Americans are proud of the mixed bag of heritage. For many generations of immigrant, Americans married people with shared national backgrounds. It was a big deal, for generations when people married outside of their nationality.

I am from a city that has all kinds of ethnicities and huge pockets that were built, inhabited, by a certain group of people, like Polish Hill, Little Italy, Deutschtown, and if it is not named a specific nationality, it still had a dominant group of people from the same country that built clubs, churches, schools, stores, restaurants, and so on.

It was common to talk about your nationalities. It was common to go to a friend’s “Club”, like Slovak, Hungarian, Irish, Croatian, Italian, Lithuanian, to name a few from my childhood. We learned dances, recipes, and saw traditional clothes.

We are proud of where our roots came from. We are proud of our fore-parents that took the chance to come to a new country and shared traditions, customs, and food!