What are some cultural traits all of the Americas share?

26 comments

1. We get mad when foreigners talk shit about us.

2. Selfishness. Most don’t even realize it but it rears its ugly head constantly. Especially in politics.

3. Everyone loves blowing things up. We have a holiday for it called the fourth of july.

4. Americans place a higher importance on independence than the rest of our developed friends.

5. A complex and deep, often not happy, relationship with Indigenous people. It is perhaps less noticeable in the USA, but is a huge factor in Canada, Mexico, and almost all of South America.

6. I’m not sure there is any. Most of us have been colonized at one time or another and haven’t treated the indigenous people that great.

7. > EDIT: What I meant by Americas, I meant North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

   1. Nobody will ever assume this is what you meant.

   2. This is like asking “what do all people who have toes have in common?”

8. Lager beers.

9. Pride in their home state.

10. I genuinely can’t think of one. Even seemingly ubiquitous traits like speaking English and individualism (vs collectivism) aren’t shared by by *every* American.

11. An inclination towards Judeo Christian standards of morality, social structures, hierarchy, etc. I would say that all of the Americas also have highly musical cultures as well. Alcoholism is prevalent in most of the Americas (though the reasons are diverse) and our relationships with the native tribes are generally complex and often uncomfortable.

    To be honest, I think the Americas are diverse enough that it’s reasonable that I’m having trouble coming up with other similarities.

12. I can’t think of one cultural trait we literally all share, once you expand it like that, that wouldn’t cover someone anywhere.

13. [Birthright citizenship.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jus_soli_world.svg) (blue countries have it, teal countries have it with restrictions)

    For anyone from the Americas, that feels obvious and self-explanatory that being born somewhere is enough to make you a citizen of that place, but there are not a lot of countries elsewhere in the world that do that. Our continents are melting pots.

14. Proficiency in squishing down a really big sandwich to take a bite.

15. Um… ALL? Probably nothing. That’s too many countries and we don’t have as much connection to each other as, say, the EU does.

16. Probably that no one in “The Americas” would consider anything universal.

17. I don’t know if there’s any traits that all the Americas share, but there are traits that many countries in the Americas share.

    Most countries have a frontier or sparsely populated hinterland. We have the mountains and deserts of the West, Canada is pretty much all empty tundra, Mexico has the deserts of the north. Brazil has the Amazon, Argentina and Chile have Patagonia, Peru/Ecuador/Colombia/Bolivia have the Andes and the Amazon. The exceptions here are the Central American and Caribbean countries.

    European colonization is the other big thing. Of course, there are still some indigenous pockets with only faint traces of European culture – I’ve been to towns in the Peruvian Andes where only Quechua was spoken.

    There’s some sort of informality/roughness/freedom to social interactions. It’s hard to put into words but it’s definitely something you can pick up on and contrast with Europe or Asia.

18. Since I have never been to Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and only the US in North America, I have no clue.

19. > EDIT: What I meant by Americas, I meant North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

    ​

    Literally nothing then except for maybe our love for barbecued meats.

20. I think North and South America share some vague similarities stretching back to our colonial past.

21. All Americas (north, south, center), murdered their native population.

22. I’ve heard that citizenship by be born on the soil is more popular in the New World than the Old World.

    jus sanguinis vs jus soli

23. All humans share traits in common.

    Only someone who is from one place and moved to another could really answer about comparisons but even then they’d be experiencing the other place as an outsider to some extent. Everyone’s experiences and values differ.

    So I can’t tell you in which ways all those 4 areas are the same.

24. A history of slavery, and a general history of overseas immigration. We are also all freakishly diverse in terms of our populations (because of slavery and immigration).

25. I think every single part of the Americas just loves spicy food. Folks in Peru and Dominican Republic and Mexico are gonna love spicy food just as much as folks in New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago, or San Francisco.

26. Cowboys