Isn't it curious that we speak of our family tree, but also of finding our roots, not our leaves or branches? I think the roots comparison is better, especially if you think of yourself as the apex or convergence of a vast tangled skein of roots disappearing below you down and down into the ever-distant past. Which individual skein you choose to follow leads you to one identity, but if you choose a different skein, you are led to another.
In my case, of those ancestors I am aware of, depending on which skein I trace, I could claim to be English, German, Dutch, Welsh, Swiss, Norman, Cheyenne or...-- well, who knows what? Like a typical old stock American, I just identify as American. If I want to get more specific than that, I name my home state. It is quite as natural for an American to say he is a New Yorker or a Minnesotan or a Texan (or, using nicknames, a Hoosier, Tarheel or Okie) as it is for a European to say he is Czech or Italian. Incidentally, I bristle if someone refers to me as a European-American. I am American! Period.
It's a pet peeve of mine to dislike naturalized U.S. citizens who claim to be Americans and refer to "our" country. No! You are not an American; a citizen, yes, but your ethnicity is Foreignese or whatever. Those who insist they are as American as me and you are really saying that there is no such thing as an American nationality, let alone an American ethnicity. Anybody who shows up here, takes a test a lobotomized rhesus monkey could pass and hangs around for a few years is an "American." Phooey kablooey! They can't tell me they like moon pies and RC Cola just as much as you do. Or that they like to eat charcoal seared chili cheese dogs, baked beans and potato salad while sitting at a picnic table under a maple tree swatting away mosquitos just as much as I do. Or as a kid having your favorite lunch be a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with Fritos and a glass of chocolate milk. I bet! Nor can they believably tell me that they love the smell of a freshly mown lawn on long-lingering summer evening as much as we do. Or going to the Dairy Queen to get banana splits and hot fudge sundaes. And they sure can't say that they really like root beer. Hah!
A thing I've noticed is that green-carders or naturalized citizens who don't insist that they are Americans -- at least the East Asian ones I am most familiar with -- when they say "American" really mean Whites. Blacks are blacks and various assorted others are identified by original nationality: Mexican, (dot) Indian, Chinese. etc. But if in some far foreign land, an infantry squad of white, black and hispanc soldiers of the US Army was interacting with the locals, those locals would identify every one of those soldiers as Americans and nothing but Americans. No qualifiers; well, other than the expletive-deleted type.
Apropos of nothing, I've always gotten a chuckle out of this old meme:
The most popular American song ever written, and if you are an American you have sung this song since you were a little kid and know the words, well, most of them, and doubtless have made up lyrics of your own to the tune:
