Applause, applause. As for the title of this thread, "What are you?" My answer is "I am an American." As for the intended question, "What is your ancestry,?" the answer to that is that my paternal grandparents came to this country from Lithuania in 1906, and my half German / half Dutch great-great grandparents were here in the mid-19th century, the Dutch a bit longer than the Krauts. The Germans all seem to have fought in the Union Army in the Civil War, and probably had to receive their orders in German. One cooled his heels in Libby Prison in Richmond, another was the engineer who drew the map for U.S. Grant's siege of Vicksburg.
But back to "Bernie Brewer" and his original point. What I AM is an American. I speak a few cuss words in Lithuanian, enough German to get by in Munich on vacation year before last, and no Dutch (which, despite having been in Amsterdam twice, still sounds like frogs croaking). I'm getting to the point where I can hold my own in Spanish, and can deal with restaurants, hotels & car rental in French & Italian.....and I'm starting to learn some Mandarin, since we're going to China in October. All of which serves to demonstrate that interest in other cultures doesn't have anything to do with what you ARE. I am an American, and English is my primary tongue. Language is the glue of culture, and so EVERY American should be fluent in English. They are welcome to speak any language they wish at home, in a restaurant, while watching football, etc., but English should be a requirement. English is the language of education, of politics, of the law, and the marketplace.... and it is presently the accepted international lingua franca.
Teddy Roosevelt said over a century ago "We must have no more hyphenated Americans," and it's never been more true than right now.
