Is everybody "ethnic"?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Maybe this has been done before. I came across a comment from Nabisco on an old thread somewhere or other in the archives, but anyway the implication seemed to be that "ethnic American" is objectionable, because all Americans are "ethnic." (I am not, at this late point, specifically looking for a response from Nabisco to my paraphrase of his comment--though that's certainly welcome.)

It's not a point of pride or anything, but I tend to think of myself as a non-ethnic American. I identify myself as white and as American. Sure, I am aware that my ancestry is West European, but that seems too broad to be an ethnicity. I am: German, Welsh, English, Irish, French and Spanish (the latter two somewhat lost in the mists of time), but I never grew up identifying with any of that in particular. My father uses a few "Pennsylvania Dutch" expressions for fun, but that could just as easily have been picked up from the environment as passed down through the family. I remember my mother once cooking some sort of Welsh cookies (actually somewhat similar to pan-cakes) that she had probably gotten a recipe for out of a magazine, in honor of her father's being of Welsh background, but it just seemed like an excuse to try a new recipe.

I'm not denying that I have a culture, but when I see the way the word "ethnic" is typically used, I can't help feeling that I have no ethnicity. Or maybe WASP would cover it adequately? (I did eat a lot of jello salad as a kid.)

(I was once told that my last name is a Catalan name, which I would love, but I suspect it is simple a funny spelling of a German name, and have some evidence for that.)

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 00:35 (twenty-three years ago)

I would say that, on my father's side, my family's very Methodist background functioned somewhat like an ethnicity. It was more "intimate" than my national identity as an American, and it brought with it certain cultural quirks, primarily of a negative sort (don't do this, don't do that); as well as a traditional egaliltarianism, of a sort, which I think goes beyond what is already present in much of American culture.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 00:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh also, stuff like going to family-friendly (and dry*--i.e., non-liquor selling) resorts such as Ocean City, NJ, instead of Wildwood, NJ. (Sorry I suspect these references will be lost to many of you.) Ocean City, in fact, was founded by Methodist ministers, and has some streets named after famous Methodist preachers.

The truth is, I find myself coming closer and closer to being a natural teetotaler anyway.

*There is, however, a state store which sells alcohol in Somers Point, right at the entrance to the bridge leading to Ocean City.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 00:49 (twenty-three years ago)

eth·nic Pronunciation Key (thnk)

adj.
1) Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.

Being a member of a particular ethnic group, especially belonging to a national group by heritage or culture but residing outside its national boundaries: ethnic Hungarians living in northern Serbia.

Of, relating to, or distinctive of members of such a group: ethnic restaurants; ethnic art.

2) Relating to a people not Christian or Jewish; heathen.

n.

A member of a particular ethnic group, especially one who maintains the language or customs of the group.

that was from dictionary.com. The first definition, you'll note, has no value judgement, and applies to everyone. the second one does, "heathen", and it is more specific.

this is a question we've talked a lot about in an ethnomusicology paper i'm doing. generally, its accepted in ethnomusicology that all cultures are ethnic and worthy of respectful ethnomusicological study. (this wasn't always the case)

― di smith (lucylurex), Sunday, 6 October 2002 01:15 (twenty-three years ago)

"Sure, I am aware that my ancestry is West European, but that seems too broad to be an ethnicity."

Do you think African-American is a narrow enough term to be an "ethnicity"?

― Venga, Sunday, 6 October 2002 01:39 (twenty-three years ago)

i met a guy in dc today who said something similar. i told him i think of myself as yorkshire-english but he didnt understnadnd

― gareth (gareth), Sunday, 6 October 2002 06:03 (twenty-three years ago)

he just smiled and held your hand

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 6 October 2002 07:51 (twenty-three years ago)

That definition is wrong! Nowadays the term means "them funny foreign fellers", obviously. Actually, Nabisco is right (and I was reading that dating-Asian-women thread for the first time last night, and he was OTM all the way through that, I thought) - it's part of thinking that white European is the baseline, and other things are a variation from that. And 'ethnic American' doesn't fit the definitions anyway, I don't think. It's too diverse and broad a country to offer a unified cultural or racial group. I might accept 'ethnic New Yorker', for instance, but even that is obviously of dubious use.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 6 October 2002 10:08 (twenty-three years ago)

"Where are you from?" Asked of anyone non-anglo looking is not a good way to find out if they're part Vietnamese, Chinese, Islander, Greek, Lebanese etc. as frequently the answer will be Carlton or Footscray or Melbourne or Sydney or whatever.

"Where were you born?" Will often be equally uninformative, as will "Where are your parents/family from?".

"What's your cultural heritage?" Sounds really bad.

"What's your ethnicity?" Sounds bad too.

A"re you part something?" Is a bit rude and so is "You're exotic looking..?"

The thing is that there is no delicate way of asking someone what their racial/cultural/ethnic background is and the reason for this is that it shouldn't matter and so you don't need to know (according to PC-ness).

In fact in order to be a "multicultural" society (rather than one that assimilates people from other cultures) it is necessary to "celebrate diversity" and it's a bit hard to celebrate it if you don't recognise it.

But there's still no straight-forward yet sensitive way of asking.

― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 6 October 2002 11:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I find it confusing then to have an ethnicity but not be sure what it is. (Maybe this is far less unusual than I imagine?)

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 12:52 (twenty-three years ago)

All those ethnic people probably think the same thing. To them what they are is normal.

If you view your life as normal then it is hard to describe it - because it just is - but I'm sure your life is very different to mine, and yet I don't think of myself as "ethnic" either.

If you look at the Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage. definition of ethnic then you are (I think from what you've said above) a white christian American who speaks English. Your cultural heritage probably involves things like Christmas, thanksgiving, baseball, halloween, 4th of July, a belief that you are "free" and that "freedom" is good, that democracy is good, communism & Islam bad, man going to the moon, telly programmes, movies, the American education system, the Vietnam war, computers, all sorts of consumer crap.

― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 6 October 2002 13:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I think "Are you part something?" is a weird and hilarious question. I am led to believe that the American code for "so what race are you then?" is "Where are your people from?", but that's horrible.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 6 October 2002 13:21 (twenty-three years ago)

I think "Are you part something?" is a weird and hilarious question.

Part wanker. Part d00d. Party d00d. Andrew W.K. Part Time Punks.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 6 October 2002 13:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm part gel and part fur.

― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 6 October 2002 13:44 (twenty-three years ago)

And part should have gone to bed hours ago because now I'm just being silly.

― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 6 October 2002 13:45 (twenty-three years ago)

a white christian American who speaks English. Your cultural heritage probably involves things like Christmas, thanksgiving, baseball, halloween, 4th of July, a belief that you are "free" and that "freedom" is good, that democracy is good, communism & Islam bad, man going to the moon, telly programmes, movies, the American education system, the Vietnam war, computers, all sorts of consumer crap.

Yeah, that's pretty good. (I'm no longer a Christian, but obviously I was raised as one and it's part of my cultural background.) I guess I am being dense. Part of it is that I see a lot of consciously hypenated Americans (I have a feeling someone will complain about this term) engaging in activities that explicitly affirm and celebrate their ethnic identity, and I'm not sure what that would mean for me. Of course, maybe a lot of this has to do with my little group traditionally being the most powerful in the United States, and other groups struggling to maintain some other sort of identity (not to mention struggle to survive). Some other ethnic groups seem to be having more fun though. Any group that spends lots of time dancing seems to me to have an edge over mine, at least in that respect.

I will have to read the white men who exclusively date Asian (or was it Japanese, specifically?) women thread.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 14:33 (twenty-three years ago)

It's hard reading, RS!

As for not actively affirming your culture, surely there is more (in the US and UK) that actively affirms the WASP thing than any other culture, by a big margin! It's just more difficult to spot as we fall into regarding that as the ground situation, as neutral.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 6 October 2002 15:08 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't even know what to saw about the resurrection of the WMWEDAW thread. But yeah, Martin seems to understand perfectly why I don't like the current use of "ethnic." It assumes that any indistinct western European ethnicity constitutes a blank slate, whereas everyone else's ethnicity constitutes some definable quality about their identity and behavior. It always makes me think of bad science fiction or fantasy, wherein humans have all the variation of real-life humans but every group of aliens / humanoids is assigned undifferentiated hive-mind behavioral traits. Mostly it allows people of western European descent to go one pretending that their culture is perfectly normal and in fact not a culture at all, whereas everyone else is walking around acting funny.

― nabisco (nabisco), Sunday, 6 October 2002 17:42 (twenty-three years ago)

My mother's side of the family is made up of Armenian immigrants so she says we're Armenian-American, but come on, we live in the middle of nowhere and speak English and eat pizza, her kids aren't Armenian anything. It's kind of sad, trying to hold onto an identity that is becoming history because it's not part of the way we live our lives, because as "ethnicity" gets diluted it causes this great chasm of understanding between my grandparents and me.

I think people want to feel like they have a history and a unique place in the world, and that can come from feeling like they're in a special little group different from all the people surrounding. I don't think the word ethnic is objectionable if it's followed by an adjective - you could very well say ethnic American and have that entail not all of, but many, of the things Toraneko described.

― Maria (Maria), Sunday, 6 October 2002 17:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the question here is whether you can really "not have" a culture. A lot of white Americans don't think they do, because the way they live their lives doesn't tie strongly with anything from either a country of origin or from the past. But that in itself, I think, is a culture just as significant as any other.

― nabisco (nabisco), Sunday, 6 October 2002 18:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, I'm surprised at the revival of that thread. I've avoided commenting on it, in the hope that it will die again quickly. Actually, the most I've talked and thought about these sorts of issues was when I got involved with a woman whose dad was Scottish and mother Jamaican, who had lived half her life in Britain and half in Jamaica. Here she was black with all that entailed, there she was upper-class and light-skinned. She thought of herself as black and had all kinds of doubts about dating a white guy. The last one she had dated, some years before, had said at one point, in what he clearly thought was a complimentary way, that he didn't think of her as black any more! She also talked a great deal about the various problems and issues, as related to black and white men and women and the various combinations thereof. It was pretty interesting, and revealing of how important race is to a lot of people, whereas I really don't generally think about it very much, for better or worse. I'd had partners before who were white, black and Asian (Indian subcontinent sense - as it happens I've never been out with a southeast Asian) without this ever being so prominent an issue. It's certainly never occurred to me to choose a race, or a hair or eye colour come to that, and decide that I'll date no one who doesn't conform to that.

It occurs to me that I've known three white-male/oriental-female married couples (I still know two, but one has split) - one of them, I would strongly suspect that the man was after that geisha stereotype (but they seem genuinely happy, far as I can tell), but the other two it seemed entirely individually based.

Dearie me: posting thoughts to one thread because you wish the more apt one would die off, dud or dud?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 6 October 2002 18:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Nabisco, I see your point, I think. Honestly, I certainly understand that I have a culture, but have felt confused partly at not being able to put a label on my ethnic background, though maybe "WASP" is good enough after all.

because the way they live their lives doesn't tie strongly with anything from either a country of origin or from the past. But that in itself, I think, is a culture just as significant as any other.

[New Message Alert, though I cheated and changed what I said slightly, though I had already said something about having a culture.]

That sense of detachment from a country of origin could qualify an aspect of my ethnic background then? That makes some sense.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 18:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, Venga: good point. Of course, it is equally broad.

I am probably coming off as idiotic in some of the things I have posted related to this subject, but I would rather just put it out there to get it sorted out.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 18:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Or: I may sound obtuse and idiotic, but I'm really not. (And you should believe my own evaluation why exactly?)

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 18:25 (twenty-three years ago)

It assumes that any indistinct western European ethnicity constitutes a blank slate, whereas everyone else's ethnicity constitutes some definable quality about their identity and behavior.

what i meant earlier, about how in ethnomusicology all cultures are understood as ethnic - this includes any "indistinct western european ethnicity". what i want to know is - can a word's definition be broadened, or should a different word altogether should be used?

― di smith (lucylurex), Sunday, 6 October 2002 21:14 (twenty-three years ago)

We don't need the term 'ethnic' music! We have 'world music'! That already means 'music by those funny foreign fellers'!

More seriously, 'ethnic' is a perfectly good word, and I'd rather everyone used it properly instead of as some sort of crap euphemism.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 6 October 2002 21:55 (twenty-three years ago)

I take "ethnic" to mean the thing that someone is if most other people go "you ain't from around here ARE ya bowah?" i.e. if I moved to Bombay I would be quite ethnic but in Tennessee I'm the blank slate. I guess it's the shades of gray we're talking about here. that's why New York is so interesting to live in: your relationship to the norm, yr deviant status, changes sometimes by the block.

I actually LIKE the terms "Armenian-American" etc if you feel like using them for yourself - though they are a bit ungraceful. The construction makes explicit the liminality of your culture - you're neither simply an "Armenian" (because your struggles and ways of living are specific to America) but not simply "American" either - much as everyone would like to assimilate you and assimilatchu GOOD - because your American experience is a necessary reaction against AND continuation of the (fudge word alert) "values" and experiences from back over there where you and/or your family came from. Maria it sounds like you just feel "American" - good then. there are some folks though who are 2nd or 3rd generation over here and still can't speak english. they don't WANT to be American and they don't WANT to be whatever it was they were before - they specifically want to be in exile, sort of. there's an excellent book called "The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles" by Hamid Naficy that gets at a lot of these points in a nuanced and brilliant way and I really should read it again.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Sunday, 6 October 2002 22:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Martin, the funny thing about that is that I have had a grasp on the sillines of the "ethnic music" label for a while. Somehow that didn't get generalized to the rest of my thinking.

Possible autobiographical contributing factor: I have often been asked over the years: "What are you?" meaning what ethnicity are you, sometimes in the context of talking about my last name. Since my family has never been sure what nationality it comes from (though after having done a little research I've come to suspect it's most likely German), I never knew what to say. There has never been an easy ethnic identity marker for me to put in front of "American." In casual conversation this has often resulted in the other person saying, "So you aren't anything," or "So you're just an American." These sorts of non-label labels aren't my own invention.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 22:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Incidentally, I suspect that this is one of the most common ways that ethnicity gets brought up in American small talk with strangers: asking about their last name.

I've even had people say, "Oh, you really are an American then," after I've indicated that (a) we aren't sure about the nationality of our last name and (b) we have never explicitly identified with any country our ancestors came from. Of course, I personally don't think I am more American because of this.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 6 October 2002 22:28 (twenty-three years ago)

World Music - music from the rest of the world. This reminds me of the footy matches we used to play with friends where it was Tassie vs The Rest Of The World. Always good fun! It's great to see half the people playing being patriotic to The Rest Of The World rather than just their little niche.

― toraneko (toraneko), Monday, 7 October 2002 05:32 (twenty-three years ago)

World music has never meant that, though. I'm from the UK, and no one ever describes Eminem and Daft Punk and Neil Young as world music.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 7 October 2002 16:20 (twenty-three years ago)

NB on the "how do Americans figure out your ethnicity front" here's the breakdown for me personally:

MOST PEOPLE: "Where are (you)/(your parents) from?"
RUDE PEOPLE: "What are you?"
PEOPLE WHO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS MODERN: "So what's your ethnicity?"
OVERDIPLOMATIC PEOPLE: "So what's your background?"
BLACK PEOPLE: "You really black?"
INDIAN + PAKISTANI PEOPLE: "Are you from India or Pakistan?"
SRI LANKANS: "So were you born here, or in Sri Lanka?"
MUSLIMS: "Wait, I know. Hold on, don't tell me. You're from ..."
ETHIOPIANS: "Hi!"

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 October 2002 17:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually I always pretend like I don't know what people are getting at, so the "most people" bit is more like:

THEM: "Where are you from?"
ME: "Chicago."
THEM: "Okay, but like where are you from?"
ME: "Well, I grew up in Colorado."
THEM: "Grr okay how about your family?"
ME: "Well, my parents are from Ethiopia."

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 October 2002 18:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Among the (many) reasons that I don't like public transportation is the number of mentalists who would try to open conversations with me by asking things like "Are you Swedish?" "Are you Danish?" "Are you Irish?" And I've had the "Where are you from?" sort of conversation, too.

― j.lu (j.lu), Monday, 7 October 2002 18:51 (twenty-three years ago)

i usually just say "i'm black". that seems to shut them up.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 7 October 2002 18:53 (twenty-three years ago)

world music is pretty appaling, a term used to tidy up non-western music into a neat box...very unfortunate.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 7 October 2002 19:25 (twenty-three years ago)

I also get, "Are you Jewish?" a lot.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 7 October 2002 20:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Just about the only time anyone makes a specific guess about my ethnicity, it's: "Are you Jewish?" Sometimes followed by "Italian?"

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 7 October 2002 20:25 (twenty-three years ago)

No one ever speculates on mine, because I am so obviously white British, and unusually white even for that*, but in fact I don't know - I was adopted and know nothing about my biological parents.

*the stereotype is of the British tourist who is whiter than everyone else on the beaches: I am that odd one out on a British beach.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 7 October 2002 20:52 (twenty-three years ago)

THEM: "Where are you from?"
ME: "Chicago."
THEM: "Okay, but like where are you from?"
ME: "Well, I grew up in Colorado."
THEM: "Grr okay how about your family?"
ME: "Well, my parents are from Ethiopia."

Makes me think of a Margaret Cho joke. She once did an appearance on some morning chat show, and at the end, the host asked her (on-air) to do a station ID:

Host: "Now, Margaret, after today, we're becoming an ABC affiliate, so in your native language, please tell the audience that we're becoming an ABC affiliate."

Margaret (bemused): "They're becoming an ABC affiliate."

― Jody Beth Rosen, Monday, 7 October 2002 21:06 (twenty-three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.