Guy isn't even Irish! He's American of Swedish and Irish descent. He's like one of those wonderbread wop who had a grandfather come off the boat over a hundred years ago and thinks it makes him Italian.
That term refers to someone’s culture, and not to his “ethnic purityâ€.
The cultural environment in which an individual is raised defines his personality more than DNA, unless one believes in racist theories.
Someone may be born in Italy, holding an Italian passport but if he was raised by Chinese parents in a monocultural, close-knit community (read: ghetto) in Prato or Milan he’d be less culturally Italian than a “non-genetically pure†wop raised in a majority-Italian area in Montreal, Staten Island or Melbourne.
Better example: Look at the many French-born-and-raised youths who are more culturally Maghrebi than French. An Acadian or a Québécois who never stepped foot on French soil is more in line with his ancestral culture than them.
Most “national identities†are transnational due to obvious historical (mass emigration, colonization) and social (poverty, segregation, self-segregation, radicalization) reasons thus more fluid and complex than many believe.
America, being one of the first Western nations to experience massive immigration has reached a stage that many European nations will experience later or are starting to experience today.
As for Frank Sheeran, supposedly that was his underworld nickname. I don’t know if he “felt†Irish at all. Whitey Bulger was 50% Canadian-Québécois but being born in Southie in 1929 sure played a fundamental role in the creation of his persona.
