An inspirational article from Kathleen at the intelligent website Planetbahai.org. Source is here.
Appeared: 04/03/2009
A while back Elizabeth mentioned that she and a group of her college friends were sitting around discussing their "parts". For those unfamiliar with this great American tradition, it goes like this: a bunch of American kids engage in a conversation consisting of statements like, "I'm part Swedish, and part Irish, and part Italian"; "I'm Dutch and African-American"; "I'm Cherokee, English, and a little bit German"; and so forth. You get the idea. You don't have to be a kid to do this. All ages can indulge. It is, I think, a uniquely American exercise born of the many ethnic streams that have come together to make a modern American. Even if one of your ancestors came over on Mayflower, chances are more than one of them met somebody who came over on a different ship. Or walked over. Either way, very few Americans are purebred anything, and most of them are ridiculously proud of their various "parts".
Now that everybody's curious, okay: I'm German, French, and Ukrainian. How about that one? Dale's family has been here longer than mine (the earliest Lehman dates we're sure of are 1804; earliest Kettlers are circa 1832)—as far as we can tell, he's English, Swiss, German, and Dutch for sure, with a probable Welsh connection that no one can quite pin down. In our grandkids' generation, Bill has added Irish and Scottish to the mix, and T.J. has supplemented with Greek, Scottish, and Cherokee.
One of my favorite true stories about this sort of thing was told to me by a colleague at the Chicagoland library in which I worked. Her dad's family was Polish, her mom's Czech, and all four of her grandparents had come to America as children in the early twentieth century. Her parents were both bilingual. There is apparently enough similarity between the two Slavic languages (I don't speak either, so I couldn't say for sure!) that when she and her brother were young, and her parents didn't want them to know what they were talking about, her dad would talk to her mom in Polish and her mom would answer in Czech. Mom and Dad could understand each other, but the kids hadn't a clue.
Long ago, dynastic marriages were common—you know, the king of Country X married his daughter to the son of the king of Country Y to form an alliance. Muhammad Himself was a party to some of these arrangements. It was to be understood that this sort of thing created a more permanent sort of unity than a mere treaty. Frequently both courses were pursued simultaneously to strengthen the bonds between two nations. This ancient tradition continued into the twentieth century, when monarchy began to be déclassé.
I think there's a lesson here for everyone. In America we've been carrying out a grand, freewheeling experiment in hybridization for a couple of centuries. At whatever point in time Samara's widely separated ancestors parted—Greek and Cherokee—there was probably a lot of ice on the ground. Or maybe it was just starting to snow. The long-sundered lines are back together again. I suspect that we are seeing some of the effects of this in taller, more robust people with longer lifespans. Hybrid vigor is good, in lots of ways.
I suspect that the key to solving racial issues is here, too. We've allowed the artificial designations of race to overwhelm our common sense. The more often we put checkboxes on forms and keep census statistics, the more deeply we imbed this false distinction into our consciousness. We don't solve the problem by substituting "African-American" for "black" or "Negro", we just change its name. I don't think there's any point going through Samara and Gabriel's DNA and seeing if we can isolate the Cherokee fractions from the Greek, French, or English.
Unity, perhaps, will arrive in just this manner: little by little, day by day. One friendship at a time. One marriage at a time. One family at a time. One neighborhood at a time. One day we'll all have too many "parts" to count, and by then we'll have forgotten what they were, and it won't matter anymore anyway.
Maybe we should try something like this: let's all be Americans. Or, since I'm addressing a global audience, Cosmopolites. And let's hang up our various ethnicities in a big closet. We don't have to keep them there. We can take them out when we want to celebrate Oktoberfest or Kwanzaa. We should certainly check them over from time to time for wear and tear. We can't let moths get to them, either. But when we can be human one hundred percent of the time and American eighty percent of the time, we'll have gone quite a way toward solving some of the issues that are beginning to overtake us. When we've internalized that what everyone wants is peace and quiet and a chance to raise the next generation without fear and want—and we're serious about addressing the many difficult questions involved—we'll be halfway there. Right now we're just starting. But I have hope that the more we become Japanese Spanish Apache Norwegian Persians, the closer we will come to understanding that.
Ye observe to what a degree the world is in continual turmoil and conflict, and to what a pass its nations have now come. Perchance will the lovers of God succeed in upraising the banner of human unity, so that the one-coloured tabernacle of the Kingdom of Heaven will cast its sheltering shadow over all the earth; that misunderstandings among the world's peoples will vanish away; that all nations will mingle one with another, dealing with one another even as the lover with his beloved.
It is your duty to be exceedingly kind to every human being, and to wish him well; to work for the upliftment of society; to blow the breath of life into the dead; to act in accordance with the instructions of Bahá'u'lláh and walk His path -- until ye change the world of man into the world of God.
('Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, # 47, p. 89)
