Americans totally have more knowledge and understanding of their own culture.

Irish-Americans have very little knowledge and understanding of Irish culture

They actually seem to be quite educated on the topic. Unlike yourself who seems to think that you'd have authority to speak on this issue because you have a certain passport? It's really not that wild. I moved here as a first generation immigrant about 10 years ago & I pretty much concur what they are saying. Irish and American Italians in Boston and NJ respectively feel that they have more in common with their 'home' countrymen than fellow Americans, just one example. Personally I think there's also an aspect of "oh I'm not just white, I'm actually 1/8 Irish". Mind you that's not what I think at all, why would I have a bias against you if you are white? But it's almost like I'm asked to view them as more than "white American" when people tell me that stuff after I tell them where I'm from. You can imagine what their answers typically were when I asked about whether they often go back to visit family/home or foods they cook. It's just ancestry, they have no actual ties to those lands.

One thing I will say though is that whenever I'd talk about this kind of thing is that people get weirdly defensive about it. Overall I learned just to let them say what they want to say, it's not worth my energy trying to understand their mental gymnastics as to why they're actually as Irish as I am Egyptian. They're not ready or willing to have that conversation.

I understand the cultural grouping that happens when large migrant communities form. What I don't understand is why Americans portray themselves as Dutch when coming to the Netherlands. Their customs, language, culture, and nationality are different. They're not Dutch whatsoever.

Use it to identify yourselves within the USA, that makes sense. Don't use it to claim being part of a culture that you know nothing about.

That's just being part of a minority no matter where you live. White Americans don't all celebrate the same things and don't all talk the same way, with some of them being nigh impossible to understand if you weren't raised around people who speak like them, yet they're just called Americans. Hell, if you were raised in the USA and have Danish parents no one will call you a Danish-American as long as you don't have an accent, but if you are of Latino origins and your family has lived on US soil since before the USA was a thing you will be called a Latin-American. It's just racism.

Speaking a heritage language or celebrating occasional holidays doesn't justify claiming a nationality you don't possess.

Most "hyphenated Americans" cherry-pick pleasant cultural elements while remaining disconnected from the contemporary realities of those countries. The vast majority don't speak their ancestral languages or meaningfully participate in authentic cultural practices.

There's a significant difference between recent immigrants maintaining strong cultural ties and 4th/5th generation Americans with minimal connection claiming the same identity. Americans also inconsistently apply this logic, often identifying with only one ancestral line while ignoring others.

When "Irish-Americans" visit Ireland, locals don't recognize them as Irish in any meaningful sense—revealing the fundamental disconnect between claiming an identity and being accepted as authentic by actual members of that culture.

These hyphenated identities ultimately function as American cultural constructs rather than genuine connections to the nations they reference.