My maternal great grandfather immigrated to the United States from Germany when he was nine years old. His name was Conrad Eimers, and he came alone to live with some relatives. My paternal grandmother immigrated to the United States from Ireland when she was just a small girl. Mary Blayney had a Gaelic lilt until she left grade school. Eventually their descendents, Margaret Meier and William Blayney met, fell in love, and produced me, an Irish-German mutt (but mostly Irish). Whenever someone asks me what ethnicity I am, that is my response ‘Irish and German, but mostly Irish.’ I love the color green, all types of potatoes, and respect the symbolic significance of the claddagh ring. Oh, and I tolerate bagpipes considerably more than the average human being.
I met my best friend, Priscilla, in the 10th grade. She’s 100% Mexican, her parents having immigrated here the year before she was born. When we got to talking about our respective background shortly after we met, I noticed a difference in our behavior. While I calmly talked about how much I liked St. Patrick’s Day, Priscilla launched into an impassioned speech about the “el orgullo de ser Mexicana” that left her glowing with pride for her heritage. She talked about food, music, family traditions, holidays, and everything in between.
Our conversation resonated with me for a very long time, and left me feeling totally disconnected from my ancestors. I began to pore over my family, our traditions, the food I was raised on, the music I listened to over the years, and I came to the conclusion that I am not what I thought I was. I am not Irish or German. I am American. The first food I remember requesting at the age of three was a hamburger. The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Billy Joel, are among my favorite music artists. I celebrate Christmas, along with Independence Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Presidents Day. My family’s idea of bonding time is crowding around the TV and hurling insults and curse words during March Madness. All of these different factors of my life are untied with one single thread – they are distinctly American.
This is a part of the sociological theory that states that even though people may be of different races, they can still be the same ethnicity. This idea was especially prevalent at my boarding high school. The girl who lived across the hall from me was named Liz Fu. She’s Laotian, and possibly more American than I am. While she is capable of speaking broken Chinese, and her father and mother are very faithful to their heritage, Liz is much like me. We both have the symbolic ethnicity, that is to say, we place emphasis on such concerns as ethnic food and music and holidays rather than deeper ties to our respective heritages. She loves wontons and orange chicken, and she enjoys the presents that accompany the Chinese New Year, but she said herself that on a recent trip to China to explore her heritage, she “couldn’t wait to get back home to California.”
Is it bad that I don’t identify with my heritage? Maybe. Am I going to lose sleep over that thought? Absolutely not. I don’t see the benefit of trying to keep my Irish heritage alive, when it has no influence on who I am as a person. Symbolic ethnicity is not the same thing as truly being proud of your ethnicity.
I got my census today, and I am stumped as to what to put for ethnicity. In the end, I ended up putting European, but I know in my heart and my soul that I will never be anything other than American, and while some factors (ahem, Kanye, obesity, Octomom) may be embarrassing, the freedom and independence that America stands for will always fill me with a sense of national pride.
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