It got me thinking about a conversation I once had with one of my best friends in college who we will call A. Around the time Boybee and I were engaged/getting married, A and I disucssed our mutual desire to bear and raise children. To set the scene, A is also a cisgendered woman and she is African American (also gorgeous, hilarious, and brilliant - the woman speaks like, a bazillion languages). At the time, A was seriously dating a guy who happened to be white. So here we are, a couple of women in our early 20s talking about future child rearing plans.
I'm Jewish and Boybee is not, and A asked what we were thinking in terms of religious offiliation for our future spawn and I explained that in Judaism religion is passed through the womb - literally - so a baby born to a Jewish woman is automatically Jewish and therefore my kids will be Jews.* And A's first reaction was "Oh! Like how any kid I have will automatically be black!" because American society uses the seriously racist and bullshit system of "hypodescent" to assign race to kids (see Barak Obama who is totally halfsies but first and foremost Our First Black President). We then descended into a fit a giggles because that's how we roll and semi-seriously determined that my marrying a non-Jew and her basically only ever dating white guys (she's now married to a white guy) garunteed that by having children, we could more quickly generate a surplus of "minorities."
It also got me thinking about the idea of becoming American - my dad was not born in the States but I was and when I was a kid and mouthing off or if my room was a mess or I was exhibiting some other vaguely undesirable trait and he'd get angry he'd always yell about my being "so American!" Like it was an insult, and coming from my dad who loves country music, grits, and Branson Missouri, that's sort of a big deal. So, yeah, I speak a language other than English with my family sometimes, am a member of a minority religion, and have a name that gives people a lot of trouble to spell/pronounce, but, my dad was right. I am really American. It hits me hardest when I talk to my cousins back "in the old country" who share a lot of my dad's viewpoints and cultural touchstones that the differences aren't just generational - they're cultural. I think about my friends whose parents were born in other countries and how they are more like me than my cousins even though they don't necessarily share the same ethnicity, religion, or race.
To me, that's the American experience. We don't all have to look the same or believe the same things to share some of the same ideals.**It's kind of awesome and a little upsetting when you think about it.
Look at folks of Irish or Polish descent in the US - when immigrants from those countries first arrived en masse they weren't "American;" they were foreigners stealing jobs and causing trouble or something, but now? We all wear "Kiss me! I'm Irish" buttons on March 17th and eat klotchkes*** and kielbasa. Because... yeah Ireland and Poland are places and folks from those places share an ethnic heritage and cultural identity, but lets be really honest here - that identity has been subsumed in what it means to be "American." Sure, we're getting lots of East and South Asian immigrants and Hispanic immigrants now, but in 100 years? We'll all be throwing brightly colored powder at each other every spring, we'll curse in Mandarin, and the best tamales ever will be made by an older black woman who lives in Rhode Island.
Yeah it's problematic, but... I think I like that vision of the future.
*Boybee is also totally cool with and excited about raising Jewish children with me for those wondering.
** Or to share a devotion to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
*** If you don't eat klotchkes you are living a sad and deprived life.
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