seryn

Jeopardy referred to Spiro Agnew as a "Greek-American". I paused and asked, "Shouldn't that make him ineligible to be vice president?"

He wasn't born in Greece, he was born in Maryland. His parents were from Greece.

I'm pretty sure we shouldn't have words for Americans with a pureblood other heritage. It should always be linguistically awkward and specific, "My parents were born here but my grandparents both came from [other country]." Or "My mother was born here, but my father is from [other country]." Or "My mother and father were from [other country(ies)]." Then it would be obviously a question you shouldn't ask a stranger.

I would never ask someone in a queue where their grandparents were born, because it's obviously none of my business and since a lot of people have dead grandparents, it's likely to be hurtful.

When there is no word for something and I have to talk around the concept to get at the point I was trying to make, it's too much work to put my foot in my mouth. (Which is probably such a horrible take on the Sapir-Whorf concept that they'd be outraged.)

This also came up in my own real life recently. One woman said she was busy because it was Chinese New Year. I hadn't had any clue what her background was. Visibly she was non-caucasian of one of the non-Indian kinds of Asian. But audibly she has no accent and told us about her Christmas plans and her cooking of Euro-American foods (I'm not quite sure where the division is sometimes. If it's got sauerkraut, it's still European. If it's got fake cheese, it's all American now. Most recipes of European origin cooked by Americans end up being somewhere between those extremes.) in the past. It honestly never occurred to me that she was Chinese.

I actually said, "Oh. Well, I'm sorry we missed you, but sure, I can see why you'd choose that over being here! ....... I don't think there's a polite way to ask about that." And it's really true. If she'd been Korean or Cambodian or a mixture of ethnicities, she probably wouldn't celebrate Chinese New Year.

Last year thistleingrey tried to educate people with a post about it being the "lunar new year" because not everyone who celebrates it is Chinese, but you can't even ask people if they celebrate that because no one who doesn't look Asian gets asked.

My ancestors came to America relatively recently, but not so recently that any of them were alive when I was born. But I only had one living grandparent during my lifetime. I don't particularly like most European food and I certainly don't celebrate any of the standard European holidays. We don't even do Christmas except toeing the line of family gift expectations.

I do sort of keep track of Chinese New Year / lunar new year in that I endeavor not to visit any Asian restaurants for several weeks surrounding the date (which I usually remember only nebulously). It's like not going to Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo. (You only make that mistake once; they were really upset to have us there although the restaurant was open.) And, although I screwed it up last year, never going to Middle Eastern food stores during Ramadan during the day.

I guess what I'm saying is, "I can't quite manage culturally-sensitive because I'm an American with mixed heritage that I blatantly ignore so I really have no comprehension as to why other people would want to honor their distant heritage that their ancestors moved thousands of miles to escape. But sure, if I'm reminded, I'll try not to step on people's dearly held rituals. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just ignorant and oblivious. And I am oblivious even when you're being subtextually obvious because I want you to not make assumptions about me."

I do sort of wonder how many generations they live in America before people want to drop their hyphenated aspect. Maybe it's until they have more than one thing before the hyphen? But maybe it's just that regular people who want a sense of connection to family identify themselves with their ancestors' origins. I'm kind of offended when people whose families have been here longer than mine still consider themselves a hyphenated kind of American, where the other always comes first. But that doesn't apply to holidays. If my ancestors had had good holidays I wouldn't ignore them out of spiteful pseudo-individuality.

I usually celebrate on Groundhog's Day, not under that name. That was the day before the lunar new year this year. But I don't expect anyone I encounter in real life to be aware of it because it's weird and personal to me and uncommon. I don't want to be expected to know that some people who look different from me all celebrate the lunar new year. But she seemed really surprised that I didn't know better. I don't want people to look at me and know what holidays I celebrate and it seems really odd that anyone else would want that.