Three Generations Removed
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. Between having two jobs, trying to do NaNoWriMo (which I unfortunately didn’t finish), and participating in a performance of The Nutcracker over the holidays, I fell behind. Mix that with my inability to post to WordPress using my iPhone during my destinationless road trip in October, which was discouraging, and I missed out on four months of writing. My goal was to keep this blog going to keep my mind sociologically active. Since October, I feel I’ve been missing my love of sociology. So almost a year after initially starting this project, I’m going to try to pick it back up. The style may be a little different; rather than a heavy emphasis on reviewing literature, I’m going to also start writing about my interpretations and thoughts dealing with sociological issues.
And that’s what I’ll do today. Earlier this week, I had an interesting conversation with a customer at the coffee shop where I work. Strangely enough, she’s a sociology graduate student at the nearby university. Since it’s March, the employees at my workplace have been wearing St. Patrick’s Day themed ties. The owners have Irish ancestory. I, however, do not. At least I’m pretty sure. This customer came in and inquired about the ties, asking whether I had Irish ancestors. I said no and followed up by saying that it didn’t really matter. This caught her off guard. She was amazed that I had no ethnic ties to my ancestors’ countries of origin.
I explained to her the way I felt: I’m two generations removed from the relative that moved to the United States, who immigrated with her mother to the United States when she was a little girl sometime around World War II. This person was my grandmother. Since she came her as a young girl, her acculturation was more rooted in American ideologies. She knew German, but used English in day-to-day interactions in school, where she was exposed to American culture. To a large extent, I view my great-grandmother as the last relative who wasn’t fully American.
While this sentiment isn’t necessarily true, ethnic identity is based on how one is raised. I wasn’t brought up being exposed to the food, traditions, or language of the European countries my relatives emigrated from. The only thing I even remember doing that wasn’t American culture was having St. Nick visit on December 5th to fill stockings. And I didn’t even realize it was unusual until this last year, when my girlfriend mentioned that it was neat and my mom explained where it came from.
I remember somewhere in my college education talking about acculturation, specifically when immigrating groups started to dissociate with their country of origin. It generally happens around the third generation. The first generation, the immigrators themselves, keep their language (sometimes learn the language of the new country), dietary habits, and traditions. The next generation down usually knows the language of their parents’ country, but is rooted more in the new one. The second generation has a mixed diet, and learns traditions from both cultures, although the new traditions have a larger impact on their life because of their larger cultural surroundings. Once we get to the third generation, many of these things are completely transferred to the new culture. Learning the new language makes more sense because it allows for more mobility in the new country. Learning the new country’s traditions is the same. And a diet that includes the food of the country one lives in is simpler. An exception tot his trend is groups that live in enclaves in larger cities, such as Chinatown or Greektown. The point is to maintain ethnic identity, so these patterns generally don’t form in these areas.
I’m in that third generation down. I don’t feel any connection to my ethnic roots. The customer I was talking to was down a few generations, too. What made her hold onto her roots when I never had them? The answer I can come up with is that her family held very tightly to their traditions. She still identified as Irish, saying that she regularly ate Irish food and celebrated Irish holidays. Her ancestors never fully acculturated into American society, holding onto the things that separated them from other European groups that immigrated to the United States. I guess I never had that as a kid. I’ve always felt American.
