We had a fascinating discussion on race and on what ‘being an American” means at my job the other day.  Prompted by a co-worker’s sociology essay, the discussion of ‘what makes a person African-American vs. black’ spread out to a discussion of values and labels and stereotypes.

This discussion was possible – or at least interesting – because I work in Queens, which is the most ethnically diverse concentration of people in the United States – hell, possibly in the world.  My co-workers include a Malaysian woman; an Uzbekistanian Jewish woman; a woman from Hong Kong; A woman from Canton; a woman & a man from Haiti; a Pakistani Muslim man; two African-American women who grew up really poor in the Bronx; a young woman from Yemen; a German guy; an Italian woman, two devoutly Catholic women from Columbia; a woman from Romania, several men and women from Puerto Rico – mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses – & the Dominican Republic; an Albanian girl; a woman from Minsk and a man from a teeny Russian village whose name I don’t remember; a Queens-born Jewish man; and me – whitebread mutt from Southwestern America.  All of whom are now American citizens and most of whom had to work really hard to become so.  Needless to say, the different feelings about race and identity were fascinating.

• The Haitians resent being called “African-American”, because they identify as Americans of Carribbean ancestry.  Or just plain ‘black’.
• One of the older African-American women from the Bronx describes herself as “an extremely dark-skinned white lady” because she identifies more, culturally, with mainstream Martha-Stewart America than with what’s popularly portrayed as “black culture” in New York.
• The Chinese women are tired of being called “Asians,” or even as being lumped together as Chinese – the woman from Canton grew up speaking an entirely different language than the others, and the woman from Hong Kong feels like she has more in common with the Malaysian woman, who’s from Singapore, than with the Chinese women – who are from rural villages – even though they all speak Mandarin in public.
• The South American & Uzbekistani women spoke mostly of how frustrating it was for people to assume they were Mexican or Russian.
• The German guy has a lot of pride in his heritage, but gets irritated by the Nazi comments.
• The young woman from Yemen is about as “all-American” a girl as you could imagine, only she wears a headscarf and long skirts over her blue-jeans every day to work.
• The Pakistani guy is sick to death of being teased about being a terrorist.
• The Albanian girl just received her American citizenship yesterday, and she’s over-the-moon excited over it.
• The Russian guy gets twitchy when people ask him if he knew the spies who were just arrested.
• The folks from Puerto Rico are more distinctive for their religious practices than for their culture-of-origin, and the guy from DR is sick of being mistaken for Puerto Rican.  Or JW.  Because he’s not.  Not at all.

At the end of the day, they’re all American and that’s how they’d prefer to be identified.  They’ve held onto their first languages & favorite foods (& let me tell you that potluck dinners in Queens tend to be instances of gastronomic glory!) but they’re Americans, and they work hard to be American – whatever that means to each of them at any given time, and no matter what other people might think ‘being American’ is or should be.  It’s a definition that’s broad enough to encompass just about everyone who wants to be encompassed, and for me, that’s what’s absolutely and totally the best about this country.

It’s not something I’ve ever applied too much to myself, though, because my ancestors have been here since approximately forever; plus I look like your basic, European-heritage person: brown-hair,brown-eyes,beige skin.  No one ever asks me where I’m from, or where my parents are from because, honestly, they expect it’s somewhere er, boring.

Which is fine – Phoenix is kind of boring, especially compared to a childhood spent raising camels & pomegranates in the Kashmir valley.  But it occurred to me that Thor is possibly going to be dealing with some of these issues of perception and of others’ views on ‘being a real American’ when he gets older, depending on the hand that the genetic cards have dealt him.

Genetically, he’s half Turkish/Armenian & half German/Northern Euro.  Which means he could end up being dark-skinned, black-eyed, black-haired, or could be lighter skinned, -haired, -eyed than either I or his father (or his egg donor) are.  My own family is mostly German/English on my mom’s side, and a hodge-podge of European ethnicities on my dad’s.   We have suspicions of a Cherokee ancestor.  There were lots of Quakers.  And Huguenots.  And a couple of defrocked priests.  You know, the usual interesting stuff that shows up when you make a study of anyone’s genealogy.  But culturally, we’re pretty much ‘standard American’.  No fancy food passed down from generation to generation, no lullabies hummed in minor keys that no one remembers the words to anymore, no stories of oppression and coming here to escape or to make a new life or to begin anew.

So while the history behind little Thor’s DNA is just one more addition to the familial mix he’s going to be culturally as much of a sponge as I am.  We’ll celebrate Christmas with the family and we’ll go look for meteor showers with friends at the solstice.  We’ll likely attend Seder dinners with his oldest sister, and we’ll make a point of watching the parades in Chinatown at the Lunar New Year.  We’ll watch fireworks and eat cherries on the Fourth of July and we’ll celebrate the things we love about this country just as we’ll try to change the things we don’t love so much.  He’ll grow up a part of so many different things.  And if he shows an interest, we’ll go out of our way to explore Turkish/Armenian culture and history with him.  Because it’s a part of who he is & who he’ll be, which means that culture and history have become a part of us as a family.  Which is just the way it should be.

I’ve always been a big fan of the intrinsically American ideal of the ‘melting pot’ – where the best parts of so many different cultures have the chance to come together and form something entirely new, something which is likely better than any of the originals.

Sort of like what this kid of mine will be.  I can’t wait to meet him, my little Turkish-Armenian-German-English-American son whose very existence is possible because of American ideals.

I can’t wait to clap with him next Fourth of July when a particularly beautiful explosion of lights goes off over the water.  I can’t wait to feed him cherries and tell him what America means to me.

Happy Fourth of July, little one.  Happy Fourth of July.