As I was driving home from class, I started trying to really process everything that we had discussed about racial and cultural differences in the classroom. It got me thinking about how stupid it is that we classify each other by the color of our skin. To simply call someone "white" is completely disregarding anything unique about their background. The same goes with "Asian", "black" and in some cases, "mexican". We throw these terms around so easily as descriptors for people that we start assuming that the appearance of someone is an indicator as to who they are. I'm proud of the way that I look, because nobody can really guess what I am. I'm half Vietnamese and the other half is made up of "white" nationalities like German, Polish and I can't remember what else. I consider myself as both "Asian" and "white", but at the same time I don't identify with either of those categories. My friends who are white consider me Asian and my friends who are Asian only consider me half Asian. As I was thinking about this, I was trying to figure out what I would classify myself as, and I think the only thing that really captures who I am is "American". That sounds kind of cheesy, but its true.
If you think about it, why would anyone who was born and raised in the US need to identify themselves as being part anything else? I mean, while it is great to know where your roots came from, and in a lot of cases they may play a part in your upbringing, its not like you were raised where your ancestry came from. Of course this is a rather large assumption, but it makes sense to me I suppose. I'm not saying that I think its not important to understand your ancestry, I just think its more important that you embrace the fact that you have the opportunity to create your own identity. Regardless of your background, if you were born and raised in the US, then you have been brought up as an American. I think what is unique about the US is that it is a very young country and is made up of a giant hodgepodge of different people. Sure, this country was founded by people originally from Europe, but it has been created by people of all different nationalities. I suppose if everyone could take a moment and accept that the US is made up of just about every kind of person in the world and accept that we're all coming from different backgrounds, we wouldn't have so much racial divisions.
I guess I'm just trying to grapple with at what point in the future, if someone is asked what their nationality is, when with they answer with "American"?
In relation to teaching, I agreed with everything we read about race and not being "colorblind", but to accept the fact that everyone is coming from different backgrounds. When I have my own classroom, I want to help my students accept that they all come from different backgrounds and that each student may have a different ethnicity from the other students. I want to affirm their differences and let them be proud of who they are, but I also want them to understand that it is exactly their differences that binds them all together. Those differences in ethnicity are what shape America into what it is today and they should all be proud to be a part of such a culturally diverse country.
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