This . Significant mixing of the cultural groups , even the white culture groups , is a relatively recent phenomenon . In the past cities had neighborhoods for each group living in it . Even small rural towns , if not all of one cultural group , would stick to their own . In the small town my mother grew up in , those of German descent and Swedish descent mostly kept to themselves and neither wanted much to do with the Poles . It only started to change in the last 60 , 70 years . Post WWII . <| sep |> Indeed , and if they visited these places they ' d see at least if they were self aware enough to see how they are American in the way they think , speak and act and it would be only more apparent if they behaved that way in Dublin rather than New York . Plenty of my recent family are from Ireland . Grandparents , and they had brothers and sisters who stayed in Ireland and had kids and grandkids that grew up in Ireland . But I was born in England , to parents that were born in England and went to school in England . When I ' m in Ireland I see lots of shops and meet lots of people with the same surname as me . That gives a certain sense of identity because my surname is untypical in Britain . But to the limited extent that stereotypes and traits are valid in the first place I am most definitely not Irish . One morning in a hotel near Galway we sat laughing and joking at breakfast with another couple of Brits . That we were Brits in a foreign country became so apparent as we were going through all those cultural differences that we ' d experienced on our holiday . We connected immediately with the other Brits . Ireland was a wonderful , warm , friendly place in spite of what many might imagine if you ' re British but we were most definitely culturally different . Any delusions or illusions that I was Irish were gone after a few trips there . I have an Irish surname and a Dubliner ' s CD but I ' m a product of English schools and society .