Comments on: Thoughts on Ethnicity

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:00:19 +0000

When I was a kid my dad used to tell me “when people ask you what nationality you are, you say AMERICAN”. It always struck me as a typical thing for my right wing, Fox watching, Bush voting dad would say. But he’s right. I look at my son, and he is so far removed from Ellis Island and the days when your heritage mattered– he’s an Italian-German-Irish-Welsh-Syrian-Lebanese-French American.

I think we can officially draw the line now.

By: D. J. Uhlarik

D. J. Uhlarik — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:18:07 +0000

In 1972 I was fortunate to be traveling in Italy, studying art history. A person asked me “What is your nationality?” My response was “American.” But this was not what that person wanted. “What country are you from?” “The United States of America.” It was a surprise to that person that I answered the question with “American”. When are we going to be “Americans”? When are we going to stop with “hyphenated-American”? When we are citizens of the United States of America.If you are not a citizen, then you can be what ever country you name, e.g. Italian, Greek, French, etc. But if you have United States citizenship, you are American. Let’s stop with the need to name yourself as a hyphenated whatever. And I agree, Africa is a continent and not country. And I am not North American-American. Could we start a movement to accomplish this?

By: Esther

Esther — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:23:56 +0000

I think a person’s ethnicity is whatever he or she chooses it to be, from whatever background he or she has. I used to call myself Asian, (embracing the 1/4th, probably just to stand out from the rest), but now I don’t worry about terms like that. I say that I’m a mutt, when asked. Any ethnicity I claim for my own is usually in terms of a family member. As in, “my grandfather was Japanese,” or “my father is from England.”

Maybe this is a cop-out, but I’ve found that it’s the easiest thing to be ethnic-neutral, if you will. Asian people don’t consider me Asian, so it makes no sense for me to claim that as my ethnicity. I don’t consider myself to be fully white, so I prefer not to use that term. It’s difficult to think that the least convoluted way to describe my ethnicity is to list everything off, but it seems to work for me.

I was actually thinking about this the other day, and I asked myself which ethnicity I would claim if I could only choose one. Perhaps surprisingly, (depending on how one looks at it), I decided that above all else, I am American. I’m willing to say that I have English, Welsh, Irish, Japanese or Swedish ancestors, (etc), but I am American. It may not be an ethnicity, but it is, above all, what I am.

But, again, (perhaps because I have such a difficult time defining my roots in relation to myself), I think that people can call themselves whatever they want to. Every group of people will view each individual differently, depending on ancestry and nationality. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong? America is the great melting pot, after all. People came here to define, (or redefine), themselves, and still have that right and ability.