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Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Ethnithicide
2005-04-01   3:05 p.m.

How fun: just days after I went off on my little rant about the scientifically inaccurate information our administration would like teens to learn about sex, I receive an email from NARAL linking me to this "quiz" on those government sanctioned "facts". Tee-hee! Point taken. Bleh.

Today I was the subject of another round of "guess my ethnicity". Out for Turkish food this afternoon with a few friends, our waiter turned to me and said "You are Greek" as he poured my water. This wasn't a question, mind you, but a statement. "No," I said,
and my friends proceeded to laugh as he walked away, thinking - I suppose - they new what was coming. They were somewhat right: when he returned with our salads, he set mine down in front of me and said "...Portuguese?". I shook my head no, and he seemed satisfied enough.

His prolonged interest is partially my fault - I wasn't very forthcoming with what I am. Like most Americans, I'm a true mutt; a little of this, a little of that. Some grand/great grand parents are from Southern Ireland, some from Manchester, England, some from Poland, some from Lithuania, some farther East than that. But as to how blended they are, your guess is as good as mine.

One friend I was with has witnessed this before - the guy who runs the lunch truck where we often get tea just insists that I "must" be Italian. When I tell him no, I'm sure I'm not at all, he says I must just not be aware of it.

Ok, sure, I'll go with that. But then I'll also have to entertain the thought of being Brazilian, Spanish, German, Russian, and Indian (???), all of which I've gotten before. When I've outright laughed in spite of myself at some of the above suggestions, people will counter with "Well maybe you are just a little but don't know it".

I guess it's fun, in a way, having this sort of non-descript face that people morph into anything they'd like to see. It makes me wonder if some people are reaching to relate to something within me that they'd feel connected to for some reason; half the time, it's my students who ask me these questions - some of whom are themselves the ethnicity they're asking about in relation to me.

Sometimes I get envious of my husband and the sense of ethnic identity he feels so secure in and familiar with. He's Hungarian as Hungarian can be - fluent in the language, similar in features to other Hungarians; he even has a gran still living in Nyíregyháza to help him feel connected. What a time it is when he goes to the Hungarian Deli and not only knows what to order with what, but can be as colloquial as you please with all the old Hungarian ladies who run the place.

Come to think of it, nearly all of my more serious romantic relationships have been with men who, if not immigrants themselves, are the children of immigrants who still have close extended family living scattered across the globe. I wonder why that is? I wonder if it's conscious? Friends who have heard me ponder this before have offered up the idea that there must be something different in the upbringing of those men that I'm attracted to - some difference in work ethic, gender construction, approach to the world. I think that's a rather blanket statement though, so I still don't know what to make of it all. Well there's always my friend Ryan, who married an Indian woman, and his approach: "Yeah I dig the foreign chicks too. Wait, are you, like, flipping out about this? What's the problem?"

While I'd hardly say I "flip out" about my penchant for non- or first generation American men, I do often wonder about my own choices (post-involvement, usually), and Ryan has a point: I could be way over thinking it; all of this may well be chance and coincidence rather than design.

I remember thinking back to my apparently questionable outward appearance when I visited the Apartheid Museum while in Jo'burg, South Africa this summer. I didn't understand much about how Apartheid law worked outside of the obvious, and assumed the system worked similarly to our pre-segregation ones: whites here, non-whites only allowed over there. I couldn't have been more wrong, however - race and ethnicity broke down into such amazingly precise categories. The extent to which people like Jan Smuts (one of the architects of Apartheid) went to institutionalize racism and a belief in a "master race" is almost too overwhelming to understand.
To bottom line it: Afrikaners, Dutch in origin, really, were category A/1, enjoying privilege and access to any opportunity they sought to claim. Then there were the British, a sub-category of white below the Afrikaners, the Germans, below them, the Irish, further below the Germans, and Eastern European refugees, below even the Irish immigrants. There were Indians who gathered around Durban and built their own communities who ranked below the Eastern European refugees but above the native South Africans; there were also Asians who popped up in Jo'Burg and around the Mpumalanga province (once called the Transvaal) who also had to be sub-categorized below white, but above black.

I read accounts of people who were most definitely Afrikaans, but whose darker hair or brown eyes pushed them into a category of "other", grouped together with Germans or, as white as they'd be, with Asians, even if they were clearly neither of those. The problems with this ridiculous version of organizing a society are obvious: it's fantasy to believe in ethnic "purity" - it's a social impossibility, not to mention counter-productive to evolution. But I guess we know all about governments who live in fantasy-land and impose their laws on us despite their slipping grip on reality, don't we?

As much as this recurrent question surrounding my ethnicity is just folly for me or a good inside joke amongst my friends and I here & today, I wonder what it all would have meant if I lived in a place like Johannesburg in the early 80s. I wonder if someday, considering how far we regress socially under the political leadership of conservative nut-jobs, we might encounter such sub-categories again.

My job is great because I have the power to "study" or investigate these ideas that I become engaged in and get paid for it: I think I'm going to include Nella Larsen's 1929 novel Passing, which tells the story of a light-skinned black woman who's able to pass for white enough to access the benefits of race-privilege. It's a good read, one I think students would enjoy, and one that will fit right in with the class I'm teaching next semester on women & identity construction in lit. But this also allows me to research bigger questions about all this race categorization in order to teach the class well.

I suppose this job can become somewhat dangerous - my students are sort of subject to whatever I want to project, and whatever my interests are. But I suppose I was once subject to my professors' interests; I guess that's how it all works. And lest anyone think my ego will get out of control, they need only to look at my schedule & compare it against my paycheck to understand the humility of a non-tenure track faculty member.

Ok, enough typing. My friend Sandi is home from Brazil, and I must get ready to go meet her. I’m also in pain right now - my left pec and tricep hurt even when I move my fingers, as I got a little carried away with chin-ups yesterday. The good news, though, is that I'm now up to 14 chin-ups, and I've gained some of the weight & muscle back that I so dramatically lost when traveling this summer. Tomorrow I'm skipping swimming to have a girly shopping day with Tara and Nicole, and Sunday-Monday will be my Steven's birthday follies. I'm so excited with what the plans are - but it's a secret so I'll have to elaborate after they're over.

xox