Do you resent your ancestors assimilating and losing your families' cultures

Question:I have to admit that this question was spawned in my mind by the recent debates on Undocumented immigration and controversies with the overwhelming Hispanic culture here in the southwest US.
It seems that most older waves of immigrants went severely out of their way to quash the practice of their culture when they arrived here and rushed to assimilate as "Americans". Many refused to speak their language with their children and gave up celebrations and other distinct features and connections with their old country.
I'm half Irish and a few of my friends are of Italian, Egyptian and Greek heritage, yet our families could be interchangeable. Being so surrounded by the Mexican culture, we realize now we miss having a heritage and wish I could hear blaring Irish music, see Irish language billboards in my neighborhoods, whatever. Basically, I guess I'm really jealous of the Mexicans in this nation who have their cultural centers, tv stations, magazines, congressional delegation even.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I have to admit that this question was spawned in my mind by the recent debates on Undocumented immigration and controversies with the overwhelming Hispanic culture here in the southwest US.
It seems that most older waves of immigrants went severely out of their way to quash the practice of their culture when they arrived here and rushed to assimilate as "Americans". Many refused to speak their language with their children and gave up celebrations and other distinct features and connections with their old country.
I'm half Irish and a few of my friends are of Italian, Egyptian and Greek heritage, yet our families could be interchangeable. Being so surrounded by the Mexican culture, we realize now we miss having a heritage and wish I could hear blaring Irish music, see Irish language billboards in my neighborhoods, whatever. Basically, I guess I'm really jealous of the Mexicans in this nation who have their cultural centers, tv stations, magazines, congressional delegation even.

Yes, I do. Especially for us, the Jewish people, we consider almost a tragedy when
one of us assimilates. We are too small a people to lose even one of them to other cultures.

well, I'm German, so i have other things to resent my ancestors for. haha

in all seriousness, i am part British but mostly of German descent. my family now lived in Canada. i think it would be nice to live in German, and to have 100% german culture. but no, i dont resent my ancestors for "loosing" the culture. i still have german culture in my family and stuff, but not to the extent it would be if we lived in Germany.

I do not resent ancestors for what they felt they had to do at the time they lived to survive and adapt. Whether it was wrong or right, it was what they believed was necessary. I myself am sad that I don't speak French fluently like my great grandmother and that I don't know traditional songs and history. But I know that as long as I'm interested in it, I can do my best to keep it alive and learn as much as I can to pass on to my children so that they do not feel the same as you do.

I also don't think that everyone needs to go to those extremes when they come/came to America. No one should ever loose their culture or change things that make up who they are but I do feel that everyone should speak the basics or learn the language of the country that they are moving too.

No. Mine is more the fact that they didn't pass on family history. My grandpa on my dad's side from what we can tell is 3 generation in america from Germany. However no one ever mentioned it. Now sadly, all who would maybe know something have passed away.

My husband's family is worse, however african american family have a history of not passing on their family history. They have a mini series on PBS about it every so often.

I regret but don't resent.My ancestors mostly wanted desperately to get along in America. They had no nostalgia for the "old country".Their memories were of poverty,lack of civil rights, repression and lack of opportunity. One of my great-grandmothers would NEVER speak fondly or at all about her native land. As a 15 year old girl she ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage to a much, much older man.That is the sort of stuff immigrants wanted to forget about. They came here for a new start. Some changed their names to fit in better or for a sense of rebirth.One of my great-grandfathers changed his name.

You have as many cultural icons as the Mexicans, but you have lived with them all your life and so don't recognize them--turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving and Christmas, 4th of July, TV , magazines, newspapers, etc. As for Congress, mine is 1/8 Irish, and I would gladly swap him for a Mexican, or even a circus clown.
My mother's family came here right after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and right up to the present some of their descendents still speak a bit of German, and have kept some of the old customs. My mother made a dish she learned from her mother, but never thought was anything odd until I went to Germany and ordered a dish I didn't recognize the name of, just as an experiment, and found that Kasseler Rippchen was just my mother's old way of making ham.
Some fellow born around the year 2110 is likely to visit Mexico and discover some odd dish is just the way his mother made it.

No, I don't, but then I am three generations away from my foreign ancestors and I don't live in a multicultural country but in a country where you are supposed to have shed your ancestors culture by the second generation (the system has problems now but that's the idea). I am proud of my Swiss and Italian ancestors but feel no need to live in their culture.
Of course, if one of my parents was of another culture I would like to know about it, being still so close to it.