Had an oddball thought this morning, so bear with me! Filled out a survey about downtown parks for the City of Redmond. At the end, they asked for demographics of the person filling out the form. The last question: How do you define you ethnicity? My immediate response: I dont. Then I had to pause. I actually joke about being a mutt, or pick one of my ancestors to joke about something in my personality or habits. Never does my ethnicity come into my own definition about myself. I define myself by my family, my accomplishments, my likes and dislikes, but not about my ancestry. I define myself by my friends and associations, by what I like to read and do. When introducing one person to another, we do not use ethnicity; we use their connection to us. Fred, this is my mom/friend/cousin/co-worker/nurse/dog Fredrika. When we describe others, we tell about our jobs, hobbies, and relationships. Fred works at ABC company as a Flibberty Gibbit maker and likes to ski on weekends. If you ask my kids, they will tell you we are all African because humans evolved there and then spread throughout the globe. Perhaps several hundreds of thousands of years ago, but still our lineage is from Africa. Maybe I should start filling out the other category on all these forms: African by evolution, pale by coloring, and American by birth. Ethnicity then, is a human perception and way of categorizing or organizing people. It has nothing to do with behavior, potential, or ability. It does not, or rather SHOULD not, define a person. It can give a sense of common history or shared physical characteristics in the same way a genealogy can. When I look at demographic questions on forms, it strikes me as the ones deemed most important are those we cannot control. My age? It changes all the time, but I have no control over that. My ethnicity? Defined by my parents. My gender? Defined at conception by genetics. Yet we humans put such emphasis on these factors as defining us. Which brings me back around to the question. How do I define my ethnicity? Human.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 16:03:54 +0000
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