Noli Irritare Leones

My father came from Greece. I can sing, in Greek, the song from “Never On a Sunday” about the harbor of Pirea, and another Greek song about an almond tree, and one verse of the Greek national anthem. I know the political difference between PASOK and Nea Demokratia, the year that the Greek junta fell, and who Venizelos was. A monk who shares my last name was a noted figure in the war that won Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire. My ethnic foods are lamb and rice with yoghurt, vassilopita (eaten on St. Basil’s day, with a coin for good luck), baklava, and other foods popular in the falafel belt.

I am also, in the sense in which Stentor’s ethnicity is Mid-Atlantic White American, of the New York metropolitan area white American ethnicity. My ethnic foods, are, what? Bagels, pizza, spaghetti, Chinese take out?

And, on my mother’s side, I get that “North European-American whitebread mishmash culture” that Maria Brumm talks about in Jello Salad is a Weird Ethnic Food. My ethnic foods are, judging from the WASP grandmother’s dinner table, roast beef with potatos, green salad with Italian dressing and avocados in it, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. And a jar full of chocolate chip cookies for the grandchildren.

The difference between being “white ethnic” and “white not supposed to be any ethnicity at all” is this. When Agnew resigned, I watched on TV as reporters went into Greek neighborhoods to ask how Greek-Americans felt about one of their own being disgraced. I had never liked Agnew. We had a coloring book in our house of Agnew and the silly things he had said. I didn’t want to consider him one of my own.

When Nixon resigned, no one went to look for his fellow ethnics to find out how they felt about seeing someone like them disgraced.

“White ethnic” isn’t exactly – if the ethnicity is Southern European – just about seizing on where your ancestors lived in 1492 to give yourself culture. Not just because my father was in Greece as recently as the 50s, and because I still have cousins in Greece with whom I exchange email, but because white people do, still, sort of, make the distinction between Southern European white and North European whitebread mishmash. I’ve always heard it, in bits and pieces of popular culture – “a brown-eyed girl in hand-me-downs, whose name I never could pronounce, said pity please the ones who serve, they only get what they deserve” – it’s not an accident, I think, that the outcast girl in Janis Ian’s song has brown eyes and an unpronounceable name; presumably the “rich-relationed hometown queen, who marries into what she needs” is supposed to be fair and WASPy. Or, there was the time when the coworker with the German name got the letter from the hack genealogy outfit that promised to tell him “why your ancestors left their European homeland,” and I got a letter from the same hack outfit promising to tell “why your ancestors left the Gazis homeland.” We can tell you all about your ancestors, but we’re not sure whether they’re from Europe.

I know why my ancestors left the Gazis homeland. My father got a Fulbright scholarship. Before him, there was an aunt who passed through Ellis Island; I’ve found her ship record.

But the Ellis Island story has also become part of the white American mishmash. And I can see people like me reflected, unnoticed, in mainstream culture. How often do people remember, and point out, that Jennifer Aniston is Greek-American?

“White ethnic” is not an identity remembered just when white people are called on to tell ethnic stories; it’s a lingering distinction among white people. (See how Italian-Americans, every so often, will still complain about being typecast in movies and TV shows as gangsters.)

And “white ethnic” is, at the same time, an ethnicity that’s often asserted against the claims of black people and other people of color. “My ancestors never owned slaves! My ancestors weren’t even here in the time of slavery. I don’t owe anyone anything. Why should some black person be favored over me by affirmative action?”

My ancestors did own slaves – but on the Northern European whitebread side, of course, not on the Greek side. When I learned this, I went to the census records and found the slaves. The slaveowners have names and ages and other details given. The slaves are listed only by age, sex, and whether they are considered black or mulatto. You can tell, if you look at censuses, that some slaves are staying with your family while some are being exchanged. But you can tell little about these slaves.

I told my grandmother and uncle, “I found one group of mulatto slaves who seem to stay with the family from one census to the next.” Joel was watching them as I said that. He told me later that my grandmother seemed oblivious to the implication. But that my uncle blanched.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:41 am and is filed under Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.