perhaps you are 50% Irish because you have one Irish parent. But what if both your parents were born and brought up in Scotland, by those Irish grandparents. Then you are 100% Irish, courtesy of your grandparents, and 100% Scottish, courtesy of your parents. You are literally twice the man you thought you were (unless you’re a woman), and you yourself, don’t even count. In percentage terms.
What if you were born and brought up on the streets of New Mexico, your parents were born and brought up on the streets of New Mexico, but three of your grand-parents came from Ireland. Are you 75% Irish? Hang on, I’m not finished.
Your other grandparent was German. And that German grandparent had one parent who was Irish (you’re now up to 87.5% Irish) and the other who was Mongolian. (They met on a Greek Island resort) 100% Mongolian. Going back countless generations. And so proud of their heritage and culture that they practised and passed it on to their children, and so did their children, and so did their children - which resulted in you being steeped in Steppe stories.
So, what percentage of you is American, Irish, German, Mongolian? I’m not telling you what you are, just that percentages don’t make sense. Mathematical absolutes can’t be applied to abstract concepts like identity. Your identity is something you have to come to terms with - just not percentage terms.
One of your grandparents is Irish? That means that one of your grandparents is Irish.
See also:
• Test: How Irish Are You?
• Stage Irish Woman Shows Mexicans the Way
• Irish Home Rule causes 50 years of British misery
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Personally, I see “I’m a quarter Italian” as meaning “One fourth of my ancestry is Italian”. A shorthand way of saying it. Doesn’t mean I’m literally 25% Italian. (Same for the 1/2 Polish, and 1/4 Czech. But not for the 100% American. :))
I understand Ellen, but the shorthand doesn’t fix the discrepency between the generations. Is one a quarter Italian if that Italian grandparent has different ancestry again? Treating such statements as a measure of ancestry (as distinct from identity) only removes oneself from the equation; one is still left with unlimited ancestors.