Here we might consider the phenomenon the sociologist Mary C. Waters has called “optional ethnicity”—how White Americans can choose to identify with the origins of our ancestors, based on which ones we might think are the coolest. This is, of course, an option reserved for White Americans: my friend Alfred E. Prettyman’s maternal grandfather was Irish, which means that he has at least twice as much Irish ancestry as I do, but I get to be part Irish, and he’s supposed to only be Black. Is that weird? Yep. That’s very weird. White people might want to consider that before we invoke our own assorted ancestries to make claims for ourselves.
In fact, the kind of double-dipping that has White people ticking boxes other than “White” fits perfectly with the systemic racism of this nation’s consistent policy toward, to cite one example, Native people, to wit: if a Native person or group of people is seen to have anything that might be of any value, then that thing must immediately be taken from that Native person or group of people and given to a White person or people. Including spiritual practices, and including ancestors, if we think they might come in handy. The sincere belief that White people are entitled to have it all, as in absolutely all of it, is practically the whole point of White supremacy—which, if we’re not really White, we would hardly be promoting, would we?
And what about all of those settler-colonialist English ancestors who fought in brutal wars against Native people back in the day? The heirs of one of mine were awarded a substantial piece of land for his “services,” which makes me not want to know what those “services” were, but they must have given him some PTSD, since he also appears in official records as getting arrested more than once for drunk and disorderly conduct. If having Native and Irish ancestors is supposed to mean that I can’t really be racist, does having seriously White-racist ancestors both near and distant mean that I can never not be racist? Aw, dang!
It may be, though, that another motivation for claiming to not really be White can arise from a healthy impulse: sensing that Whiteness robs us of vital aspects of our humanity, we may try to connect to something closer to full humanity through our ancestors who weren’t “really White.” Splitting off all the parts of ourselves we’ve been told aren’t acceptable and then projecting them onto other people—not only what we think is bad, but also traits and talents that could bring us joy—is not a good plan: “less than” is a game the whole human family can play. The good news is that we can be of one hundred percent White European ancestry and still reclaim our full humanity from the clutches of Whiteness—it’s all right there in us. And meanwhile, instead of making claims on our ancestors who weren’t “really White,” we can be open to the claims they have on us, and to how we can best honor those claims.
35