Mistaken Ethnicity
For most of my life I thought I was Irish.
At least mostly Irish. I was also bizarrely proud of the fact that I had some Cherokee and African blood mixed in the genetic soup but I was told and I fully identified as predominantly Irish.
I didn't embrace Irish culture. No deep dive into the history of the country nor an embrace of traditional foods or dance, music or literature. My early church experiences were defined by the midwestern values of my youth which, while sometimes contentious between the Lutherans and the Baptists, wasn't a lifelong war. I projected from the place of stereotypes—I gave credit to my Irishness for my drinking, for my seemingly pointless anger, for my stated inability to be psychoanalyzed (per the famous quote by Sigmund Freud).
Let's face it—race is a fiction created by faux scientists who needed some sort of justification for separating us into haves and have-nots. A belief in race is only slightly different from a belief in werewolves or faith in identity apart from biological reality. It's powerful but kind of silly when you look too hard. Culture? That's real stuff but more like a costume one chooses to wear. Ethnicity? Based entirely in reality but closely aligned with culture; not chosen but easily ignored.
Irish is not a race (cuz that's all made up) but it is both an ethnicity and a culture. I thought I was the ethnicity; I only claimed the culture when I found it convenient.
This fall my mother, who did one of those ancestry.com things, informed me we were not Irish. We're...
Welsh. At least we’re equal parts Welsh as we are Irish.
My identity has been compromised. I can no longer legitimately call myself Irish. I’m mostly Welsh and I don’t even like rugby.
So what? Ireland and Wales are both in the Anglo-Saxon family, right? How different could they be? The Irish are belligerent drunks and the Welsh are known to fuck sheep. Both really despise the English and for good reason (likely the same reason West Virginians despise New Yorkers). More to the point, I was never really Irish in any real sense. I identified as Irish but those were only words. It isn’t like I lived the life of an Irishman.
If I had lived the Irish life and fully embodied the cultural heritage of that specific ethnicity, would I suddenly have to stop because I’m Welsh? I don’t think so. I mean, I suppose if there were a job that required I be Irish and I told them I was so I could squeeze in, that would be crossing some sort of ethical line. My belief of Irishness doesn’t make me Irish any more than if I ran around with an Afro wig and used black slang would make me black or if I frequented my speech with Yiddish and wore a yarmulka would make me Jewish.
Identity is just another costume.
At our base, we really all are exactly the same creature. We all basically want the same thing and suffer in similar ways. We find joy in similar things and are all angered by injustice, dishonesty, theft, unnecessary violence (as we interpret them). We all gotta eat, we all need water to survive, we all need to sleep. The simple biology of humanity is the same with no regard for the costumes we dress it up in.
If I am hit by a car, lying on my back in pain, does the driver care if I'm Irish or Welsh? If I'm hungry and come in to order a hamburger and fries, does the kid at the counter give a shit if I'm straight or gay? If I wander into an art museum, does the docent volunteering her time stop to even consider if I am affiliated with a religious belief?
This is due in part because I don't identify as almost anything at all but some random dude. There a lot of random white dudes in the world so I blend in. I don’t stand out in a crowd and that’s on purpose. The costumes of race, ethnicity, and culture are double-edged and practically beg for assumptions to be made about us.
How you present yourself is your personal choice and expressing oneself with appearance is both very powerful and empowering. How you present yourself also carries with it consequences and the responsibility for the setting of those consequences belonging to he or she making the choices, not those who react to them. As I used to tell actors I worked with, the audience always gets it. If they don't, it's because you aren't communicating clearly.
Choose wisely, assess risk realistically, and blame no one else for the choices you make. The only solution to this set of circumstances is to reframe how we decide to perceive one another. Because, just like the choice to demonstrate as either Irish or Welsh, how I decide to perceive someone else is likewise a choice.
If I choose to assume that the homeless dude with no teeth who rummages through the trash and tosses it all over the street was once a pediatrician with three kids who no longer bear any responsibility for him, my reaction to him is changed. If I choose to assume that the black teenager with the Gangsta Rap t-shirt and gold teeth is an honor student who volunteers on Saturdays at the local animal shelter, my reaction to him is improved. The woman with the midriff t-shirt from Hooters and booty shorts has a PhD in biophysics. The guy with the Marine tattoo and the handlebar mustache councils young boys to understand their masculinity.
When I was a younger person I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be seen. I wore the costumes of the ostentatious and bold. I was loud and gregarious. I exaggerated my personal history to seem more noteworthy—not in a George Santos complete fabrication way but merely adding a bit of sauce to each truth. Which, I suppose, is a very Irish trait.
These days, I'm not inclined to be noticed for the costume but for what I accomplish. If you notice me, I hope it's because of the things I do rather the things I identify with, the way I carry myself rather than any assumption of ethnicity I may wear. Those are the things I'd rather notice in others.
I'm a lot of things mixed in there—musician, writer, carnival barker, cinephile, child of the eighties, Apple enthusiast, lover of most things Marvel, smoker—and, now, I guess I'm Welsh. A mutt in all ways like almost every other person on the planet.
Hey. I'm also single so maybe a sheep might look good right about now.
