Who Am I?

Soon I shall have some of my students write an essay having something to do with their culture and how it plays into them being an American.  I decided to come up with an example for them to kind of see what I'm talking about.  I've been thinking about this topic for a while now, and the words pretty much flowed off.

Who Am I?

            Who am I?  How do you answer that question?  My parents named me Mary after my mom, but they called me Ellie.  That was ok, until I hit the real world, when all the college teachers and the administrators and everyone official had the name “Mary Hall” printed on the documents in front of them, and I was forced suddenly to respond to my mother’s name.  And then came the forms, and the applications, and the tests.  They wanted to know all about me on those – at least for their statistics.  Name.  Birth date.  Gender.  Those are easy.  Mary E. Hall.  November 19, 1988.  Female.  But then they asked Race, and they give a few options to pick from – Hispanic, African-American, Asian, Native American…White.  Other.

            My pencil always hovers over the ‘other’ when I reach that question.  I look with some longing at the interesting options for people of other races.  Hispanic.  African-American…Native American.  If only Grandma had been a quarter Cherokee instead of 1/8^th, maybe I could mark ‘Native American’ instead of just plain old ‘White.’  Could I mark Other?  I’m not just ‘White,’ and even if I was ‘just white,’ it still doesn’t represent who I am.  I am so much more than ‘White.’

            I am the Romanian Jew who fled from Europe when the rumblings of trouble began to reach the Jewish community before Hitler took over, and from them I learn what it is to have suffering in my history and hatred against my people.

            I am the industrious Irish who traveled to the States in some hope of a job that would pay enough to prevent starvation, and from them I learn the value of hard, steady work.

            I am the curious, far reaching English who knew opportunity and independence were to be had in the New World, and from them I gain my indefatigable nature, never satisfied until I have carried on to the farthest reaches of my abilities.

            I am the proud, capable Cherokee who wandered the native forests and fields of America long before any European set foot here, and from them I learn to love the woods and the plains and the water.

            But I am more than these people and races, dissected and separated into their little categories.  I am more than the persecuted Jew, the starving Irish, the conquering English, and the defeated Cherokee.  I am a unique combination of them, their cultures, their traditions, their beliefs intertwined within me.  If I tell people I am Native American, I deny my other parts, but if I tell people I am White, I neglect my Cherokee.  White cannot define me, because White is a color that could mean anything.  It could mean the English who oppressed the Irish, or the German who oppressed the Jew, or the French who fought for centuries against the English.

            White cannot define me because I am not a color.  I, too, have a history and a culture that varies as widely as the Hispanic’s history varies from the African American.  There is just one thing that brings all my backgrounds together, and that is why, when I am asked who I am, I do not respond with a color, but with my home.

I am not White.

            I am American.