Activity #3

Even though my ethnic background consists of German, Swedish, and Dutch descent, not one person has ever asked or wondered about my ethnicity. When people look at me they presume me to be American and nothing else. For that reason, nobody knows how my ethnic background has slightly influenced me as an American.

A point in case rests with how my German background (my primary ethnic background) has negatively and positively influenced who I am today. To exemplify the former, when my literature class last semester was reading Maus I and Maus II, two books portraying factual accounts of the Holocaust, I felt uncomfortable during class discussions. My discomfort derived from the general stigma associated with German history. Needless to say, I am often embarrassed about my German descent; embarrassed even though my great-grandparents and great-uncles and great-aunts became migrants in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota in the early 1900s, nearly forty years before World War II.

Despite my inner embarrassment, however, my German descent has interested me, as a literature student, to take an interest in early Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman literature. I am unsure if my family extends to the Saxons, Angles, Jutes, or Frisians, but I am proud to be loosely connected with works such as Beowulf, Lanval, Dream of the Rood, and my personal favorite, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Upon my graduation next fall, I foresee myself studying Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history and literature more closely, mainly because Modern English literature derives from their works. In this respect, my German descent has influenced a specific literature passion for me. And I am very happy for that.

But, as I said before, when most people look at me they don’t notice a young adult with an ethnic background. Therefore, people understand or misunderstand me in other ways. Most people, I think, focus their attention to my reserved personality. In doing so, most individuals label me as a “shy” person. For my whole life I have disliked people labeling me as a “shy” person because a shy personality has grown to represent a derogatory description in American culture. After all, I have never been labeled a “reserved” person, and whenever I have been labeled “quiet,” people precede the description with “so quiet.” In a way, I have grown to understand that the word “shy” doesn’t correlate to “quiet” but rather “so quiet.”

As a result, the label “shy” has influenced who I am very much, even possibly more than my ethnic background has, and possibly more than anything else in the world. For instance, because of the label I have studied more dutifully the etymology of words, the personalities of words, and the uniqueness of how words altar in meaning over the course of time. And considering that many words derive from Old English, the language from Germanic settlers in England, I have only become more interested due to my Germanic descent. More to the point, since I enjoy writing my own stories, I consider very carefully how words are gradually changing meanings in our own culture—“shy” obviously being one of them. For that reason, I strongly believe that I have become a better Creative Writing student. And hopefully my passion for words will help positively influence my future in English studies as well.

Question: What do you think it would be like to presently live in a place that has very violent ethnic conflicts? For instance, only 16 years ago, one ethnic group in Rwanda (the Hutus) committed genocide, killing nearly 1 million of another ethnic group (the Tutsis).