Heritage & Belonging
Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate, Heaven Host
in Epiphanies
In the closed "pegs and holes" thread in purg I posted:
I wonder if it's possible to "own" a particular culture and heritage if one hasn't grown up with it. I think there is a power dynamic here: as an educated middle class English white guy I represent the dominant, homogenised culture which has a long history of trampling on and denigrating other cultures then looting them for shiny things (both literally and metaphorically).
I envy those who can say "my ancestors lived here longer than anyone can remember, my great grandfather built this house and I have a box with his rent receipts for the croft because he didn't trust the Factor." I hope that what I am offering to my daughter is a chance at that, if not for her then any children she might have. We've just finished building our house, Little Miss Feet is in Gaelic Medium Education, and it might be that she is able to feel that this island and its heritage are "hers".
I'm well aware of wanting to feel attached to a distinct culture, because I feel it too. I'm a new Scot, born in England no less, and an incomer to an island community. I don't - can't - claim the heritage of my home island as my own, I don't feel I have that right (and if I did there are folk who'd soon set me straight), but I was born in a part of England where neither of my parents grew up (and no longer live) and don't feel that's my heritage. For a time I reached for my grandfather's Welsh identity, but that could never be really "mine" either.
I wonder if it's possible to "own" a particular culture and heritage if one hasn't grown up with it. I think there is a power dynamic here: as an educated middle class English white guy I represent the dominant, homogenised culture which has a long history of trampling on and denigrating other cultures then looting them for shiny things (both literally and metaphorically).
I envy those who can say "my ancestors lived here longer than anyone can remember, my great grandfather built this house and I have a box with his rent receipts for the croft because he didn't trust the Factor." I hope that what I am offering to my daughter is a chance at that, if not for her then any children she might have. We've just finished building our house, Little Miss Feet is in Gaelic Medium Education, and it might be that she is able to feel that this island and its heritage are "hers".
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I'm an incomer - but grew up as a constant incomer as we moved house so often. I like novelty so I was fine. It taught me how to make friends.
Over the years I have shown many people from furth of Scotland round our church and graveyard, and generally I say "Welcome home!" If I get the sense (and usually I do) that they "own" a Scottish heritage, I am pleased.
The first time "Welcome Home!" faltered was the first (but not the only) time our visitor was descended from members of our parish who had travelled to the Caribbean in the late C18th / early C19th to make their fortune and had had children with their slaves. These children carried his Scottish surname. Is "Welcome Home!" appropriate? In one case the man had freed his slave, legally married her and their children were legitimate. "Welcome Home" seemed appropriate then.
In fact I think we are all flotsam and jetsam passing through at different speeds from some place else staying a while and going onwards.
They're clearly quite a different community than the Indian villages they originally came from, different from their neighbours in Uganda, different from other Indian communities in the UK.
Note to add that I realise this is a bit rambling -maybe speed-read for comprehension first, or pull up a cuppa?
TL:DR - blowed if I know where I fit.
So going away to a boarding school that was a bit more multicultural (though some of the abuse handed out to kids who were in any way different makes me cringe to think about it) was quite an experience, and 6th form and university continued to expand my mind.
Interestingly, my sister stayed local, never went further than a local college, and seems pretty similar in that respect. She's certainly happy to wind my mum up about her homophobia. Meanwhile my brother and my mother have also stayed local, but are just completely 'phobic - you name it, they don't like it, which is one of the reasons relations with my birth family are very strained. Except my dad, who is too dead to notice - he at least had an excuse, as being old enough to think that people from the next village were "furriners". Whereas by their standards I am probably far-Left. I suspect if the villages had roundabouts, my brother would be painting them...
So I moved to a well-known Dark Blue university city for work - country lad in the "big" city, surrounded by academics. And as time has gone by I've ended up feeling in a sort of middle ground where I don't really belong to either. It's a very uncomfortable feeling, and is exacerbated by my current situation where I don't know if I'll ever work in science again.
Where I do seem to belong is my spouse's family. Most of you know I'm half a Ship couple, & doubtless she will weigh in at some point. They'll take anyone, bless them. The family includes English, Irish, and Polish, and the social circle; They are also Scottish - the classic Scots who moved for work - and I had a Scottish granny (unknown as to whether she was ever shoved off a bus), so there is some shared heritage, and interest in Scotland and Scottish affairs. That said, I'd never claim to be Scottish.
Interestingly, if I talk to anyone from non-England bits of the UK, I've often felt I've been accepted more if I mention that I'm from Essex than if I say I'm English. Maybe they take pity on my white stilletoes? I'm happy to take an interest in Welsh affairs (I lived in Bangor for a year) and sport (even football - I saw what it meant in 1993-4 when they so nearly qualified for the World Cup before it ended in tragedy). I take more interest in Scottish rugby, as SWMBO is a big fan, than football. Nothing will drag my love of England cricket out of me - though my heart lies at New Writtle Street - but having followed through the bleak years of the 1990s I know what sporting pain feels like, and I'm damned if I'm going to crow over someone else's defeat unless they brought on themselves by doing something really twuntish - which is where the FA and RFU, and the English press, really aggravate me, there's an arrogant assumption that England will win, whatever the evidence. TBH it annoys me about cricket as well, but I'm dyed in the wool enough that I feel I have to put up with it.
What was the question again?
Buggered if I know. Was there a question?
But what does it take to be accepted as having a right to be here nowadays? Being born here doesn't count, judging by the number of children the Home Office wants to deport. Being married to a British person? Not according to my non-British friends, who are having to jump through an increasing number of hoops to be allowed to cohabit with their spouses. Even being British yourself doesn't count, if you are a married woman with dual nationality and are trying to get back into the country with your other passport. 🤬
I'm not 'from' anywhere but my grandparents were all Lancashire mill workers - so I'd say that's probably my heritage.
My Granddaughter has an English Dad, a Georgian Mum and lives in Germany. She lives in Heidelberg and many of her friends have bi and tri-lingual families. So it's not unusual for her. Heidelberg being a university town with many hospitals which have a lot of 'foreign' staff.
She loved a recent trip to Georgia to visit her Mum's family village.
Seems like my immediate ancestors all lived in and around London, but if you go a little further back you get Portmouth, Norfolk, Somerset, Wales, Scotland, Lancashire and Yorkshire on different branches!
So I didn't find a sense of a locality where my family is 'from' as such. I guess I am mainly English, although I wouldn't describe myself as such, I would say British. I am a southerner. I love the north of England but I recognize cultural differences that would make me stand out if I lived there (quite apart from my accent!). When I lived in Tunisia for 9 years I very much felt my identity as a European. And as our children were growing up there we tried to connect them to their British cultural heritage through stories, books, films, marking days and festivals that would be marked in the UK. They had lots of international friends, especially Americans, as well as Tunisian and Tunisian/European mixed heritage friends. And the culture in Tunisia was very much a mixture of Arab and French, of which we were neither, yet there are aspects of both that remain with me 10 years now since we returned.
I think I do long for a sense of connection to a place, and do feel the British Isles are 'home'. Perhaps the width of my family roots allows me to feel that I am a child of these islands! When I visit prehistoric sites, or just look at the landscape I feel some sort of thread of connection to those ancient forebears who lived out their lives in these landscapes.
Red brick in the suburbs, white horse on the wall.
But for all the kerbstones painted red, white and blue, the Orange Halls and the Presbyterian sabbatarianism, my Irishness is ineluctable. Centuries of ancestors lie in the churchyards of Abog and Clogher, other than the ones who went to America or England.
There's a manufactured outrage in the UK at the moment because the Band of England wants to change the design on the banknotes, as it does ever so often because of counterfeiting, and held a consultation (limited - reached 44.000 people; can you imagine a parallel universe where they're being slammed for spending millions on a massive publicity campaign?) and the public voted for a wildlife theme.
This has been presented by the rabble-rousing end of the press as "Churchill being removed from the £5 note (presumably because Woke)"
Even if it was, I couldn't have given a shit. Even if I thought Churchill was God in human form, I still wouldn't have given a shit. Because that's not what my British identity means to me. It's not History and Armies, Royalty, Battles, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace - it's mountains big enough to be mountains and small enough to not require oxygen, training and special equipment, cask ale, Stilton and Cheddar cheeses and living in a climate that's seldom too cold or hot and almost never homicidal.
The point of which is it's interesting how people's sense of identity can be so different even when it's focused on the same topic, such as nationality.
We moved to the town in which I grew up (and to the house in which my mother still lives) when I was five. In some sense, that is home. When I go back, the accents and the pace of life are familiar - but it's an accent I don't have.
I've spent time in the part of Scotland where my grandparents and their parents (and so on) grew up. I hear my grandmother's accent on the lips of strangers, and I do feel a sense of homecoming from being there, although I don't have any right to claim it as home.
I do wonder, though: when I return to the town in which I grew up, I notice the things that have changed over the period I've been away. How much has to change before I don't "belong" any more? Do I really have a claim on my grandparents' childhood a century ago? There have been vast changes in society over that time.
My own father's family came from South London but the family tree placed them near York in the 18C. His mother was a Murray from Almondbank. My mother's family were all chapel-going Midlanders, though the surname is Welsh. Which is where I am now and have been for most of my adult life.
On the one hand I envy people whose families, like my wife's, have farmed the same land for generations; on the other hand, I know from her how claustrophobic a tight community where everyone is a cousin can be - being Brethren probably didn't help - and can understand why she chose to 'marry out'.
My family tree is almost completely populated by people whose first ancestors in North America were English, Scottish/Ulster Scots, Welsh, Dutch and French (Huguenot specifically). And it is mostly populated by people whose families have been in North Carolina or Virginia for 300+ years, and in eastern North Carolina specifically for 150+ years. I am a Tar Heel through and through.
My family tree, at least the American part of it, is also largely populated by people who were Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed or Huguenot, with a scattering of Anglicans and Baptists here and there, and it contains quite a few Presbyterian ministers. The result is that I’m as culturally Presbyterian as an American can be.
White American Southerners have a reputation of being particularly interested in genealogy and family heritage, and to a point that reputation is deserved. Lord knows, my family was full of genealogists when I was a child, and I was reared on stories of family history.
My experience as to how this worked with regard to “claiming” another culture—and the experiences of other white American Southerners may differ—is maybe best described as “not belonging but feeling some connection to.” No one for a second thought they were English or Scottish or whatever, and even if they said “we’re Scottish,” that was understood to mean “our family has Scottish roots.”
It is my mother’s family, for example, where all the Scottish ancestry could be found. Yes, occasional tartan things could be found in the house, and yes, the family was Presbyterian. (American Presbyterians, at least of the Southern variety, do love tartans and bagpipes.) But those things were more reminders here and there that gave a sense of connection to forebears that was at work, I think, rather than “this is our culture.”
I’ll give one concrete example, and then I’ll stop for now. My real name (Nick is not my real name) is a family name; I’m named for my mother’s grandfather, who like my mother had a McSurname. My real name is one that isn’t Scottish in origin but that is historically a fairly common Scottish given name. And here’s the thing: I/we do not pronounce the name with the standard American pronunciation. When I was a child, my parents always told me that we used “the old Southern pronunciation,” which in turn, I was told, came from Scotland. Now, I have no idea if anybody in Scotland would say my name the way I say it, but I have learned in adulthood that the way I say it is indeed the, or at least a, traditional pronunciation in much of the Carolinas. (And most people I know with my name who are from families that have been in the Carolinas for more than a few generations say it the way I and my family do.) BTW, I long ago gave up correcting people, but I’m always pleasantly surprised when someone says it right without being told.
The point of that is that my parents and grandparents saw the pronunciation of my name as a connection with previous generations and with the country from which ancestors came. It wasn’t (and isn’t) a “claiming” of Scottish culture in any way, but rather is a way of remembering and connected those who came before us.
If that makes any sense.
And @Caissa, my great-great-grandfather came to North Carolina from Saint John, N.B., where his family had been since the end of the American Revolution. (Let the reader understand.)
* I specify “white” Southern American because Southern African American is a different culture; related and similar in many ways, but different. What people often think of simply as “Southern culture”—food, music, language, etc.—is a fascinating melding of Native American, European and African/African American cultures and influences.
I grew up in an isolated and odd little part of an odd part of the USA...look at those absolutely bizarre state lines!
I have four grandparents. Grandpa H (dad's) is from Brooklyn, NYC; Grandma H is from Chester, PA (near Philadelphia.) They met while going to a very good college. Grandpa W is local to the area (Mt Savage,) Grandma W is from SW Missouri (a town near Springfield.) They met in the army. Somewhere in adulthood I reckoned that as a clear class divide.
But my parents both lived a block away from each other in LaVale, which is kind of a suburb of Cumberland, a non-town tax shelter apart from the city. Then my mom's folks moved up to Frostburg. My parents got together later on and my dad moved back to the area after he lost his government job because Ronald Reagan was elected president. Americans of a certain age will understand. Mom wouldn't have been willing to leave the area she grew up in. So I was born. Thanks, Ronald Reagan!
So, I was born in Cumberland, small town of about 20K. Then I moved to Frostburg (~6K + uni) when I was 12 or so, and never really left the area until I went to college, same college my grandparents H went to, out of state. I didn't go there to impress them, it suited me.
Locally, the differences between Cumberland, Frostburg, and LaVale are pretty stark. You've got a declining rust belt county seat that's still the biggest city for some distance around. You have a small college town. And you have a weird little transitional suburb with some strip malls where a lot of folks do their shopping because it's a tax shelter. Each is its own community. And if you zoom out even a little, you see the "tri-state area" between PA, WV, and MD, each its own state with its own state laws. One remark I remember and repeat is that you can tell MD is a rich state because the road quality becomes visibly worse as soon as you drive over any state line. At the same time, people do cross those state lines to buy things because MD also has higher taxes then its neighbors. Borders are A Thing.
And if you zoom out more, well, it's all on the northern edge of "Southern Appalachia," which is cultural region that has a big often-stereotyped reputation that involves rural poverty, whiteness, country music, the coal industry, pickup trucks, the US Military, high unemployment, substance abuse, and voting for Donald Trump. And by the way, it's also absolutely beautiful. Damned shame about the strip mines.
If you ever wonder why I sometimes get a chip on my shoulder about "hick" stereotypes, that's why. I do know some of these people and I care about them. And yes, some of them really are deplorable. But they're still human beings. And there are also a lot of folks out there who aren't like that and really deserve better representation than this fucking movie.
Aaanyway, I got out and moved to Chicago and have a lot of very complicated feelings about where I'm from because I'm only from there and I'm not sure I ever really belonged there but...compared to this ridiculousness, I do feel like I'm still kind of a hick.
And what's funny to me is that I have to do all of this explaining because "where I'm from" is this obscure little microcosm that most people haven't ever heard of, so I feel obliged to write a freaking essay just to explain basic things like the difference between Cumberland and Frostburg. But if you're local, those are two different places with two different cultures. When you're on the outside, it's all "Appalachia." See how confusing that is?
Meanwhile, I think I can safely assume that when I say "I'm from Chicago," that doesn't require much explanation, because Chicago is a minor global city. And I have fairly put down some roots here, insofar as anyone can.
Thirteen years ago we moved back to the midlands. Although in a different county it is only 18 miles from where I spent my school days. I feel as though I have come back to my roots. all the more so as my mother’s parents came from round here, though I never knew them. My family history research has uncovered links with hundreds of past relatives from towns and villages all around me. My mother knew none of them, as her parents died when she was young, so it is all theoretical.
My father’s family was originally from Wales on his father’s side, whilst his mother’s side was from Devon, with some German ancestry way back.
My mother’s childhood was in Scotland, so there was a Scottish element in my upbringing.
I consider myself British rather than English.
When asked where I come from I say I’m from the Midlands.
I was brought up on a poor council estate in Luton and I feel that I established my roots from my class, not from my geography; perhaps living in a town with so many immigrants was influential. My parents were not locals either, they were born in Lancashire and were the children of cotton mill workers who had moved down south to work in the factories. At school I was told off for the Lancastrian words I used (despite never having lived there).
My family tree has illegitimacy through several generations and discussions about heritage with older members could be cagey; my mother was embarrassed to discuss having been conceived out of wedlock and one of my grandfathers even suggested he had been adopted by wider family when really he had been an illegitimate child with a stepfather. But my grandmother was proud of her union heritage; my great great great grandfather was famously transported to Australia for forming a trade union in 1834. But even he was from Dorset, not Lancashire.
Now I live a middle class lifestyle, lecturing at an online university and living a comfortable life in Cambridge with my middle class family. Yet I still feel working class, as I never went to college or traditional university (all my degrees are from the Open University) and have had to learn the system the hard way, and I empathise with my students who are also mainly working class with diverse backgrounds. But I do now have the advantage of being very relaxed in almost any social environment and I have a fabulously flexible accent. My children think it is hilarious when I visit my siblings back home and speak Lutonian again.
I don’t have a Christian denomination heritage either as I never went to church as a child. I became a Christian as an adult in a conservative Anglican church and consider myself non-denominational. My parents and older siblings were brought up Baptist but my famous ancestor was a Methodist.
Sometimes, it’s pretty much impossible for someone outside a culture to adopt a particular cultural element from another culture respectfully or appropriately, as, for example, when the cultural element has religious or other significance that can only really be expressed and understood by the culture of origin, or that is by definition taboo to outsiders. But other times, a culture of origin may have no problem, as long as respect and acknowledgment are there.
My “stake” in this is as a white American. White Americans have a long, long history of appropriating elements of Native American culture and African American, as often as not without respect and without acknowledgement, but rather as though it’s our right to take what we like from other cultures.
The issue with cultural appropriation is the way it's rooted in colonialism; the Indigenous Mexican roots of Dias de los Muertos (because it covers both All Saints and All Souls in Mexico) only amplify the colonialism in this instance. A lot of Mexican Catholic folk practice incorporates pre-Christian beliefs and rituals. Also, some religious practices are closed and respecting that is just about good manners - just like you wouldn't gatecrash a stranger's wedding and eat their food without being invited, it's rude to partake of a religious feast you haven't been initiated into.
Cultural appropriation means enjoying the benefits of or profiting from a culture you don't belong to, while also being protected from experiencing the struggles of that culture - particularly when that culture is also punished for their culture. So for eg non-Indigenous Americans buying dreamcatchers (which are religious items rather than decoration) when Indigenous religious practices were banned and Indigenous children were deliberately taken by the state in order to have their culture and religion erased.