I think a lot of this can be explained by the Scots-Irish invisibility phenomenon, coupled with the fact that a lot of those "generic white Southerners" are a mixture of Scots-Irish, Scottish, Irish, and English, and thus don't know how to identify themselves from among these ethnic choices. Also, many people just do…

I am also dismayed by people's general lack of curiosity and knowledge on this. Ancestry.com is pretty easy. I can't imagine not wanting to know this information. I've known my family history back to the 18th century since I was a child and started asking my older aunts and uncles about it. One of them gave me a…

Scots-Irish

This is my suspicion, as well.

I'm pretty sure that Americans have tended historically to overreport their ethnicity as German in the census. But, of course, I can't find a link now.

Many "European Americans" know exactly where their ancestors came from, either because it was fairly recent (within the last ~120 years) or because they have family trees, etc. Furthermore, almost all European Americans *could* find this information out if they so desired, because their ancestors left a paper trail in…

Yeah, this is funny to me. Those same British people who think Americans are stupid for knowing and claiming our ethnic heritage as English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, etc., are also usually pretty adamant that third- and fourth- generation British-born people of West Indian or Pakistani or Nigerian ethnicity aren't…

Or have multiple European origins not accounted for by this simplistic breakdown.

Scots-Irish very much has a connection to Scotland.

I don't know. My family is exclusively from those (Southern) areas on the map coded "American," and I know I'm mostly English and Scottish from family surnames, family trees, and, now, Ancestry.com, and I identify as such, including with Britain as my "homeland," as it were.

Yeah, the author obviously does not live in the South.

NAACP, too. Totes smug. Also, those Jews, man - get a load of THAT smugness? Why they gotta be meeting together and shit? What a bunch of self-congratulators.

Nope.

Yes. This is A Thing. It's why I largely ignore "movement" atheism these days, even online. Militant online atheist has a strong correlation with sophomoric, resentful libertarian MRAs.

Religious belief correlates with poverty. Helllllllo.

Dawkins doesn't assume that just because people are non-white, they *must* believe in superstitious mumbo-jumbo. That, in fact, they are quite intelligent and curious enough to see through religious bullshit just as much as any European. Assuming "those people" "NEED" their religion is also a form of smug paternalism.

I think it's time for this again

I had the OPer's epiphany at 19, sitting at a bus stop in the sun about this time of year, having just finished and closed Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason." I just... knew I didn't believe any of it. And that I could no longer go on pretending that I did. I no longer wanted to pretend, including to other people. And…

MAN, I hope Athelstan rejoins Team Ragnar next week!

Hear, hear!