My ethnicity has always been a bit of a mystery. My great grandmother was Mina C. Lowell. Yeah, those Lowells. The ones who spawned Amy and Robert and have a spot in Massachusetts named after them. I know little else. It surprises me that I know that. She was the daughter of a minister. She married with a railroad man. They came to Newark, New Jersey. She spent the rest of her life there. I am her great –grandson; that is all I truly know about my lineage. The rest is subject to conjecture. I believe that she had five children. I got to know two of them, and I was told about a third. That was my grandmother. She died many years before I was born. I knew my great aunts and I loved them but not equally. I was taught that my ethnicity was that I was an American. Does anyone ever love equally?
Ironically, I have spent the majority of my life with people who felt otherwise. They were Italian-Americans. They were Hispanic-Americans. The Jewish- Americans were a bit different in that they did not really identify geographically as much as they did culturally and religiously. I think that I partially feel this way from having been the bastard son that would never be accepted as a Jew. Then Israel told me that I actually had “the right to return” mostly because Hitler would have considered me a Jew, not an American.
This is not the way that I expected this essay to go. Here’s what happened. I have become mildly addicted to this TV program called Shark Tank. People come there, after what I imagine is a fairly extensive, screening process and pitch entrepreneurial deals to wealthy people who may have an interest to invest. It is a form of reality TV. I console myself by saying that at least it is not the housewives of anywhere, or that it does sell itself by putting “America” in its title.
So, this kid from Croatia presented an idea for LED lighting on bicycles. It was a good idea. The young man was an immigrant. One of the panelists was also a Croatian Immigrant. Instead of bargaining, he gave the young man twice as much as he asked for and then sat patiently while he listened to others before giving him an answer.
It struck me that they shared a sense of ethnic identity that governed their behavior in a way that was not clear to others. No one mentioned the connection. It occurred to me that even mentioning it might go against a kind of code.
Ethnic identity came into my head as a subject that held intrigue. I had always been on the outside of it, looking in. My first experience with ethnic identity was that I was embraced. My second was that I was rejected. It had nothing to do with me, but then again ethnic identity cannot be readily shared.
I was just a kid. I could be told that I was loved and then not loved with impunity. That is one of the natures of ethnic identity that I have discovered. Either you are in or out, but it is always about blood. For a while, I detested ethnic identity for this reason.
I felt that who you are should matter more than your lineage. Boy was I wrong. It matters all the time. It never ceases to matter and if you do not believe that you are a fool who will be raped by it mattering or not mattering. Who you are is part of your lineage. It is not totally up to you. There are other rules.
How does that saying go, “Blood is thicker than water.” I have learned that there is blood and that everything else is water. But I was not deterred. I kept pursuing something stronger than blood. I’m not sure that I had a name for it, but I am sure that I was drawn to it.
The girls at Good Counsel loved me with something that I thought was at least as strong as blood. But I know that they also have genetic identity. I know that I am not part of that. It is good that I know this. We have stretched the limits of a non-sexual, non-genetic love. It lifts my heart to hear from them.
I needed to teach and they needed to learn, it was really all about that. About that and that I loved them and they loved me back. My identity will always be in part that I loved and taught them with an open heart. It would seem that they learned and loved back. How blessed we are to have come together in that time in that way.
I’m confused about how this relates to ethnic identity. We had different ethnicities and yet a shared identity. At least it feels as if we did. I am turned away at the altar of ethnic identity because I lack credentials. Most of these students had a strong sense of Hispanic American Identity. Some felt marginalized by not having that. I’m not sure how, but feelingly I managed to identify with most all of them. I was not Hispanic any more than I was Italian. But I knew one ethnic identity from experience and I learned the other through exposure.
So the question becomes, what have I learned? I learned that devotion to blood is something that I do not feel as others do. I feel blood, I will always remember and cherish my great grandmother and her daughters. It would seem that I did not choose to further the line through blood. If I had, I suppose that ethnic identity would have become much more natural to me.
My choice for a life partner was more inspired by my soul than my bloodline. My wife speaks to my soul, the greater person that I aspire to be. Very differently, my students have always reached my soul. There is no ethnicity to this identity except that the cultural mores seem to surface again and again.
I feel as if while I am writing this that I am standing on shifting sands. I’m trying to explore the birthright of an Identity that I do not share. I am trying to create the pathways for other forms of identity. I am far afield of where I began.
Maybe, I have answered my own question. I can say that I have the ethnic identity of being American. I believe it to be an embracing identity. I feel respect for the older world cultures but I have always been an outsider to them and I always will be. It is silly for me to look for ethnic identity there, simply because it is that to which I have been exposed.
I have felt the weight of the chains on others who are part of ethnic identity. I have felt their need to pay homage and to, at the same time, break loose of these chains. That process has mostly been one that women have undergone. Not always but it seems to me mostly. Perhaps this is because women tend to have more emotional courage than men.
I feel like I no longer have an ethnic identity. Maybe elections do that but maybe it is because I do not have anything to fall back on. I can only fall back on those people that I have touched and hope that they will catch me.