What makes a Latino? For that matter, what is someone who claims to be a Scot but never set foot in Scotland? Can a person really be anything besides a citizen of the country in which they reside? Are the blacks in the Netherlands Dutch because they’re citizens? Are the whites in Argentina Latino because they’re from South America?
What is an American, aside from someone who lives within the borders of the political body that presumptuously calls itself America? Aren’t all the residents of this country just people from somewhere else? Isn’t that why most everyone here is a hyphen-American? African-American, Irish-American, Polish-American, and so on. I’m sure there are people content to be merely American, but there are many who are not. I am one who is not.
I’m not sure I’ve been satisfied to be anything, though. When it comes down to it, I don’t know anything more than that I have blonde hair, blue eyes and white skin.
I’m told I’m Scottish. Fine. Cool. I dig that. Scots are awesome. Kilts and badassness and big hairy balls going commando. Right on.
I’m told I’m Danish (after a lifetime of being told I was German). Fine. Great. Better to be Danish than German; no holocost in Denmark. Cooler flag. Scandanavian instead of Teuton. Cool.
I’m told I’m Italian. Bummer. Maybe I should be more proud, but I think of goombas and wise-guys and guido jackasses, catenaccio (boring, defensive-minded style of football), greasy, wannabe paramour douchebags. Every bad sterotype you can imagine. Fat guys in suits slurping pasta. Suck.
I don’t even know my Italian family, not close to any of those cousins … first or second or once or twice removed, whoever they are. As for the Danish side, don’t have a single living relative aside from my immediate family (at least of whom I’m aware).
It’s the Scottish side with which I most readily identify. I have plenty of relatives, a great and vast knowledge of the family history. What clans we belonged to, where in Scotland we originated. But being Scottish is like being a little of everything. No Scot is just a Scot, they’re Norwegian, Gael (Irish), Pictish, English and any other imperialist ethnicity. To be Scottish is to be many things all at once. But it’s a cool collection of things. Notoriously tough people, inventive and intrepid. I’ll take it any day of the week. That’s mine. I’m a Scot.
But my mother’s family lived in Argentina for a while, before she was born. Long enough for them to be naturalized, whether they were or not, I don’t know. But does that make them Argentine? And does that make them Latino?
I participated in a DNA experiment tonight. Swabs of my DNA are going to be sent out to determine from where my X and Y chromosomal mitochondria originated. Am I indigenous? Am I decendent from Moors? Am I just a totally white guy who can only be traced back to Africa via mitochondrial Eve? Does it even matter?
Whatever the test decides, I’ll still have only been to London and Jordan. Yeah, I’ve been to Canada, but it’s like an Englishman saying they’ve traveled abroad by taking a trip to Glasgow or Dublin. I’ve never been anywhere, really. I’m American in my ignorance of the world, but I aspire to know. I learn languages for which I have no practical use, I yearn to travel far and wide but simply can’t afford it. I don’t want to be uncultured and boorish, closed off and ignorant of the greater scope of different cultures there are, into which I want to be immersed.
Latin culture as it’s portrayed in America has never appealed to me. I love me some bagpipes and a kilt, but I don’t go around professing to the general public how great I think Scotland is and how shite and rubbish is America. In that way, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans can grate on my nerves. I don’t love America blindly, but I don’t appreciate when someone disparages a place and deifies another place far away. I’m not saying I don’t understand, but I don’t appreciate it. I find it puerile, tactless and obnoxious.
If I thought I could make it there, I’d leave here for Scotland in a heartbeat. There’s no love lost between me and the States. I was born here, sure, but this place isn’t for me. Just like it isn’t for anyone else who isn’t rich. I feel unrepresented by the government and I’ve never had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who jibed with my personal values. That candidate has never existed during my adult life. But I’m not wrapping myself up in St. Andrew’s cross, shoehorning myself into too-tight shorts and a mesh tank top and shouting for anyone who doesn’t care to hear that I think Scotland kicks the pants off of the U.S. of A.
When the DNA test comes back, I wonder what it will tell me. I have a lingering fear that I’ll be told my samples were corrupt and useless, but I certainly hope not. I want to know something more about my origins, get a little more help in finding that sense of from where I came. I don’t know what I am, really. I feel often like a countryless, identityless lost soul with no significant purpose but to go through the rote drudgery of an immensely unfulfilling, monotonous life. Sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, eat, work, eat … break that up with excretion and hockey and you’ve got my life.
Being told I’m descendent from Moors won’t change my life. It would be cool, but it wouldn’t fundamentally alter anything. I guess what I’m hoping for is to be told I’m more diverse than anyone ever gives me credit for. It obviously isn’t enough to be a Scot, a Dane and Italian, to speak English and Spanish, and a little bit of Arabic and Czech, and less even of French, German and Italian, but a decent amount of each. It’s not enough to play the guitar and the piano, to draw and write. No matter what I do and who might have been my ancestors, I’m still waking up tomorrow morning to go shill for a place that values my skills and very self so little it has become as dehumanizing as any penal debasement I can imagine.
What am I? Fairly fucking miserable. And hoping for better.