<p>Small comment: isn’t there a shared human component to all of this? I think EVERYONE needs to identify. If you look at pretty much every American city, there will be the Little Italy or Tokyo or Chinatown; entire towns of Scottish/German/Polish immigrants were founded in rural areas. These places have intense cultural ties that have melded over time with the other cultures, creating “American” culture. Of course, the individual family unit is different from culture to culture. Some ethnicity have a village ethic, where everyone communes, everyone is family. Some are very private and personal about who they admit into their tradition. So, I would say that due to different circumstances and cultural tradition, African-Americans have a different way of identifying. On the other hand, so do all these other cultures. </p>
<p>The only real fabrication of identity occurs when there is none to start with: the Americans who were raised American, that had a great-great-uncle from Germany that makes them “German”, but knows nothing of any other culture but American. This may be a majority or a minority, I don’t know, as I’ve grown up in areas with 60-70% 1st and 2nd generation immigrants.</p>