When you don't inherit your ethnic culture anymore

Originally Posted by umma

I'm not telling you to profess your ethnicity/culture's superiority to other people. But people should care more about where they come from... it's a shame so many people don't care about it.

And why is this, precisely? I'm Ghanaian, but I sure didn't grow up in Ghana until I was nine and lived there for another nine untill I wound up back here in the US. Point being that culture isn't genetic. Culture is merely the way a group of people live, and if I didn't happen to be raised in a way that makes me think and act like a Ghanaian, I don't see the point in straining it. If people identify with a culture, they should feel proud of it and explore it as much as they like. But I think those of us who couldn't care less about the country and culture we just happened to be born to should be left alone. Why should me wanting to choose my identity in my own way be of any concern to anyone else?

@Dee: I see your point, but what about those of us who refuse to play that turf war of ethnicity? I personally don't try to sculpt my behavior to identify with any one culture, and take odds and ends that I find admirable. I'm who I am, and so I refuse to play that game of culture ownership with either side. Either you respect me as I come or you don't. I find this binary one-or-the-other thing of cultural identity and the resulting rejection if you don't belong to the right side smacking slightly of intolerance and xenophobia, neither of which I can stand.

Jam it back in, in the dark.