![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I’ll never understand the pride people take in saying, “I was born and bred here” or the use of the same phrase to defend one’s perceived superiority or deservingness of housing, health care or other basic human rights.
I mean, what did you, yourself, actually do to influence where you were born or bred? Unless you were a particularly ambitious embryo, the answer is “nothing”. Sure, your parents might have made some kind of effort to select your place of birth. Maybe they strove to move to better housing in a neighbourhood with better services and schools. Maybe they’re even immigrants, like my dad, and they struggled long and hard to learn their fourth language in order to integrate into their adopted country. But you? You didn’t do anything. Why are you so proud of that? Think of the things you've accomplished in your life. Isn't it far more fitting and fulfilling to be proud of those?
And why the obsession with asserting the superiority of a single identity over the others? “I’m English first and then British.” Pro-tip: Most of the rest of the world considers both of those to be synonymous with “ex-colonialist imperialist arsehole” so it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. ^.^
Here is a list of the geographically-linked identities that I consider myself able to lay claim to. I’m proud of some and not others.
Today, I think I’m proudest of being European. I earned that identity and that passport, and I’m still very pissed off that some people want to take it away.
Today is also, weirdly, simultaneously:
So, to close this post, here is a peaceful photo of a woman doing some engineering.
I mean, what did you, yourself, actually do to influence where you were born or bred? Unless you were a particularly ambitious embryo, the answer is “nothing”. Sure, your parents might have made some kind of effort to select your place of birth. Maybe they strove to move to better housing in a neighbourhood with better services and schools. Maybe they’re even immigrants, like my dad, and they struggled long and hard to learn their fourth language in order to integrate into their adopted country. But you? You didn’t do anything. Why are you so proud of that? Think of the things you've accomplished in your life. Isn't it far more fitting and fulfilling to be proud of those?
And why the obsession with asserting the superiority of a single identity over the others? “I’m English first and then British.” Pro-tip: Most of the rest of the world considers both of those to be synonymous with “ex-colonialist imperialist arsehole” so it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. ^.^
Here is a list of the geographically-linked identities that I consider myself able to lay claim to. I’m proud of some and not others.
- American
- British
- European
- Hawai’ian
- Filipino
- Olympian
- Seattleite
- Angeleno
- San Diegan
- Londoner
- Brummie (this is a new one; still feels a little odd)
Today, I think I’m proudest of being European. I earned that identity and that passport, and I’m still very pissed off that some people want to take it away.
Today is also, weirdly, simultaneously:
- the anniversary of Brexit, aka the Colossal Waste of Time and Money Foisted Upon Us by a Generation That Tore Down Decades of Painstakingly Won Goodwill with Our Neighbours and Won’t Live to Experience the Disastrous Consequences, Thanks a Lot, Dickheads.
And
- International Women in Engineering Day
So, to close this post, here is a peaceful photo of a woman doing some engineering.
tags:
From:
no subject
On the other hand, the picture is quite nice.
From:
no subject
This summarises a lot of what's wrong with the attitudes of certain people currently in powerful positions in the US government.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
If someone claims their ancestors came over with William the Bastard I delight in telling them that he was a part French Scandinavian married to a Belgian.
I'm of partly English decent with Scottish ancestry married to a Scottish guy with partly English ancestry.
In my own case: England, Scotland, Wales, Latvia, Italy and Brittany with a side order of adopted daughter of Belgium and then there's my Romani Great Grandfather so I guess that makes me a citizen of the world............
And don't get me going on Brexit! Well, you know.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Her response: The Womb.
You share my curiosity. I think that it may have something to do with a lack of feeling of power or position so they must find one. Some people really adore boxes and are violent against those boxes being changed. See why many people consistently vote against their interests. I know that poor whites in the states tend to see themselves as "temporarily disenfranchised millionaires" so they vote accordingly.
Spoiler Alert: You're never gonna be a millionaire
From:
no subject
Another great band name. Also, SUCH AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION, WOW
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
It's something I've been reflecting on this past year.
From:
no subject
It's more like, "We have been here even longer than/before anyone else and then you came along and stomped all over us and started taking pride in being born and bred here as if no one else were here before you, wtf is wrong with you, this is why we can't have nice things."
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The point isn't that those people you're encountering aren't being shit: they are.
The point is that a lot of the refutation of the shit involves literally poo-pooing and holding up as risible the fundamental idea that this connection means anything, inherently. And that gets you into troubled waters.
Because like: so is literally the only reason that respecting their cultural connection to the land and occupancy because we fucked them over? Like the concept itself/etc is irrelevant and even stupid, but because they have suffered we mark it out of bounds and say "yes well let them have it"? That is, um. Pretty patronizing?
Do we start demanding it be based on community? I'm pretty sure that there are communities in England and Wales and so on that are at least as old in terms of their occupancy of a certain geographic location and ability to trace lineage as, say, the Métis, or as several nations that were forced to move significant distances in the 1700 and 1800s?
And you just sort of keep going.
It's easy - ironically ESPECIALLY for someone working within a context of wider European and North American culture and its concepts of movement and individuality and so on - to turn to "this idea of 'born and bred' here is stupid, period, and has no merit at its base" as a way of dealing with the part that's shitty?
But for me as engaging with that are of Reconciliation, it doesn't work anymore. The thing is, what that kind of person is doing is STILL shitty, even on their own terms . . . because they're not dealing with and engaging with all of the truths that claiming "born and bred here" actually mean.
Which in the case of someone (probably white) saying it in Britain is a legacy of colonization and imperalism and various cultural genocides and deliberate undercutting of other nations' abilities to reach the same position of quality of life as is available etc etc etc. (And in the case of settler culture in Canada is EVEN WAY MORE LOADED.) Which in terms of moral imperatives does not actually tend to put one in the position of being racist and oppressive of more recent arrivals, you know?
So.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
But I've definitely come to a place where it's something I have to keep in MIND and keep in mind that it has real meaningful implications to how I engage with the idea of connection to place, connection to legacy/history/thingie. (Sorry am super tired and it's really hot in my house right now, so my brain is kind of melty.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
-Irish-Norman-Bretton-Franco-Germanic-American Military Brat who has lived in a bunch of US places and Europe as well.
From:
no subject
I would love to feel European but I never have. I desperately want to, and I want to stay in Europe as a political identity and I am angry as fuck that that is being torn away from me, but it never felt like it was presented as an option somehow.
From:
no subject
"What, *ALL* of them? Are you sure? 'Cos... Hang on, pass me that calculator... It's been 950 years, so that's, lemme think, 38 generations or more? ... That makes 274 billion individual great-to-the-36th-grandparents, not allowing for in-breeding and re-crossing (which there must have quite a bit of, 'cos there's never actually been that many people in the world all at once)... So let's allow for that by taking the square root. [TAP-TAP] That's still 524,000 individuals. [LOWERS CALCULATOR AND PONDERS] I don't think they actually sent enough boats over for that, did they...?" =:o}
"My ancestors were this"; "My ancestors were that"...? No, the ancestors you *know* about, and choose to acknowledge, were this or that. Almost none of us are pure-bred anything, except (in some cases) pompous arsehole. =:o}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I'm Dutch-American, the first generation born in the US. I grew up speaking Dutch, practicing Dutch traditions, and traveling frequently back across the pond to see family. Because I lived much of my life in places where people don't speak my language and don't practice my traditions, my Dutch heritage and my sense of family are strongly linked. When I say I'm proud of my Dutch heritage, I don't mean that I earned anything by it; I mean that it's a deeply important part of my identity. That's a different use of "proud" than me saying I'm proud of having earned my PhD, but the emotion is no less real.
Of course, neither use of "proud" can justifiably be used to promote one's superiority or deny another's basic rights. On that I think we agree completely.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The Saxons however had been working the land for generations, they knew how it worked. Even if they couldn't articulate it. So claiming you were 'born & bred' here was in effect, a claim to superior knowledge that basically, couldn't be explained and was seen as an innate connection to the land. In effect saying 'I belong here, you don't'.
From:
no subject
I always liked Wilde's line "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." overidentification with one thing is in my experience *always* so you can exclude others. We all have many identities, and that's a good thing.
From:
no subject
I do want to add a little more though. For us Scots we are caught between histories. Some are aware of what we gained under this Union but we are also aware of how those 'famed Scottish regiments' who went in first were sent in first to either win or die because no one would care. The Union was formed because the rich here tried to create and Empire, failed, lost all their money and got desperate. In return England tried to eradicate our culture, much like it did in the places it went on to colonise. The fact that we stopped them doing so despite their bans on so many things is a part of pride. So it is not as much where we were born but the past we have?
We are so welcoming of anyone who wants to come here. Come here, live here, ok you're Scottish. We'll fight anyone who says different and that includes border force. That fuels a fire to get our independence as others nations did.
So, we have that pride you don't like but we are not unwelcoming of anyone else? I would like to think that makes us unique.
From:
A very popular opinion, in this quarter.
Your post also reminded me that last night I dreamt I was going through passport control and they insisted they replace my passport and issued me one without "EU" on it and I cried.