Watching the Olympics always puts odd questions into my head. It throws the ridiculousness of our wars into sharp relief, it makes these boundaries that we’ve thrown up seem preposterous, and it brings out odd senses of loyalty in us that don’t exist as strongly otherwise.
I found myself cheering for Constantina Tomescu-Dita yesterday in the Women’s 25 mile Marathon. It wasn’t because she was about a half a mile ahead of the other ladies. It wasn’t because she was 38 and was about to be the oldest marathon champion in history. It was because she is Romanian, and being a little more than a quarter Romanian myself I wanted to see her win. Honestly, those were the thoughts in my head. I cheered for her because she was Romanian, and I wanted her to bring that honor to her country.
It’s stupid, really. I’m an American. I’ve never left the United States in my life. I am four generations down from the ancestors who came over on the boat. But my paternal grandparents are strongly Romanian, with my grandfather being 100% and my grandmother half Romanian-half Ukrainian. So where does this loyalty come from? It’s not like I know anything about Romania, other than what I learned in school with everyone else. I’m not Ukrainian Orthodox, and I don’t think there’s anything particularly Romanian or Ukrainian about me. I look very much the Irish-German I got from my mother’s side. But that’s the other thing. What is it about Americans that we’re so proud of coming from everywhere else in the world?
Immigrants who land on our shores fight to be able to say “I am an American.” (Or in most cases, “Soy Americano”…) We are of the most sought-after nationality. But we pride ourselves in being from everywhere else. You don’t hear people in Italy saying that their grandparents were Albanian. You don’t hear the English bragging about their French ancestry (although who would?). No other country is so focused on being from all the other corners of the world.
I have a professor in college who is Irish. He says all the time that he cannot believe how many people say to him, “Oh you’re Irish! I’m Irish too!” And he has to keep himself from saying “No, you’re not. You’re American. Because you’re not Irish unless you were born in Ireland. You may have Irish ancestors, but you’re an American.” Why do we focus so much on our geneaology like that? Is it a method to stand apart from the crowd? Am I proud of my Romanian blood because it makes me a little more unique? Or is it because we’re Americans, and we are plagued with nothing ever being enough? It’s not enough to be American; we have to be everything else too. We have to be able to claim the world in ourselves, to be able to pretend that in all our American majesty we’ve united the global bloodlines, and brought everyone together.
We brought the world’s people together, and we’ve made them fat. How’s that for world unity?
I think the major issue is that American is an immigrant country. The only real national history that wasn’t stolen from elsewhere belongs to the Native Americans – who are heavily out-numbered by now. America is a melting pot – and its culture is built off of the other cultures it has melted together. Being part of a “pure” culture, a culture that can count its history in hundreds, even thousands of years, is seen as a far more enviable feat than being “American,” or having relatives in the country for almost a hundred years or so. Our relatives did not build out a unique life here – they just melted in.
In other words, uniqueness = coming from a different country = speshul.