The Importance of Cultural Background

Our discussion in class on Tuesday reminded me of another reason that doing a “family tree” project is important. We were talking about cultural background and its importance in our lives. Pauline mentioned that people with more “diluted” cultural backgrounds often have trouble identifying with one culture or another. I think that this conundrum must be especially difficult for people who are – or even just appear to be – of more than one ethnicity.

Although I am of only one ethnicity, my background is actually fairly diverse and diluted. My father is half Swedish and half Italian, making me one-fourth Italian and one-fourth Swedish, while my mother’s background is a disparate mixture of nationalities, including Scottish, English, Russian, and German. Although my background is all western European, each country where I am “from” has a completely different culture and distinct traditions. Thus, I have never thought of myself as very connected to my cultural backgrounds, but rather as “American” – more than anything else, anyway. For instance, my family has never really had a particular kind of food – like Italian, for example – that they make because that food is a part of their cultural background. We eat all kinds of cuisine – Asian, American, Italian, Indian, French, Mexican – and we don’t really eat any one kind more than another.

As a child, and even sometimes as an adult, I felt jealous of friends because their cultural background was clearer and a bigger part of their lives. I think having a distinct cultural background as an important part of your life can be nice because often there are large communities of cultures, and people can connect to each other based on their shared cultural background. For example, there are certain neighborhoods in many cities where there is a dominant cultural background, such as the Irish south end of Boston. Similarly, many people at Michigan are Jewish and make friends by going to Hillel and joining the Jewish community here. Sometimes I wish that I had a certain community that I could join and feel connected to the people in it based on shared cultural background.

I think that learning more about my family and my ancestors will make me feel closer to my own cultural background and the various nationalities that comprise it.