Race/Ethnicity/Something/Nothing

This all started with thinking about race. I decided there is no such thing as different races, but there are many ethnicities. Ethnicity is determined on a personal basis, often influenced most by culture. And yes, you can be many ethnicities or just one or you can even have none.

So that's the short version of my "thinking time" from earlier today. If you're interested in further explanation, feel free to ask. But I just had to push myself some more. See, I don't think I have an ethnicity. People look at me and think I'm your typical American high school student. Close, but I am in college, and...that's not my ethnicity. It's my citizenship. But is American an ethnicity? America was based on the coming together (and sometimes clash, even today) of cultures and ethnicities. So how does that create an ethnicity? I'm not sure it does.

I grew up in a reasonably ethnically diverse area (economically not at all). One of my college friends introduces me to others by saying, "This is her first group of all white friends. She hung out with Asian kids in high school." I did. And some Indian and some Caucasian and some mixed. I was able to sample many different cultures just by going to my friends' houses. It's how I became enamored with steamed dumplings (J, send my compliments to your mom again please). I had so many different ethnicities influencing me when I was young that I never stopped to consider what anyone was. People just existed. When I moved to a far less diverse area (though still amazingly diverse for this particular state), I became insanely aware of the differences in ethnicities. The influence certain cultures can have on people. Suddenly, I was noticing all these differences and how they divided people and it scared me. Was my ignorance bliss? Was this state and state of mind turning me racist? Trying to ignore unspoken boundaries certainly made it difficult to make friends.

When I tried to identify my own ethnicity, I began to wonder about the ethnicity of my friends. Do my Chinese-American friends consider themselves to be Chinese or American or both? But then I'm starting to sound like I'm talking about citizenship again. Maybe ethnicity is tied into citizenship. I can't imagine considering myself to be Canadian until I became a citizen, even though I already fit the stereotypical Canadian profile (if only I could nail the accent...). My friend, B, recently became a US citizen. She said she was American. I asked, "Yeah, but what does that mean?" She shrugged. It was just a convenience. She could vote now. It was far easier to manage her life.

I call myself an egg - white on the outside, yellow on the inside - and that's the best I define myself. So are my friends bananas? But that, or Twinkie, has always had a more negative connotation. And now I'm wondering why, if I can't even define myself, am I trying to define my friends. I certainly wouldn't be terribly pleased if I were in their shoes.

So then, what is ethnicity even? Is it just my way to sound, well, not racist? But if I don't care what race/ethnicity/culture people are, why am I trying to hard to define it? I feel like if I know what ethnicity I am, I'll have this huge epiphany and it'll be all, "Oh, that's why I am how I am." But I know why I am how I am. I just kind of told you guys - when I was younger I experienced a lot of different cultures. It was filtered, true, but I was still exposed and I took a lot from that. Maybe I am confusing culture for ethnicity. But still, for some reason I can't just accept that. I don't believe it. Culture seems like a way of doing things, a list of interests. Ethnicity includes culture and language and history. It is inherently more than just culture. So I'm a combination of cultures. Got it. So what's my ethnicity?

You know what I just thought of? I know my political science books had a lot to say about this. I'm really pissed I sold them now. That'd solve all my problems.