New York Times columnist David French wrote a column about a new concept floating around. It’s even endorsed by J.D. Vance. It has been labeled the Heritage American. French put it simply:
“A Heritage American, in their formulation, is someone who can trace his lineage back to the founding of the country, preferably even before. Not long ago, a person posted a chart online. You get an A grade if you’re “colonial old stock,” meaning your ancestors came here between 1607 and 1789. You get a B if you’re “antebellum stock,” a C if you’re an “Ellis Islander.” You get a D if you or your ancestors arrived after World War II.”
The concept holds that individuals in the A category are special. The American heritage pumps through their veins. After all, their ancestors walked the continent when the American rebellion began. That leaves me s@#t out of luck. My ancestors sailed from Ireland and Germany as the Civil War ended. They came with no particular talents except the desire to escape tyranny, poverty, and starvation, more insidious than what colonials endured. (Not unlike many illegal immigrants today.) A few were drunkards, giving me a C- on the Heritage scale.
That’s no matter to the Heritage American pundits. They forget that the English colonists were not the first group to settle North America. Let’s see how strong my history memory is. There were, of course, Indigenous Americans; the Vikings; the Spanish in the southern border states; the Africans enslaved by the Spanish, Dutch, Portugese, French, and English; the Dutch in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware; the Swedes in Delaware; and the Russians in Alaska. There are even tales of the Irish coming to North America in the sixth century. Read about it in the ninth-century text Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. And not a one of these settlers of North America was asked to attend the meetings of the Continental Congress.
It must be wonderful to label yourself special, mostly because of who screwed whom over the centuries. I don’t recall, however, a geneticist discovering the specialty gene. I’ll have to ask J.D. how this concept differs from the notion of the Nazi Aryan race superiority notion. (Maybe DOGE mistakenly cancelled that research program.)
For a Dignity Deserved 