this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Is it just the Jewish part that you don't get? The US has so many different active cultures going on in the same spaces that knowing someone's ethnic background can tell you a lot about them and their family. I'm sure some people want to know because they're racist, but for most people it's just a cultural shorthand. Knowing someone is Cuban rather than Puerto Rican, or half Spanish and half Irish tells you what kinds of experiences they might have had, what comfort foods they're likely to eat, how they're likely to celebrate their holidays. Stuff like that. Especially if one of their cultural identities is one that you share, or frequently share the same spaces with, you've probably just found a whole lot of commonalities with that person. Older people might ask. In my experience younger people generally won't. So either it's obvious to you or they tell you or you might not know at all.
From a governmental standpoint, they keep track of different statistics based on ethnicity, supposedly so they can make sure they're not failing any groups of people with representation, healthcare outcomes, policing, etc. It obviously doesn't always work, but that's supposed to be why the government is interested.
Aw, you guys are gonna make me answer this seriously, aren't you?
No, it's not the Jewish part that I don't get. I have been around enough to understand that Wilson is implying that she has some (presumably) Ashkenazi and some Irish ancestry, and I am self-aware enough to understand that she would sound insane if she put it that way.
The fact that she's calling it out as a shorthand for common cultural ground is the part that is strange, let alone the persistent hangup with ancestry and the weird assumption that culture is somehow genetic. I was just trying to break it down gently by being facetious about it.
It's weird, it's highly specific to American culture, and yes, I do get the very deep roots in colonialism that lead to this outcome. It's just weird to me that's where it landed and how often Americans seem to think it's universal when it's actually pretty unusual.
I was not kidding about the census categorizations that get repurposed on immigration forms, though. They are full of apples and oranges in all sorts of arrangements and I have never once felt I fit on any of the categories or that the categories themselves make any sense.
Do you think parents' ancestry plays zero part in a child's cultural experience in the US? Like as soon as you're born on US soil you're only allowed to eat KFC and burgers, and you can never hear folktales and history from a different country. Not to mention how cultural heritage plays into how you are perceived.
There's a difference between people saying "my great granddad was irish so I'm basically from Ireland and st paddy's day is the greatest holiday woooo!" and a Japanese American kid getting teased in elementary school for a foreign sounding name and eating pickled plums during lunch, or a Jewish kid in predominantly Christian areas never having their cultural holidays off school and feeling left out.
I'm mostly letting this one simmer, because you may be shocked to find out that this isn't my first time hearing Americans try to justify their weird approach to caste like it's actually a super wholesome thing. I know we're not gonna agree on this one.
But you did quote me directly and you are commenting about something slightly different and I think this is a more interesting angle, if we keep it civil.
So, ok, does parental ancestry play zero part in someone's cultural experience? No, of course not. I plays some part, depending on how long ago that ancestry happened, how focused on that ancestry the family is and how similar the cultures are in the first place.
Does it define one's identity? Nah. It shouldn't, anyway. I lived in a place with a different culture and dominant religion for a long time, and had I raised kids during that period I don't see how having different days off becomes a personality-forming event, even assuming I insisted on doing my own take on those holidays at home.
I interact with kids of migrants every day, and yes, the fact that we sometimes speak a foreing language between us in front of other people is different, so yeah, at some point they'll probably explain to people why that is in like the second date or whatever. But their own future kids sure won't, and the impact of their grandparent being a migrant will be almost entirely negligible. My source would be my own migrant grandparent, I suppose. Although it's weird that I pay so little attention to that connection that I barely remember that in US terms you'd describe me that way. That sounds so crazy to me, I'd never dare. It'd feel like an insult to the part of the family that actually is from the place in question and lived and died there and was a part of that culture, which I absolutely was not.
I just struggle to see a reason why cultural heritage would be a long term defining factor in one's life, regardless of how much of a "melting pot" your country is, that isn't built on appartheid. You REALLY need to keep people apart along ethnic lines pretty hard for any of this to be a major part of your life past a couple of generations. Well, with the exception of ethnic divisions that are visible at a glance like, say, skin color, where you just need garden variety racism. I concede those are more universal and life-defining, because we all deal with that one, unfortunately. But I've interacted with enough visually indistinguishable Americans who claim this or that personality trait of theirs is "because they are Polish/Italian/German/Irish" or whatever. That's what I'm talking about here and what so many non-Americans find weird to deal with.
Part of the reason she’s bothering to be that specific is for the “dammit ratcliffe” joke, it would be unnoteworthy except in a a”genetically predisposed to” context otherwise, but by being unnecessarily specific the cumulative effect of the joke gives a bigger payoff.
Essentially the “two nickels” joke but she’s allergic to nickel
Right.. because I've never met a European who verbalized their white ethnic backgrounds before.
Huh. I'm trying to think, because that's a good point. Have I?
I mean, it's not like I've never heard something like "my father was from Germany", I definitely have, particularly when prompted. But "I'm half German"? That's more specific, and I genuinely can't think of an example of people who weren't dual nationals themselves. It gets complicated, too, because Americans tend to think of ethnicities as nationalities, but Europeans don't. So if we're talking about Europeans it's not "I'm half German" as much as "My mother was Swiss-Italian" or, "my surname is Flemish", or "I spent summers in my grandfather's hometown in the Basque Country".
But that's why I brought up colonialism earlier, my impression is that Europeans value integration highly while Americans value ancestry. I've met nonwhite Europeans who got VERY testy at the implication that they were "from" the place their parents or grandparents originated, and considered that way of phrasing it deeply racist. The example of this that always comes to mind is that time Trevor Noah had a fight with the French National football team for saying that the black members of the team were "African", because at the time that argument was popular with the French far right. So in France people thought that saying "this black athlete is African" was a racist thing nazis say to pretend that black people aren't "really" French, while Noah was coming from the colonial perspective of pride in an ongoing heritage that isn't superseded by personal history as much.
So have I met a European who verbalized their white ethnic background as a matter of their own identity rather than the identity of their relatives themselves? Yeeeeah, maybe? But mostly in the context of advocating for seccesionism or just being a nazi, I think.
I really appreciate the child of colonizers telling the children of immigrants how they should act.
Bang up job.
You are making a lot of assumptions there, all incorrect.
Bang up job, indeed.