How important is your heritage to you?

I am half Mexican, half Scottish. Both my parents were first generation born in the U.S. My heritage means nothing to me, just a bit of nostalgia for some things my Scottish grandmother used to do, but that was about her, not about being Scottish.

My mother taught me to make certain kinds of Mexican food, but living in California, it’s available everywhere.

Not all that important. I’m a citizen of the world. The blood that runs through my veins is the same as that of other people and I’m against the concepts of nationalism, patriotism or feeling emotions about one’s heritage – where we’re born doesn’t say anything about us as people, it’s nothing we did to deserve or not deserve. People can talk about their ancestors and what they’ve been through and they can certainly talk about discrimination based on ethnicity and all that and therefore fight that kind of thing with pride but it’s a pretty clear defense mechanism and not much else.

I’m half Italian, and Italians are notorious for being very proud and protective of their cultural traditions. Food and a great deal of gesticulating while talking is a big part of my life. Here’s my great great grandpa and his family just before he left Italy for America.

The other half of my family is a mix of English, Scots-Irish, Cajun, Creole, Cherokee, and some other stuff, but my grandmother has been able to trace my lineage pretty accurately

All this considered, I’d say heritage is pretty important to me. I know I had no control over it, or whatever, but I’m fascinated with the cultural and ethnic histories that all came together over the centuries to boil down to me. It’s not so much a point of pride as it is a cool thing to think about. I consider myself an American first, but I like thinking about the histories behind the thousands of people from dozens of different places that all came together over hundreds of years to eventually make me.

It’s not even remotely important to me and I catch flak over it every now and then. My father is a third generation Mexican-American and did not grow up speaking Spanish (his mother only knows so much herself.) My mum is English, German, Dutch, Russian, Irish, and Native American, but the only part of her “heritage” she holds fast to is that she drinks at least one cup of tea every day. We have no cultural traditions outside of Americana.

My inherited makeup does not play a significant role in my sense of identity.

Patriotism confuses me and while I am all about celebrating culture, “pride” confuses me too.

Not all that important to me.

French Acadian, from Alsace, Welsh and Scottish.

My heritage is very important to me.

I appreciate my heritage but it does not define who I am. I’m human. Nuf said.

Really we are all so much more than we think we are genetically speaking, after having to reserch this for court and the adotion of my older daughter whom we saw a genicist for, if you were to run you DNA you would find so many different more nationalities you never knew you had. You can actually do this online here So now my being half polish ¼ english and ¼ german means absolutely nothing to me anymore. We are what we are and thats it.

Not important to me at all.

Not really for me. German, Italian, French, Irish, British and Native American. I’m a mutt like a few others here. I feel no attachment to my nationalities. As far as I can describe it, I’m (as @AmWiser put it) a human.

It’s a curiosity, but I’m primarily concerned with if I am an earthling or not.

Heritage is important insofar as it helps you understand who you are. For some people, it is very important and it provides a very strong sense of identity. Children of Jews who survived the holocaust feel defined by their parents’ experience in many ways. It is a kind of heroism through which they see the world.

Many other people can tell other stories about their people and this helps they figure out who they are. But in the United States, it gets problematic, and your case is a prime example of that. You don’t have ancestors from any one particular place. They are from all kinds of places. You have many peoples. You have oppressed peoples (Indian and Black) and oppressor people.

The question is what should we do with our heritages when we have so many? And how do they inform our sense of self. For me, it’s kind of strange the way it works. I didn’t know that my mommom was Jewish until I was 20. My ancestors came from Central Europe and were Ashkenazic Jews. Since I knew nothing about Judaism, this meant little to me.

Then it turned out I was unable to father children naturally. I had a cystic fibrosis gene that caused me not to grow a vas deferens, making it impossible for me to deliver sperm. How is this related to being of Jewish ancestry? Well, it seems that the genetic mutation that I have and that causes cystic fibrosis appears much more often in Ashkenazic Jews. My people, I guess. Giving me such a cool gift. Thank God for modern technology.

On the other side, I am from New England, and my people, even if they were from the Netherlands as well as England, took on the Puritan ethic long ago. Some of my ancestors came over to the US in the 1600s.

Does any of this help me know who I am? I think the Puritanism helps explain a lot of my instinctive attitudes about sex and human touch. I love it so much and I can’t allow myself to have it. I’ve always chosen partners who either aren’t into sex or are into sex but aren’t available. But growing up in a very liberal town during the Vietnam war is, to me, a better explanation of where my political attitudes come from.

My Jewish heritage means something, but I don’t know really how much it means. Jews are supposed to value education. I value education. Is that the Jewish part of me? But wait. the Puritans also valued education. My father is well educated.

In the end, I think heritage is a story we tell ourselves when it is useful to help us understand ourselves. We take the stories from the past that resonate with us and use them to lay a foundation for our own stories. These stories are very important to people, but they are also somewhat arbitrary. We are all so much more than our heritage.

If there were no antisemitism in the world, being Jewish would be much less important to me, maybe not at all. My identity with Judiasm as a cultural tie has more to do with a reaction to every hardship the Jewish people have been through than anything else. I feel American more than anything. Although I do like the connection with the food, and cultural attitudes. As far as my family being from Russia and Latvia, I care about their stories of coming to America, on my father’s side very sad and difficult, with some horrific circumstance. On my mom’s side I don’t know how bad Russia was, I would assume pretty bad, but once in America they did well for the most part, America was a new and prosperous life.

I find knowing our backgrounds interesing. I love hearing stories about the old countries, and meeting people who just immigrated. In America I always felt like these differences bonded me to my friends, that being different made us the same.

I think people decide which part of their culture is most significant. I have a friend whoisnhalf Polish half German, but she only talks about being Polish, identifies with being Polish-American. I had a neighbor, his children are half Italian half Domincan. He was upset the children checked Hispanic on some form. He argued they have Italian surnames, an Italian father, they are Italian. But, where they live in FL, Hispanic is a more likely culture they would identify with, the children were fluent in Spanish not Italian.

It’s not but I feel it’s because I don’t know enough of our families ethnic details so it’s easy just to look past it. We’re Americans on all sides dating back to the early and mid 1800’s, pioneers of the west of different ethnicities and religions who melded around the lifestyle of sheepherding. Over the decades I’ve found myself drawn to people who share a similar cultural background more than an ethnic background. I don’t say it’s all important but it does feel good to have things in common and I really believe this particular facet is what kept me together with an ex many years more than I would’ve stayed with anyone else.

My heritage is very important to me. It shows me the path from where I came. I love history and stories about my ancestors and my roots. It is fascinating to know about the lives of the people who came before me on this earth and the types of lives and families they created and their world. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. They are all part of me and live on through me. Very important indeed.

Thanks for answering people. It was interesting and comforting to know I’m not the only one with a diverse heritage. :)

My heritage is somewhat important to me. If I did not take pride in where I came from than I feel I would have lost a part of who I am. Each culture has their own differences that make them unique. My children are also a mix, and they seem to embrace my culture more and that is primarily because I spent more time with them in their younger years. But I always remind them that they are also a combination of another culture and have made sure they have had the opportunities to know them as well. Its taken them a while but I think they have a good sense of who they are as a result.

It has always been important to me. I’m the family genealogist. I find it fascinating to day dream about what caused all my ancestors to migrate to North America. I wonder about their struggles and their joys.

I recently met a branch of my family that stayed in Nova Scotia. That branch has been there since the 1830s. It was only my great grandfather who got itchy feet and decided to cross the whole continent to settle, first in Alberta and then in British Columbia.

I know next to nothing about my father’s family. I only know that his mother came from a very wealthy German family who lost all their money in the stock market crash (they were living in Seattle at the time).

Funny this question should come up. I’ve recently been watching ABC’s, “Find My Family” in which adopted children and mothers and fathers who have given up children for adoption search for their birth children/parents. You can see the pain on their faces as they talk about a hole in their being that can only be filled by connecting with their birth families. I know not every adopted child wants to find their birth parents but many of them do. It matters.

My Jewish heritage is important to me. My ancestors have been persecuted, harassed, tortured, abused and expelled from countries around the world. This does contribute to shaping a person’s world view, their politics, moral values and their desire that their children maintain some link to their cultural heritage. Ignoring our heritage has never insulated my ancestors from mistreatment. Passing it on to our descendants has played a key role in preventing our annihilation. I don’t harbour hatred against individuals from groups at whose hands mistreatment has come. My strong beliefs supporting human rights extends to all people and peoples, including those who in the past have sought to wipe my People off the face of the earth.

I have family members who have researched every branch of our family, on both sides, as far as it’s possible to do so! I’ve always known my heritage. I inherited a bunch of stuff from them and knowing my ancestors owned these things and loved them make them precious to me. I cannot imagine not knowing my heritage. It would be sad.

It’s also a great way to learn history.

It is very important. Our lives are a sequence of events and people that led us to where we are now. Pretending our lives are reduced to here and now is to deny and deprive ourselves of a past that either good or bad, has had an impact on us. This is not really a matter of personal opinion; any psychologist of sociologist would tell you something along those lines. We are the result of what happened before in every way, be it physical, psychological, spiritual, etc., so the more we know and understand about our heritage, the more we’d understand about ourselves and that certain void or emptiness that some feel would not be present and a lot of stuff would make sense and fall into place once that you know that it comes from your ancestors.

I’m interested in it, but it doesn’t have all that much effect on my life. Most people can tell I have Russian heritage by the ”-ov” at the end of my surname and that’s usually the extent of it in terms of sharing it with other people. But for me personally, I find it interesting to learn about my Russian relatives, especially considering I have relatives now who live in Russia. Part of my interest stems from my interest in languages and so I have interest in Russian as a language and I’m fascinated by my mom’s fluency in it and a bit disappointed that she never really spoke it to me as a child.

I’m also interested in how my mom’s family changed their last name to avoid sounding Russian. That’s interesting in of itself. I’m interested in how I have some Czech Jewish relatives after previous thinking that I had no Jewish ancestry.

In day to day life however, I’m really not seen as anything beyond “white” despite my last name giving away my Russianhood. I love Russian classical music and the language, but the culture is pretty separate from my day to day life. I remain interested in my heritage, however.

I asked a similar question a long while back, and I was surprised at how many people said that it really wasn’t important to them.

It is important to me. I am an American, but my family is Ukrainian, and we keep many traditions alive within our family. It’s always been something that I cherished and it makes me feel closer to my family. The language, food, and traditional customs are important to me, and I would like to pass them on to my children if I should ever have kids of my own.

Hmm…I never really think about it. My paternal grandparents were both born in Mexico and I grew up in a barrio, but I don’t speak Spanish and my mom is a generic white lady (mostly French and German), so I feel no tie to any culture.

I will say I feel very uncomfortable when I am around white people only. I feel most at home in the streets of Los Angeles where I am surrounded by people of various colors, cultures and languages.

I have spent many years working on my family genealogy. It is fascinating to me.
That said, I have no interest in visiting most of the places my family come from, since they were all in the US before the Civil War. I am Scottish, Irish, Bohemian, German, and Sioux, but really just American.

Not really that important. I’d much rather pick and choose the cultures and histories I like than have it dictated to me by genes.

Yeah, I’d like to invent my own culture.

My heritage is EXTREMELY important to me. Knowing where I came from is crucial to me.

@Dr_Lawrence Ignoring our heritage has never insulated my ancestors from mistreatment. Passing it on to our descendants has played a key role in preventing our annihilation. Great sentence

It’s not important at all. It’s like being proud of your hair color. You didn’t achieve anything, you were just born.

My dad’s half Pinoy (Filipino) and half Italian, with perhaps a bit of Spanish in there. My mom is descended from French and Scottish immigrants to Canada, as well as native Mohawk and Cree peoples.

Understanding how my ancestors were influenced by colonialism and how that led to my existence has been really useful for understanding the effects of colonialism in all its forms. Simply understanding a lot of the culture of my ancestors has been helpful in understanding how to learn to live as part of my environment, since as a rewilder I think the main role culture serves us (or at least should) is that of a guide for how to live as part of our landbases. My ancestors, though divided and often denied their cultures, have made a good jumping off point in rebuilding new cultures.