Did you ever wonder where you fit in in your society? My heritage is of a very mixed background. My father’s family has European (English, Scotch, & Irish), Asian (Russian) and Native American (Cherokee) backgrounds. My mom is mostly Native American (Cherokee AND Choctaw) herself, with her mother being half-British. So my question is, who do I associate myself with?

 Do I associate myself with being a white American? As a European-American? As a Native American? or even a distinctive Native American tribe? Sometimes it is hard to choose who I am. When someone asks me what I am..I ususally tell them a mutt. That because I am from the USA, I am a mutt. The USA’s cultural inheritance is so mixed up, that we are our own unique culture that can’t simply be associated with only one culture. That really, we can’t be defined as anything other than an American.

I am very proud of my ethnic backgrounds, but confused as to my identity sometimes. What exactly AM I supposed to check when asked race/ethnicity on the questionnaires we have all filled out? According to the US government, I am classified as white. One reason is because my great grandparents gave up their land rights in Oklahoma. Another is because of my European background, but this doesn’t really ideally classify my correct ethnicity does it? My father is red-skinned, my mother is brown-skinned, and my brother and I are white-skinned. I suppose, I mostly associate myself with being Native American Cherokee because of it being the most recent majority in my ancestry. So go figure.

Being a truck driver most of his life, my father didn’t do a lot of the raising of me and my little brother. My mother taught us tolerance and acceptance of all peoples. Dad..is well changing and growing in a better direction, to put it bluntly. He simply grew up different than my mom did. Perhaps that is the reason I have found myself dating a guy from another country. Perhaps it is because my mom taught me to look at all the possibilities. If I were to rule out a particular color, race, or ethnicity, I could pass up the opportunity of the lifetime. By this I mean, I might miss the man of my dreams.

Since we are all human beings, maybe we should just take that little question out of the questionnaires, and just ask if we are simply from Earth. But that would open a whole new can of worms, wouldn’t it?