Thoughts on a stunted ethnicity

This is a paper I had to write for a Human Service class. It is one of the most interesting assingments I've ever done. I wanted to share it. Isn't it funny how writing maps out a person's brain?

I hope ya'll like it.

Young Childhood Ethnic Identity: Caucasian/American

As a small child, I remember very few significant events. I was born in Mountain View, California, a suburb of San Jose, which is a neighboring city to San Francisco. I was what I imagine an ‘ideal’ child looked like. I had long blonde hair that my mother always put in pigtails or Swedish braids, rosy cheeks and blue eyes. I only wanted to wear dresses with flouncy skirts, and pink was my favorite color. I was very girly, very protected, and looked very, very white. In short, I resembled the All-American Girl.
The Bay Area has a high Asian population. I went to a private Montessori school, where all of my friends were Japanese, Chinese or Vietnamese. My mother joked with me that I must have been from the East in a past life, because I had no Caucasian friends. I remember looking different than they did, but, as is the manner of most small children, not paying much attention to the difference in skin color or hair texture. There were far more important things at stake, like who got to be the Mother when we played house (it was whoever happened to be wearing nail polish, since to four year-olds, nothing is more grown up that hot-pink, chipping fingernail polish). Ethnicity was something that I was vaguely aware of, like my mother’s age or what month it was. I knew it was probably important, but it had no effect on my day-to-day life so I paid it very little heed.

From Asia to Argentina
Childhood Ethnic Identity: Caucasian/American and Argentinean.

When I turned five, my mother married my stepfather, who is the man who essentially raised me. He is from Buenos Aries, Argentina, speaks fluent, flawless Spanish and English and looks like a cross between John Travolta and Bill Clinton. Of course, this could be my own perception since I know his love of liberal politics and disco dancing. My stepfather and his side of the family quickly accepted me as if I was their own daughter, granddaughter and niece.
With this acceptance came their culture. Argentineans drink a tea called mate, which is sipped from a silver gourd with a silver straw, and everyone shares the same gourd. Family barbeques are a common occurrence, but they are quite different from an American barbeque. There are no hotdogs or hamburgers or potato chips. Instead whole chickens covered in salt and lemon juice and skirt steak are cooked on the grill and served with an assortment of Argentinean side dishes. Some of the foods served were empanadas (meat-and-egg or cheese stuffed pastries), cold flank steak roll-ups made with egg and olives, and sandwiches de miga (thin-sliced ham and cheese served on thin sliced, crustless white bread). I remember that red wine was drunk, but not from wineglasses. The Argentineans prefer regular drinking glasses, which my stepfather attributed to many South American restaurants not wanting to pay for a liquor license. They would instead serve alcohol in coffee cups and water glasses. The Argentinean diet is extraordinarily high-protein, which many attribute to the local’s slim figures.
There was also a high energy in the house of my new family. People shouted, in Spanish, a lot. It was normal for my 27 year old aunt and her son to be living at home with no plans to move out, because family stuck together. People kissed and hugged all the time. Although all that loud affection was a bit intimidating at first, it quickly became normal, and I began to think of myself as non-Spanish speaking Argentinean.

The ‘Missing Link’
Adolescent Ethnic Identity: Caucasian/American, Argentinean and Irish

My mother never knew her biological father. He was what they called a ‘cad’ back in the 1940s and 1950s. He was brilliant poet, alcoholic and womanizer, not necessarily in that order. He left my grandmother when she was halfway through her pregnancy for a series of other women. To date, my mother has at least four brothers and sisters that she has never met. They are all significantly older then she, and fifteen years ago, when she attempted to make contact with them, most were already retired and had no desire to dredge up old hurts of the past. That is, all except one- my aunt Sascha.
The irony of my Aunt Sascha helping my mother and I reclaim our Irish roots is that when Sacha was born, she was baptized in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Boston, and then adopted by a wealthy Jewish family. She grew up believing she was a Jew, in both blood and religion. Only on her adopted mother’s deathbed did she discover her true Irish heritage. Upon meeting Sascha, she acts and speaks very much like a wealthy, upper-class New York bred Jewish woman. However, when you place her next to my mother, who was raised in a bohemian environment in the middle to lower-class suburbs of Boston, the similarities are uncanny. It is almost impossible to believe that Sascha is anything but Irish when she is placed next to my mother
There is something about finding a long-lost family member that is akin to reclaiming a person’s own history. For years, my mother had been searching for her own ethnic identity. She knew she was Irish, but Irish girls are a dime a dozen, especially in Boston. My mother experimented with Judaism, took us children to American Indian pow-wows and could be found worshipping at Buddhist temples. Upon finding her sister, it was as if something became grounded in her, which in turn, grounded me. A commonplace heritage is still a heritage and a history, and from where else do we learn who we are but from our history? By finding our “missing link”, the true search for the self could really begin.

Rediscovering Germany
Young Adult Ethic Identity: Caucasian/American, Argentinean, Irish and German

I have always been fascinated by the Jewish religion and culture and have an interest in the Holocaust that at times has bordered on obsession. As a child, I would read any book about the Holocaust, my favorites being about Jewish girls my age that were living in Germany during World War II. I grew to hate Germans, and was horrified when I discovered that on my biological father’s side of the family, my great-grandfather’s last name was Scribner. As it turned out, the very blood I had grown to despise coursed through my veins.
For years I denied any German ancestry, harboring a type of guilt that I can only associate with how the descendants of slave owners must feel. When I was 23 I met my now husband, whose last name is Snyder, an Americanized version of Schneider. My husband’s mother’s maiden name is Hanselmann.
My husband, my wonderful, accepting, intelligent husband, is approximately 90% German. Our children will be more than half German. I began to realize that I could not take the sins and atrocities of the Nazis upon myself. I also began to read about the German Holocaust sympathizers, and educate myself as to why Germany has allowed the Holocaust to happen in the first place. While the Holocaust was a tragedy and disgrace of immeasurable proportions, it was not my fault, and hating a people for what their ancestors had done was nothing more than a twisted form of reverse racism.

Coming Home Without Ever Leaving
Current Ethnic Identity: Caucasian/American, Argentinean, European

The more I have learned about my heritage and background, the more connected, and yet disconnected, I feel about it. I can now look at myself and say “My rosy cheeks and pink undertones come from my Welsh Ancestors”, “My blue eyes are probably from some distant German relative”, and “My blonde hair probably comes from my Norwegian blood”. I still identify strongly with the Argentinean culture. Whenever I visit my parents, my stepfather buys sandwiches de miga, and there is always a big barbeque.
I look in the mirror and can see Europe all over my face. In my heart, I am North and South American. I feel amused that I am vaguely connected to Eric the Red, and have always felt a little sad that I am German as opposed to Jewish, but my blood does not affect the woman that sits here right now, writing this paper. My American mother and South American stepfather shaped me into who I am today. I imagine, considering the merging of North and South in my house, there is no more American Girl than me.