The Scots in Carolina - North Carolina

Contemporary Review, Oct, 1993 by R.D. Kernohan

The more America changes, the more fascinated a lot of its peoples may be by 'roots' and the more thay may express that fascination in ways that are emotionally satisfying rather than intellectually entirely convincing. That applies when those whose descent goes back to the Ayshire Burns country by way of County Down take to the tartans, but it also applies to the cults of the Pilgrim Fathers, Cavalier Virginia, the covered waggon, the Frontier, and the old plantation. It produced Fiddler on the Roof as well as Gone With the Wind. It is no more completely convincing when black and very pale-brown people whose ancestors have been in America for twice as long as the Kennedys (and who in some cases have their share of Scottish descent too) project themselves as African-Americans.

But perhaps among the truths that ought to be held as self-evident (to borrow a famous Virginian phrase) is that to an extent people are what they think they are and feel themselves to be. I'm not sorry that there are still a lot of Americans, especially in the South and the Mountains, who feel themselves in some sense Scottish-Americans, or even doubly hyphenated as Scotch-Irish ones.

It is still flattering for those who are conscious of living in an old country to be treated in the United States as if they were from 'The Old Country', however remote that concept now is from the realities of either American sociology or diplomacy. I shall be making a point of stopping off next time to see how things are progressing with the Scottish Tartans Museum and Heritage Centre.