Race, Culture: American
We went to go meet friends at the Napoleon House for lunch today and sat in the patio where thankfully the sun went behind some big white puffy clouds. The subject of identity came up once again as a friend was talking about how complex her background is and can’t be summed up in any one descriptor. Her husband says she should just say she’s from Florida – ha! She’s from the Lumbee tribe, she’s black, she’s Creole, she grew up in St Thomas, her family tree is a tapestry of colors and peoples and she’s a beauty.
I told her I suffered the same fate having over identified with the Sephardic side of my background, simply because it was a quick way to tell everyone who was looking at me and thinking I am an Irish Catholic that I’m dark meat on the inside – Spanish, Turkish, Jewish inside – and Irish Anglo outside. So my story was always I’m a Sephardic whose grandparents were from Turkey and my mother from New Orleans. Later, I realized I was leaving out a large part of who I was – the Anglo part that came to the US near about the first time any whites stepped foot here and started working the land all the way till they got to Louisiana.
I came to the realization from traveling all over the world that it was best to just say I’m American because that was truly the only nationality that allowed me to be a Heinz 57 variety.