[quote] He chose to learn about his African ancestry, then decided to identify with it. Is that wrong?
In the last decade, I’ve discovered that I have Welsh blood, and that is proving very important to my evolving sense of ancestral belonging and identity. I’ve even moved to Wales, learnt some Welsh, started supporting Welsh national sports teams, and have taken up a Welsh spiritual path. Exploring this other dimension to my lineage is bringing me cultural richness as well as closer connection to a lost family.
All that doesn’t and won’t make me full Cymry, though, no matter how nice that might be. Because I’m still partly English, still moreso English, speaking technically and legally. I look hopelessly Saes, I speak English, my mother’s family are English, I went to schools in England (on the border with Wales where Welsh was taught in a few year groups, but still). Though temptation is sometimes there, I won’t just cherry-pick what is more interesting or unusual out of my whole identity and decide I’m one thing or another to the exclusion of all else, as that is deeply inauthentic.
Plus, though the rest of the world may disagree in the present Zeitgeist, I’m not ashamed to be English too—the English have in history created and effected some remarkable and wonderful things, as well as some awful things (just..not lately). It’s embarrassing to be English at the moment, but no more (perhaps less) than being white American or Ch!nese or Russ!an. We are a curious, proud, resilient and magical nationality, I do believe, and no amount of chagrin or hardship will alter that.
Perhaps if we embraced dual identities without so much sociopolitical quibbling, people who are biracial and mixed-ethnicity/nationality wouldn’t feel or experience so much stigma and angst and confusion over the fact. Perhaps we could even celebrate it.
At least, I hope we may. It looks like my sister may have a mixed-race and mixed-nationality child, an English-Welsh-Egyptian—imagine! I would like to see a world where that child and society may embrace all parts of his or her self with ease and joy and interest.
