Are you jealous of those with a proud cultural background?

I am-sometimes. I live in a township with many Native Americans--I can hear the drums from powwows on clear nights. I will never experience that kind of kinship. Generally, I look askance at taking "pride" in things you can't help or change. I know I would be welcome at powwows or similar events, but it's not the same. I'm simply wondering if this is a common feeling.

Plenty in my culture to be proud of. (Also lots to be ashamed of, but we don't dwell on that...). Although I'm sure many are jealous of the pipes and drums when they hear 'em.

I had a friend back in college who played. We'd get drunk and listen to him until he was ready to drink. It was awesome.

12 hours, I'd say.

I love pipes and drums.

Sassenachs. We Welsh call 'em Saeson.

:9

haggis just gets more press than most.

And most Scottish food is nothing like that. Although admittedly it ain't grand.

It takes a brave heart to love the pipes.

They lull the wee ones to sleep, and they scare the timid out of their shoes.

Love the pipes, but draw the line at haggis.

:)

Haggis...not so much.

:puke:

The Irish gave bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't caught on yet.

The Scots tweaked them into the Great Highland Warpipe, and the Irish haven't been able to sleep ever since.

Even though my family has been in North America since 1765ish.

Just so long as you're NOT playing Amazing Grace on 'em, I love the pipes. The more the merrier!

Scotland, the place were after the Romans tried to invade they had to build a wall to keep us out of conquered territory. Nemo Me Impune Lacessit!

-Hoot

edit: Huge error dropping NOT about the pipes there.

Thus, for example, French culture is one of which French people may be justifiably very proud (for the good contributions it has made to the world), but that does NOT mean I am jealous of Nicolas Sarkozy or DSK.

I do know that many people think automatically that French people are ALL groovy and sophisticated. It seems silly to have to point out that this belief is based upon faulty logic, but there you go.

not to be overly-glorified, but one to identify with in some way. I am half-Polish-polkas are a recent invention. And they all sound the same.

I've been to Poland, as a matter of fact, and the people are genuinely nice and the country is very pretty.

I must not be clearly stating my thoughts-which is common for me. Maybe it helps to be a member of a mistreated group. Maybe it is the desire to be connected to those you don't know, but share a common background. WW2 or VN vets, people with a shared hardship. I don't want to look through history to find some cool dude to latch onto. Is kinship the wrong word?

But they're not. :rofl: :hi: At least we on DU are. ;)

And what culture isn't proud, anyway?

I have friends. I'm talking culture man!

and delve into the culture that most intrigues you. There's a lot more of interest there than you might believe.

The kind of brotherhood that is common in Latin culture (and the Native American culture, as you point out) is taboo here, for a number of reasons. So while it's sad on one level, you are not alone in your alienation from that kind of fraternity.

and rightly so. What is taboo here, exactly?

and how you realized you'd never have that kind of kinship, it made me think you were referring to either a kind of brotherhood, like as in the French national motto, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite", or else a kind of cultish devotion to community, as with communism. And while I am not a sociologist, I did study sociology in college, and as I recall, AS culture is marked by how it reveres material success ABOVE family and community, the taboo being any relationship that interferes with the acquisition of material property, i.e., if there is a conflict between making a profit and honoring a friendship, Anglo-Saxons (generally) go for the profit. (Now people are going to demand that I prove that, but this is a 'soft' discussion, and if you disagree, fine with me.) :hi:

I hope you are wrong about AS's-but I doubt it.

It probably doesn't help to have one's family living in New England for nearly 400 years, either, after coming from the Anglo-Saxon culture "over there."

I've read letters that my great-grandmother wrote to her daughter-in-law (my grandmother) during the depression scolding her for asking for help feeding her six children.

I've felt the sting myself as my aunt urged me to institutionalize a younger and slightly disabled family member to "protect" myself from financial burden. I have been the sole support of this disabled family member for twenty years now -- her father (also an anglo-saxon) provides nothing and is on his third trophy family.

Today I had to ask my brother for a small bit of help getting through to the first of the month. I haven't asked for help for many many years, but this was just a bad month because we have to move soon. I dreaded asking. And I have to say that the response was not warm and sympathetic.

Honestly, I'd rather be part of a close Italian immigrant family than have my Mayflower ancestry. I'm not like them.

:hug: :hi: On a side note, have you ever been to Sunday dinner at a real Italian family home? Not to be forgotten, that's for sure. :)

But once I was in love with an Italian-American with a close, large family. I saw what life could be like.

Materialistic, consumerism-driven-based culture doesn't like it. It fragments society and the population.

Look at the history of social groups in America and you find lots and lots of fairly tightly-knit groups--it's just that they're not driven by issues of race. Instead of turning to what remains of the kind of culture that was common 60 or 70 years ago, we tend to dismiss it, denigrate and, and try to extirpate it.

Think of any non-indigenous group that is based on a non-minority ethnicity or religion. Now imagine joining it because it's traditionally been part of American culture. You see what I mean?

Now look at the social groups, whether Rotary or some community orchestra or choir. Such things used to be big. You'd join them and have ready-made social groups. But now we're embarrassed by them, unless they serve some utilitarian purpose, or we think that since we're not pitch-perfect it's a foolish thing to do. That kind of cameraderie isn't taboo--it just takes a different form. It's like saying that X, so common in American culture, is lacking from Arab culture because it's "taboo"--whatever it is, it's probably present. You just have to know what expression it takes. I find that most Americans have, oddly enough, been taught that they have no culture and, even more oddly, never have had one unless it's "ethnic" or "minority." As though we weren't all minorities at some point.

Now consider that most American Indians as a "group" is a homogenized, reconstructed group based entirely on belonging to what came to be defined by Europeans as "Native American" culture or race. Most of the cultures were fairly well shattered by the post-Columbian plagues and later dislocations and language/culture contact; most of what remains of the majority of them correspond to the kinds of anthropoogical relicts you find among Sorbs in Gemany or Slovaks in Hungary or even the Irish in Ireland--they're different from the surrounding culture, but they don't reflect the rich traditions that existed when the culture was a *real* culture. Instead what you get are platitudes, bits of religions mashed together with a bit of post-hoc theologizing and newagism, post-hoc reinterpretations of what survived the destruction of a thousand different, distinct, sometimes mutually hostile cultures. To a very large extent the language revitalization efforts are like the resurrected Cornish or even Hebrew--there's enough of a similarity that the man on the street is convinced that they're continuing the culture and language, but a native speaker would find what's produced to be utterly grotesque, and the bearers of the modern instantiations of the cultures would find a bearer of the culture as it was utterly foreign. They'd also find that it was bleached, reduced to the four Fs.

But it's good for providing even more fracturing and factionalizing of society, if nothing else. Esp. calls to learn about "your real" culture, which trivializes culture, by and large, to food, festivals, fashion and folklore when culture is so, so much more. I guess I should learn "my real" culture, which would be Irish. South Irish. Never mind that my ancestors mostly immigrated here 200 years ago. I should learn the current expression of a culture that my ancestors abandoned generations before I was born. Like that makes any sense whatsoever. Never mind that most of Irish culture is bleached and commercialized, and based on what survived 50 years ago in the north and west, while my ancestors' dialect and culture as a viable set of social norms died out a hundred years before they immigrated.

Even the fractured thing that constitutes US culture is made invisible by many. But while on an exchange program I watched people that bristled at each other on day one become close buddies by day 30. What united them was much more than what separated them--even the pro-abortion, militant feminist and the Baptist preacher were surprised when it was pointed out to them at the end of the exchange program that they'd been spending a lot of time in the same group. It's just that they found the culture they were immersed in--albeit a European one--foreign and turned to the familiar.

:)

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I look Irish, but genetically I'm less than half Irish (have some German, a bit of Scot, and even a bit of pommie Brit kicking around in those genes). Still, if anyone asks my culture, I usually just respond that I'm Irish.

The dirty little secret about those off-reservation pow-wow's is that VERY few of the natives are actully more than half native. Still, it's the culture of their ancestors, and they have every right to celebrate it.

As my mom once told me, there's NOTHING wrong with being a mutt. It just means that you get to celebrate the cultures of ALL you ancestors. Pick one, pick them all, it's your choice.

Everyone has a cultural history. Some have many. Nobody has none.

I found a nice block of bleucheese I bough months ago and forgot about--it was quite sound (and smell) and actually quite yummy!

it's up to you.

recently, Native Americans were made to feel like second class citizens. They managed to recapture their pride due to cultural changes in and after the 60's and a great deal of effort on their part. Surely, with probably less to overcome and some research and effort you could re-capture some of the pride in your own heritage you seem to have lost.

The OP has roots somewhere, he should find out where they are. I can guarantee that there is a group that meets in his town centered around that heritage.

But I think his OP goes deeper than that. He has some white guilt, and doesn't think that his heritage is legitimate.

The OP could be a klansman asking us liberals an "innocent" question, for all we know! I try to take these questions at face value.

Not a klansman.

But I've been around DU a long time, and I've seen all kinds come and go.
You asked a thoughtful question, and it's opened up an interesting discussion. For that, I hope you stick around.

I descend from poor farm stock. I was simply curious about others' feelings on the matter.

speaks volumes. I was just interpreting what you wrote.

This comes back to the long standing idea that country people are bonnig meaning they are from the boonies!

That's the irony.

I have a lot of respect for farmers.

Also, there is cognitive dissonance-I actually feel a distaste for too much "ethnic pride" or what have you. It is a recent development.

Western culture is as beautiful as any other.

Yum!

--imm

Folklore, mannerisms, attitudes, sexual and "moral" values, social behaviors that we take for granted that actually may set us apart a bit. The list goes on and on. It doesn't all have to revolve around a ritual.

I don't really get the urge to celebrate that with which I had fuck-all to do.

I can't be that way ALL the time, though.

I mean, I'm aware of my background of Scandinavian origin, and I appreciate it. I could have acted proud about it, but what's the point? I'm equally "American", and it's not like I go around tooting my horn about that. It's like asking someone are you jealous of those who are proud of their body, no matter what shape it's in? Your culture is your culture. And, the nice thing is, we can appreciate other cultures without having to be "jealous".

at certains events like Pow Wow's and other ceremonies, in my little circle, we do not allow non-native peoples.
We call them apples and while its probably racist to say so, most Natives I know do not care for sharing their culture.
ymmv though.

not necessarily to participate. I live in Wisconsin, BTW.

Apples. Red on the outside and white on the inside.

Like coconuts and oreos or bananas. Brown/black/yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Yet other terms of general abuse and denigration for those who don't properly conform and that you want to exclude because they disagreeably mix culture and race in ways that render them "impure"--gotta keep that racial and cultural purity going strong.

I used the play the bagpipes, I like Guinness, and I say Uff da a lot and make a mean sauerbraten. That about covers it. That's all the cultural heritage I can stand.

I don't have any idea about my ancestry. I found out as an adult that my parents weren't my parents. It's a much bigger deal than one might think, with all the emphasis that is put on genealogy and roots in this day and age where we are deprived of the feeling of "tribe" (for lack of another word).

I guess on St. Patrick's Day I could more or less truthfully say, "Kiss me, I'm Irish," because I don't know for certain that I'm not. :shrug:

I have Mayflower ancestors. Would you like that? We live in the same metro area. I also have dual citizenship -- Canada. We could make up our own traditions, cuz my family is a little bit disappointing to me.

jealous though. we have our own tradition and never having what youa re talking about, i am not missing anything.

who comes from a loving, intact family with two parents who love each other and care for their children.

I am a lucky man-no doubt.

To me the entire human race is one culture, one that I admit I'm not always eager to be a part of. One of the great benefits of being totally asocial is that one doesn't feel the tug of sentimentality too often, be it for a culture or much of anything else to do with humans. My father joked that I've taken asocial behavior to a Zen level. :)

This quote sums me up so well that it could have been plucked right from my brain...

"I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country, or state, to my circle of friends or even my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years. Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it by being rendered independent of the customs, opinions, and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my piece of mind upon such shifting sands." - Albert Einstein

I respect other people's cultures, and encourage them to be proud of the good parts and recognize the bad parts. I'm interested in all cultures but have no urge to be a part of any of them.

Jealousy is not part of who we are. That came with the Europeans when they stole our land and lied to us time and time again. Not to mention the killings the rapes the mistreatments in general.

Native Americans have had to make a concerted effort to keep alive the knowledge of their cultures, in the face of the dominant culture doing its best to take it away.

In fact for instance most of the patented medicines used today are derived from what the Native Americans had already figured out.

Many moons ago I was in Cork, Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. Obviously there was a parade and people waving flags and cheering and playing music. Everybody was happy...

Except me. I felt miserable. Even though I have some Irish blood on my mother's side, I didn't grow up with the culture so I just felt disconnected, I felt like I'd missed out.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Thank you.

All the things Americans take part in--football, food, national holidays like Independence Day--good things along with the bad--are cultural. Maybe you don't recognize it as such because you are part of the mainstream culture and you just view minorities, etc. as different. Go to another country and your craving for feeling unique will be addressed.

I'm proud of mine and I admire everyone else's.

from whence I came (WAY too numerous to list here). I'm also very proud of being a mutt and a half.

I took up the family genealogy research project a few years back, and the things I learned changed how I look at myself. Thanks to the internet, it's really a hell of a lot easier to research now. There were so many stories I learned, sometimes from newspapers, other times just putting together times, places and dates. It brought my own history to life, and made me feel 'connected' much more than celebrating on St Patrick's day or going to Oktoberfest ever had.

It was also kind of nice to learn that some branches of my family tree had gone from being Kings of England to whiskey bootleggers in 1700's Pennsylvania within the space of a few hundred years. Makes my own screw-ups seem trivial. :D

:spank:

But I do my utmost to recognize my white privilege as well as celebrate diversity whenever appropriate.

I also try to educate myself about different people.

http://www.unitedindians.org/about.html

http://www.unitedindians.org/documents/NUIFCURBANINDIANAMERICA.pdf

This last, is a very good report on the state of urban Indians, and might give an insight on why 'pride' is valuable.

Is it better to participate in many cultures superficially or one culture deeply? They both have advantages and disadvantages.

I have a lot of friends who are Maori and I really respect their concepts of mana (personal dignity; societal standing) and being tangata whenua (a person of the land). In the Maori worldview, everyone and everything is descended from the same gods, so you're actually distantly related to the mountain near your home or the trees or the river. And you have a sense of guardianship towards a very specific location. There's a very strong sense of rootedness. My friend can point to a hill and trace back a dozen generations of his family who have all taken responsibility for that hill.

But I think there are advantages to travel and to being a mutt too. I'm Irish and Italian. I get to enjoy the amazing music and poetry of Ireland and the fantastic food and sensibility of Italy. I've lived overseas for about 10 years in different countries and it's a great resource for me to be able to tap into different cultures at different times. I'm not *really* Irish or Italian or Chinese or Czech but I've taken in a little bit from all of them and that's made me a completely different (but not necessarily better) person than I would have been if I had spent all that time in the community I grew up in.

If you're feeling really alienated from your community, you might look into cohousing (a kind of housing development with an emphasis on building community and neighborliness). Or think about joining more activities based on your interests. "Kinship" can be built in all kinds of ways- not just people who happen to share your ethnic heritage.

Jealous, I don't know, implies some sort of negativity. I think what you mean is that you crave that cultural pride? That suggests that you envy folks with such background.

Anyway, no, I'm not envious. I'm mainly Irish and Italian, though recent investigations have discovered French and Spanish ancestry as well. I'm very in tune with my Irish heritage. I can cook, which is about the only nod I give to my Italian heritage. I study indigenous peoples in Mexico for a living, and thus know a lot about other peoples' cultures.
You should find out about your family. I think I read you're Anglo-Saxon? Maybe you have Irish roots. My friend is from Liverpool, but was really from an Irish Catholic family. Perhaps that will help get you over some of your envy.

I never really knew any family history because of broken marriages, step grandparents (whose blood ancestry I did not share), and a pattern of secrecy.

Mr Pip, OTOH, knows his ancestry going back to 15th Century Scotland, his family being one of the past owners of a certain famous castle on Loch Ness.

I always felt rootless.

Then a short time after my father died a cousin of his wrote to me and gave me some information on my dad's side of the family. That started my quest for my own roots. And I found lots of really neat stuff. And some cousins I never knew I had.

I was eventually able to trace one line of the family to 16th Century France, shortly before one of them emigrated to Canada. In fact, nearly the whole of my dad's family was French. There's also a M'ikmaq woman, and an English woman who survived the massacre at Deerfield, MA, was taken to Canada as a hostage and ended up taking a French name after marrying a Frenchman.

Even if one isn't related to someone famous, there's still a lot of very cool stuff to find out about one's ancestors.

:)

I'm mostly Irish but never knew any of my ancestors from Ireland, so it means nothing at all to me. Don't care about the other nationalities that make up my DNA either. My family has been of basic American culture for three generations that I knew personally, and I think it's kind of weird to be proud of something like that. I just don't really get the whole pride of culture thing anyway. You are what you are... what's to be "proud" of? That kind of smacks of elitism to me. If you're invited to the powwows go and have fun. You shouldn't be made to feel "not the same" because it's not part of your own heritage... how exclusive. People shouldn't be so clannish and should learn about embrace and enjoy whatever cultures that tickle their fancy regardless of whether or not it's part of their genetic makeup.

American on the Polish side. I feel regret for those who don't have a cultural identity. A lot of my family's identity is through food. I talked to a woman in West Virginia this weekend. I had a sandwich of Lebanon Bologna (PA thing), she had never heard of it. She said "you all must eat good at Christmas". I told her about my spetzel, Chicken Paprikash, ham, sausages, etc. She was amazed. I am sending her recipes this week.

is a sense of real family values and close ties with kin.

Maybe it's a positive stereotype, but Latino families don't seem to have "single-parent" families the way that many other ethnicities do. A child can have a mom who isn't partnered, but the kid often grows up with grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives giving affection and support.

The WASP nuclear family is soul-killing.

to developing a unique sense of understanding and experiencing the world

I like me, most people seem to like me fine. Being brought up by rednecks obviously can't be all that bad.