Sometimes I have this strange fantasy, a daydream really.
I'm at a massive reunion of all four sides of my family.
My parents and two brothers are there, as are my extended relations, but also many, many
more people whom I've never met before. I'm standing in the middle of the four
groups, who are picking the teams for the big family volleyball game. They are
all shouting, asking me to join them. And the strange thing is, they're divided
into the strains of my ancestry: the Irish, the Germans, the Poles and
the Russians.
"You've got our last name; it's a done deal," shout
the Irish, smugly nodding.
"You were raised Polish; don't turn your back on
us," yell the Poles in their red shirts with the white falcons.
"You do everything at the exact same time every day
without fail; you're a Teutonic clock," exhort the Germans, pointing at
their watches.
"Don't listen to those bastards," scream the
Russians. "You're passionate, and you love to drink and dance like us. Get
over here!"
What begins as an amusing flight of fancy to occasionally
pass the time in some boring place ends with me, in my daydream, curled up in a
fetal position on the lawn. In real life I just furrow my brow and frown
one side of my mouth. People on the bus probably wonder what the hell I'm
fretting over.
…………………………………………..
I grew up in the Rust Belt, particularly in Chicagoland for
long periods. I would describe my background as "white-legacy-working-class-Northern-Midwestern-ethnic-conscious."
When I was a kid, all my older relatives lived in the city,
and they still carried with them some of the Old Ways handed down from their
parents, most of whom had immigrated to this country in the early 20th
century like so many other millions.
By the time I showed up in 1976, these customs mostly had to
do with food and stuff around the holidays. All the older relatives proudly
considered themselves Americans, but underneath this they would spar — sometimes
playfully, sometimes not — along ethnic lines when they wished to differentiate from one another.
They gave this tendency to my parents. And in my house at
times it was a battle, not always in jest, of Team West (my dad) vs. Team East
(my mom). My dad would jibe at my mom's decorating and "Polock"
laugh, and she would criticize him for being a cold, rigid "German"
when he refused to touch the food on his plate with anything but a fork.
It got a little weird. Maybe your family was like this, too.
We weren't WASPs. We weren't Jews. We were Catholic middle class people just
trying to get by. Ethnicity was a valve that helped
my parents relieve marital pressure. Sometimes it was hurtful, but sometimes it
was really funny. And they did compromise. My dad would (ruefully) eat Polish
sausage and pierogies, and my mom would play the Bing Crosby album of Irish
songs on St. Patrick's Day and sing along to "The Bells of St.
Mary's."
It might seem hard, especially if you're not white, to understand why different kinds of white people would try to separate so vehemently, considering their home countries are probably only a three-hour drive
apart — maybe a longer boat ride to Ireland. Aren't we all part of the Vanilla Rainbow?
For whatever reason, this kind of thinking seemed more
prevalent in Chicago. As kid, I used to like looking at a color-coded map of the
city that showed the old ethnic neighborhoods, and I'd wonder how and why they
divided themselves up so neatly, the Germans in red on the North Side, the Lithuanians in orange on the South Side, etc.
I came to understand this mentality a little more from
living in the Ukrainian Village for a few years. The immigrant community there
was very insular and did not care for people like me, even though I was as
white as the lead tenor of the Mt. Greenwood Irish-American men's chorus. I had
been subdivided, and the little old ladies in their babushkas on Leavitt would
turn their faces away from me much like they probably did to S.S. men way back
when. Gee whiz, was it something I said?
…………………………………………..
Society is based on cowardice, Freud posited in
"Civilization and Its Discontents." We are all weak and huddle
together for protection, not wishing to be alone, powerless and ostracized
outside in the cold. That's how laws have been able to work for thousands of
years. Rare is the person who can resist this tendency to group up. I do it. You
do it. We all want to feel part of a select membership. And with that comes the
satisfaction of refusing those not like us.
But frankly, I'm not sure what my "group" is anymore.
Or I'd rather not admit what I, in fact, know it to be. I'm a fourth-generation white, middle
class, college-educated American in my 30s. I see "my people" every
day. They're the ones looking at their iPhones the entire ride on the bus, a
New Yorker on the lap, little earbuds in place. They probably grew up in the suburbs
like me, hung out at the mall, went to the homecoming game, went to University X, got a
job and moved to this huge city.
Maybe, if they were hipper, they were at some point part of
an arts subculture that attempted to stand out from the overculture our
square brethren embraced. Those youthful days — our one white
chance at wild, stylish differentiation — are generally done for most of us and now
we just ride the bus to the office.
When I left home at 18, I hid the ethnic
trip I grew up with. Out of embarrassment and also because I began to meet
people from other parts of the country who viewed the white origin experience
differently (as well as whites from other countries). I generally enjoyed getting a fresh
perspective, one that helped me forget the outdated sniping I grew up
with.
But there was some part that was unsettled by how people could, for example, consider themselves "Southern" and not
"Irish." It was perfectly normal to do that where they grew up, and
"Southern White" is very much its own culture that is supra-ethnic. But it still rankled, and I would feel ashamed in a parochial, backward way.
I eventually ended up marrying a woman who, under her
hipster trappings, had been raised in the very same Chicago Catholic ethnic manner. And I think a part of me secretly liked that. When I went to that first family party, the old trip
reawakened. I looked around: the people numerous and loud, the red sauce
and sausage boiling in a crockpot. These were Italians. My parents had told me
about them when I was little, like they were mythical beasts that lived on some
mountaintop. In person I found them fascinating and felt a little like a spy. Italians.
Wow.
…………………………………………..
How could any intelligent, educated person think this in 21st
century America? Well I did and I won't apologize. It's just the way I grew
up. But I would never, ever accuse Erika of doing something simply because of
the stripe she embodies. I can at least say that that hasn't endured, and
I certainly won't pass it on to my kids.
But I do feel sad for us, these white college-oids on the
bus. Long gone are the ethnic songs and dances and theater of our immigrant
ancestors. Maybe there's some special dish that comes out at Christmas, but
that's about it. I walk the streets of Chicago and see how my fellow Americans
of minority backgrounds celebrate their ethnicities. They feel they're still
part of an exclusive group, and it's a lifelong thing, like the color of your
skin. The music scene could never do that because it's only really about being
young. You grow older and what's left? A pretty good iTunes collection?
These days I sometimes indulge in another daytime fantasy. When I do certain tasks or activities, I try to envision
an ancestor from one of my four sides doing something similar: carrying wood (garbage
bags) through the snow, soaking in a mountain spring (sitting in a hot tub), dancing
at a country wedding (ditto, except in Oakbrook). All like a Breughel
painting.
I guess I want to feel part of something more solid
and eternal than consumer choices. A lifetime group. All I seem to have right now is this daydream. I know it's a fictional construct but enjoy it anyway. I really think it's kind of healthy, at least for me as a white guy.
And I really do think I would've made a good peasant.
