u're neglecting the americans who stay in isolated pockets- our cities are full of chinatowns and greektowns and hispanic sections and african american sections etc etc etc, with their own churches, schools, restaurants, stores, employers, .... it is very possible to move here without ever learning english or returning back home

of course, that's not always the case, there is also a certain degree of integration and integrated neighborhoods, more often among people of european ancestry, but......

thus the hyphen- they're not plain old norwegian, not plain old american, but, as u mentioned, a combination of the two, which often has characteristics completely independent of the others

anyway, i think we're discussing a very small detail, but it's one that i've been quite emotional about in the past, in the process of reckoning out my whiteness in brown settings

there is a post of mine in the archives called "can you be culture-less?" that relates to all this jazz

but i was truly amazed by the degree of integration i saw in europe- very drastically different from america.