There are no white people anymore

Regina has a great thought-provoking post over at her blog, Chicana on the Edge, called There are no white people in Chicago which made me want to expand the comments I left over there and write a little more here about yet another way white racism hurts white folks too.

Regina wondered why, when she was growing up in California being just plain "white American" was the ideal.  Everyone wanted people with different heritages to assimilate and some did willingly shedding their ethnicities at the door in pursuit of the American dream.  There was a lot of talk about the "melting pot".  Today, where she lives now, in Chicago, there seems to be less of that.  People who look like the just plain old "white American" that was the ideal twenty years ago now claim this that or the other heritage (Scots-Irish, German, Polish, Croatian etc).  Giving the exception to those who really are more recent immigrants from those locales (especially the large Polish communities that exist up there in Chicagoland) what we're talking about here are folks like me, who come from a mix of various European ancestors and have to go back several generations to dig up anything pertaining to a specific cultural background.  It seems recently no one wants to claim the identity of plain old "white American".

Why?

I think white "mongrels" (if you'll pardon the term) feel a deep emptiness that comes from a lack of a consistent (i.e. identifiable) cultural heritage that other people --people who still have their cultural heritages in tact-- don't have. Traditions are such an important part of human nature and identity, when we lose them, we feel it.  What this phenomena -this urge to claim a cultural identity shows, I think, is how important traditions and heritages are. That's why assimilation is so harmful. People lose touch with the ancient traditions of their homeland, wherever that may be and they are lost.  We no longer talk about assimilation as much and the melting pot analogy has shifted to the salad or stew analogy, a great dish that is made up of a mix of seperate but complementary ingredients, each retaining their own identity but enhancing and mixing well with the others.

I think many white people who come from a nebulous background try to fill this gap left by assimilating so well by going back, as far back as necessary to find some kind of homeland, some traditions, something to identify with. It's mostly a relatively harmless phenomena, I think.  Members of my own family identify to a great deal with the Scots, emphasizing the heritage of one of my grandmothers who was a 1st generation immigrant to the exclusion of the other grandparents who were not.   There's no harm in that that I can see.  It's a little rude to the other grandparents I think but they're all dead so no one much minds.

I look at white people and I have great compassion, not just because I myself am white but because I see a people who have a history of bloodshed and aggression against other people and that has to hurt.  It does hurt.  It takes a certain strength of character to face that history head on, not to shrink from it, not to pretend it's not there. It is a great big beautiful challenge.  Because if you can take something as ugly as a history of racism and turn it around into an act of redemption, what more beauty and fulfillment in life could you ask for?  All over the world people today are beginning the act of recovering from the past.  What's your past?  What's your burden?  Can you find the redemptive power of suffering?  Can you face the truth of who you are with all its joys and sorrows?  If you can, then no matter what your history is, you are a full human being.

What more can you hope for than that?