Agreed. Just as the mother in the story paid too much of the wrong kind of thought/action to the issue, I probably paid too little.
As an indication of how much, or little, ancestry/ethnicity can mean to people and how quickly it can change recently happened under my roof. One of my wife's dearest friends (the whole family actually) for o…
Agreed. Just as the mother in the story paid too much of the wrong kind of thought/action to the issue, I probably paid too little.
As an indication of how much, or little, ancestry/ethnicity can mean to people and how quickly it can change recently happened under my roof. One of my wife's dearest friends (the whole family actually) for over 20 years is Vietnamese. One day my wife mentioned that that friend was Chinese. When I said, she's Vietnamese, my wife said, "That's what country she's from but she's Chinese. Chinese people are all over the place you know." I'm not sure what inspired that, they are still best of friends. No foul. The people of Southeast Asia are more inclined to see themselves as cousins than siblings in ancestral/genetic closeness than outsider can see.
Thanks to my daughter's interest in such things, she did the 23&me DNA thing and asked us to. My wife thinks of herself as Thai with a Laotian paternal grandmother. The DNA said that she is also about a quarter Vietnamese/Chinese Dai. The Dai are from the south of China and are widely scattered throughout Southeast Asea but mostly in Vietnam (the chinese people all over the place). That piece of information changed nothing about my wife's thoughts on who she is. She's never been to Vietnam and has no cultural history there. Her poker face indicated that her Vietnamese friend's history and cultural influence is in Vietnam, she's never been to China, was dissonant with, "She's Chinese." I didn't rub her nose in that, it occurred to her.
Three takeaways from that. We often hold contrary notions so far in the background that it is without cognitive dissonance until a light is shined on it. What is important or unimportant at one moment can change quite suddenly. Your own personal experience and cultural influence is more important than that of your ancestors (your thought above). A very good reason for the conversations you inspire here. Thinking about that mass of contradictions in our heads.
Agreed. Just as the mother in the story paid too much of the wrong kind of thought/action to the issue, I probably paid too little.
As an indication of how much, or little, ancestry/ethnicity can mean to people and how quickly it can change recently happened under my roof. One of my wife's dearest friends (the whole family actually) for over 20 years is Vietnamese. One day my wife mentioned that that friend was Chinese. When I said, she's Vietnamese, my wife said, "That's what country she's from but she's Chinese. Chinese people are all over the place you know." I'm not sure what inspired that, they are still best of friends. No foul. The people of Southeast Asia are more inclined to see themselves as cousins than siblings in ancestral/genetic closeness than outsider can see.
Thanks to my daughter's interest in such things, she did the 23&me DNA thing and asked us to. My wife thinks of herself as Thai with a Laotian paternal grandmother. The DNA said that she is also about a quarter Vietnamese/Chinese Dai. The Dai are from the south of China and are widely scattered throughout Southeast Asea but mostly in Vietnam (the chinese people all over the place). That piece of information changed nothing about my wife's thoughts on who she is. She's never been to Vietnam and has no cultural history there. Her poker face indicated that her Vietnamese friend's history and cultural influence is in Vietnam, she's never been to China, was dissonant with, "She's Chinese." I didn't rub her nose in that, it occurred to her.
Three takeaways from that. We often hold contrary notions so far in the background that it is without cognitive dissonance until a light is shined on it. What is important or unimportant at one moment can change quite suddenly. Your own personal experience and cultural influence is more important than that of your ancestors (your thought above). A very good reason for the conversations you inspire here. Thinking about that mass of contradictions in our heads.