Being an American that was raised in California, I feel like I missed a lot of opportunities to learn about my family’s culture and origins. My family is mostly Scottish, British, and Irish, but there is also a mix of Norwegian, Icelandic, and a tiny bit French, in there too. When I traveled abroad, I met people who lived in Ireland, Norway, and France. They would approach me and speak the native languages of those places, and I would just try my best to explain that I didn’t speak any of those languages. The always looked disappointed that I didn’t know their language.
In school, as a teen, I was only offered the option of Spanish foreign language. I learned it rather well, and was able to walk around Spain and speak with the locals quite well. They always looked a little puzzled when they realized I spoke Spanish, in addition to English, despite not being Latina. I feel the need to explain that I was only given the opportunity to learn one other language besides English as a child. The local area in which I live is mostly populated by Mexican-Americans. Many of the cultural events in the area are focused on Mexican culture. As I child, many of my friends spoke Spanish, as well as English, but they were mixed race, and it made sense that they were raised with that opportunity to learn their native language.
I feel like I was denied opportunities to learn languages that were native to my ancestry. I feel like I missed opportunities to learn about the history and culture of my ancestors. It saddens me that every St. Patrick’s Day, people want to wear all green, grab a plastic bowler hat, and discuss where to find green beer and local pubs. No one wants to go to mass on St. Patrick’s day? No one wants to sit down at the dinner table for a pot roast with the family and talk? As a child, the mother that raised me wasn’t Catholic, so I wasn’t taken to mass, unless I went with my childhood friend. I was constantly asked, “why are you Catholic, if you’re not Mexican, like us?” Nearly all of the other white children at my school were Baptist, or Lutheran. Some even told me they couldn’t hang out with me because I “didn’t go to their church”. So the friends I had were classmates that would stand near me at recess and talk to me. If I attended any events in town, they were typically related to their social groups. My friends were nice to me. They always included me; making sure I never felt like an outsider. They didn’t have to do that, but they did.
It was nice to visit Ireland, as an adult, and finally learn more about some of my ancestors’ culture. At the same time, I felt like I was an outsider. I wasn’t raised in a school that taught me to speak Irish. I use words like “Awesome”, which made locals remind me, “isn’t a word we use in Ireland; at least not like that!” I would pass people on the street that would tell me I looked like certain other Irish locals. That was interesting! I wish I could have met them! I’m left trying to piece together the family tree to determine which Irish families were part of my family tree. I returned to California to see large gatherings of Californians in local parks; celebrating birthdays and holidays. Those people have big families and they’ve preserved their culture. Their culture isn’t necessarily American, but they have kept that culture in their family, and they aren’t treated like an outsider in California. Sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed in Ireland, but then again, I’d still be an outsider there, too.
I kinda hate to be that guy, but if you’re American and you were raised in California, your culture is American. If your family maintains some traditional values that came with your ancestors when they arrived, that’s one thing, but your culture will never be anything more than Irish-American or Spanish-American or whatever else you’d suffix with -American to clarify these differences that are inherent with a multicultural society.
My family originally came to the US from various parts of China. I had the opportunity to visit some of these places before and even met some extended relatives in Fuzhou, and it was interesting to see the places my ancestors once existed in. But I accept (and was keenly reminded at times by locals) that I was not “Chinese”, I am American (or ABC at best). Chinese culture is no longer what it was when my ancestors lived there, dialects faded, places developed. I don’t feel a sense of loss or deprivation about it because I don’t have any ownership of it.
My culture is my own, I was glad to have the opportunity to actually talk about it and share it with others in China because you can spend so much time living in a “default” you can overlook the things other people see as remarkable. I don’t feel bad having been forced to study Spanish in high school instead of Chinese; if anything that just further solidifies this shared experience of American culture.
Basically, don’t overthink it. If you want to start studying a language of your ancestry because it makes you happy, then that’s great. Like how random white weeaboos study Japanese, though, keep in mind that it won’t make you any more you, it just bridges you to other living cultures that inherited those languages.