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So, I recently read a meta on how it's easy to leave your religion behind if your Christian and someone else talking about ethnic heritage in America and I just can't shut my mouth. If you don't want to hear me drone about growing up Irish-Catholic and the issues therein, you really oughtn't read.
My parents actually left the Catholic church to avoid excommunication. This would have been very problematic except a) they were avoiding excommunication, b) they were having babies, and c) they could (and would) come back later. So they went to the town's local Formerly Catholics Anonymous and went on to have the illicit IVF treatment and produce myself and my brother. My brother and I then grew up in a slightly confusing mish-mash of Catholic and Protestant. Our family was, obviously, Catholic all-around. Our church was Protestant, except for when it wasn't. (We had Seven Sacraments and were hardcore on the saints and a variety of other not-Protestant things. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to have a First Communion, but it was enough to convince my family so celebrate it.)
When we were ten, we started going to Catholic school. I left Catholic school when I finished high school and moved on to wander through WASP land. My brother stayed and went to a Catholic college. I grew up with fish on Friday, church on Sunday, ashes to mark every Lent and a choice of fast for forty days. I grew up with a gift of the rosary from my grandmother and a portrait of Mary in the bedroom and confirmation saints and St. Anthony for lost things and St. Blaise to bless the throat. (I didn't learn the rosary until I learned that I could get indoors early in the winter with the other girls if we would pray the rosary with the women of the community, but I don't know that I could forget it now.)
I also learned the little things that differeniate me from my classmates - the French-Catholic, the Polish-Catholic, the Italian-Catholic. They are simple things, little things, but they're there. I couldn't tell you at this point, but they're there, they're instinct.
It wasn't just part of growing up - it is part of my family. My family gets together around religious festivals and celebrations and mourning - the funeral, the memorial, the wedding, the holiday. Masses on birthdays are totally plausible. Getting together in the morning to pray the rosary? Totally plausible.
People in my family have been disowned for leaving the faith. (Recently as within my parents' generation, not within mine.) Catholicism is it. It's what we've got. It's better than blood. You can marry outside the faith - it's happened - but the kids are always Catholic. I learned in my confirmation process that I know more about Catholicism than Protestantism. Protestants regularly baffle and frighten me (my mother periodically explores these faiths). For my confirmation, we had to go visit other religious sects and be part of their religious service. I visited a mainline Protestant faith and Greek Orthodox. I dressed wrong for the Orthodox service and don't speak Greek (and I look like Irish McIrishpants), but in the mainline Protestant service - where I looked like I belonged - I felt even more out of place. I kind of knew their hymns, but I didn't know their prayers or habits or beliefs beyond, "Jesus = god."
Mostly? Even as an agnostic pagan, I don't get to leave. Well, I could leave, but in many ways, I can't. It would be giving up my family, which I can't bear to do. They'll have to give me up first. And even if I did, I couldn't drop the quirks it's given me - like the inexplicable fact that I don't want meat on Friday.
I'd like to request something of people (both on the internet and otherwise).
I'm not saying that I didn't grow up with Christian privilege or white privilege or whatever you want to say. And I'm interested in learning what you have to say about that.
But. I also think that assuming people are all the same if they're not you is really wrong. Saying "Christian" works kind of okay in some situations, but honestly, to say, "Christians say..." or "Christians believe..." or, even worse, "Christians and former Christians say/believe..." is so wrong. What kind of Christian? Mormons? Baptists? Seventh Day Adventists? Italian-Catholic Americans? Catholics in Ireland? Russian Orthodox? Those are all different faiths and have different tenets, different traditions, etc.
I believe what you mean is, "mainline Protestant sects in America." Sometimes other Christian sects fall into that category, sometimes not. I know that many practising Catholics in America (as opposed to lapsed Catholics and former Catholics) vehemently disagree with many things that are common to "mainline Protestant sects in America." I would also disagree that the culture I grew up in is the "culture of America." Sure, I've got Christmas in how I grew up, but I remember, without any fondness, having fits over meat-filled menus on Friday at college (and Good Friday, too, the biggest meatleass day in the Catholic calendar - and I can tell you fits were had on my behalf all over the country when I informed my family).
As a final bit, since people are talking about how people appropriate their heritage and faith, I would like to add this. I grew up in - and still live in - Irish-Catholic Massachusetts. I am fully aware of the problem of the pedophile priests. I know people who were affected by the situation. I know the churches and the priests themselves and all of that. I have actually stopped reading and watching things about Catholics and Catholicism that are not written/directed by Catholics. Not every priest is a pedophile, not every clergyperson is sexually repressed and/or has pedophilic tendencies and/or is secretly gay, not everyone is destroyed, body and soul, by Catholic school or priests or whatever. Treating it like it's great fun is damaging.
My parents actually left the Catholic church to avoid excommunication. This would have been very problematic except a) they were avoiding excommunication, b) they were having babies, and c) they could (and would) come back later. So they went to the town's local Formerly Catholics Anonymous and went on to have the illicit IVF treatment and produce myself and my brother. My brother and I then grew up in a slightly confusing mish-mash of Catholic and Protestant. Our family was, obviously, Catholic all-around. Our church was Protestant, except for when it wasn't. (We had Seven Sacraments and were hardcore on the saints and a variety of other not-Protestant things. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to have a First Communion, but it was enough to convince my family so celebrate it.)
When we were ten, we started going to Catholic school. I left Catholic school when I finished high school and moved on to wander through WASP land. My brother stayed and went to a Catholic college. I grew up with fish on Friday, church on Sunday, ashes to mark every Lent and a choice of fast for forty days. I grew up with a gift of the rosary from my grandmother and a portrait of Mary in the bedroom and confirmation saints and St. Anthony for lost things and St. Blaise to bless the throat. (I didn't learn the rosary until I learned that I could get indoors early in the winter with the other girls if we would pray the rosary with the women of the community, but I don't know that I could forget it now.)
I also learned the little things that differeniate me from my classmates - the French-Catholic, the Polish-Catholic, the Italian-Catholic. They are simple things, little things, but they're there. I couldn't tell you at this point, but they're there, they're instinct.
It wasn't just part of growing up - it is part of my family. My family gets together around religious festivals and celebrations and mourning - the funeral, the memorial, the wedding, the holiday. Masses on birthdays are totally plausible. Getting together in the morning to pray the rosary? Totally plausible.
People in my family have been disowned for leaving the faith. (Recently as within my parents' generation, not within mine.) Catholicism is it. It's what we've got. It's better than blood. You can marry outside the faith - it's happened - but the kids are always Catholic. I learned in my confirmation process that I know more about Catholicism than Protestantism. Protestants regularly baffle and frighten me (my mother periodically explores these faiths). For my confirmation, we had to go visit other religious sects and be part of their religious service. I visited a mainline Protestant faith and Greek Orthodox. I dressed wrong for the Orthodox service and don't speak Greek (and I look like Irish McIrishpants), but in the mainline Protestant service - where I looked like I belonged - I felt even more out of place. I kind of knew their hymns, but I didn't know their prayers or habits or beliefs beyond, "Jesus = god."
Mostly? Even as an agnostic pagan, I don't get to leave. Well, I could leave, but in many ways, I can't. It would be giving up my family, which I can't bear to do. They'll have to give me up first. And even if I did, I couldn't drop the quirks it's given me - like the inexplicable fact that I don't want meat on Friday.
I'd like to request something of people (both on the internet and otherwise).
I'm not saying that I didn't grow up with Christian privilege or white privilege or whatever you want to say. And I'm interested in learning what you have to say about that.
But. I also think that assuming people are all the same if they're not you is really wrong. Saying "Christian" works kind of okay in some situations, but honestly, to say, "Christians say..." or "Christians believe..." or, even worse, "Christians and former Christians say/believe..." is so wrong. What kind of Christian? Mormons? Baptists? Seventh Day Adventists? Italian-Catholic Americans? Catholics in Ireland? Russian Orthodox? Those are all different faiths and have different tenets, different traditions, etc.
I believe what you mean is, "mainline Protestant sects in America." Sometimes other Christian sects fall into that category, sometimes not. I know that many practising Catholics in America (as opposed to lapsed Catholics and former Catholics) vehemently disagree with many things that are common to "mainline Protestant sects in America." I would also disagree that the culture I grew up in is the "culture of America." Sure, I've got Christmas in how I grew up, but I remember, without any fondness, having fits over meat-filled menus on Friday at college (and Good Friday, too, the biggest meatleass day in the Catholic calendar - and I can tell you fits were had on my behalf all over the country when I informed my family).
As a final bit, since people are talking about how people appropriate their heritage and faith, I would like to add this. I grew up in - and still live in - Irish-Catholic Massachusetts. I am fully aware of the problem of the pedophile priests. I know people who were affected by the situation. I know the churches and the priests themselves and all of that. I have actually stopped reading and watching things about Catholics and Catholicism that are not written/directed by Catholics. Not every priest is a pedophile, not every clergyperson is sexually repressed and/or has pedophilic tendencies and/or is secretly gay, not everyone is destroyed, body and soul, by Catholic school or priests or whatever. Treating it like it's great fun is damaging.
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From:
no subject
I'm reacting to couple things in this post. One, someone said that it's easy for "white Christians" to leave their faith, which is just... so deeply wrong that I don't have words.
Second, someone asked what my heritage meant to me (which was cool, but I figured I could expand on it).
Another, I've had too many people in real life tell me that I don't have a heritage or an ethnicity because I'm "too white" - or that it doesn't matter or can't be important to me or that it can't be real.
I don't consider myself religiously Catholic - but I will always be culturally Catholic. It's not something I can leave or that I want to.
From:
no subject
I've been struggling with that lately as well. Not that people have flatout told me I have no culture. But in my classes we've explored it and people talk about whiteness and the 'other'. I think everyone has a culture, whether or not other people want to believe it. You can't take two white people and think that Person A's cultural background is identical to Person B.
I think I identify with that.
From:
no subject
I struggle a lot with the idea of "whiteness." It's not that I'm not pale or that I don't experience white privilege. It's that there's this idea that there's one white culture. And wow, that's... so not true. As I mentioned in this post, I remember encountering meat on Friday at college (as one very tangible example) and just not knowing what to do. When there wasn't a fish option on Good Friday, I didn't know what to do - I had a a salad and my parent took me to a very late night fish dinner when they arrived (I didn't get Easter Monday off of school, so the family would come to see me). That's just one example.
But I'll never forget the time someone told me, point blank, that I was white so I didn't have an ethnicity. I was never so shocked or insulted. I also had no idea how to respond without being equally insulting.
From:
no subject
To say white people have no culture is, in my mind, manipulating the definition of culture as we know it.
I'd probably feel similarly. I know I'd feel insulted.
From:
no subject
To back that up with an anecdote, I was at my friend Chih-yu's (she's Chinese) birthday dinner. It was me, her, and 10 other Asian people. I happened to recognize one of them from work (we just happened to work in the same company, same building, same floor, same wing), and I said "I thought I recognized you!" Her boyfriend immediately jumped on me and said "Oh, I guess all Asians look the same to you, white boy? You white people are all the same racist, wide-eyed assholes. With eyes that wide you would think you could see the difference between us, huh? Fucking white people."
Now, ignoring the fact that he accused me of being racist while littering his comment with racism, I kind of believe that the only reason he missed the "splinter vs wooden beam" situation is because he believed that only white people can be racist, or that you can't be racist against white people.
I find it kind of sad that while racism is a slowly shrinking issue as time goes on in most places (in the US), people still shit all over white people just as much as they did ten or fifteen years ago (Asian kids and black kids in school used to call me "wide-eye" and "witeout" respectively in elementary school... was it that hard to say "Chris"?) I mean, is it really that hard to look past the surface?
Part of me thinks that as time goes on, racism against white people will continue and get worse, and we will be too... not scared, but guilty to do anything about it because of our history. I mean, just watch stand-up comedy. All the white comedians talk about is life in general and focus on things like being a red neck, hot pockets, and themselves. Everyone else talks about race. As soon as a white guy talks about race, he's a racist.
I wonder if it will ever be socially unacceptable to call a white person a "cracker" or any other label used as a derogatory term for white people? And on the note of "white culture", I wonder if people think all white people share culture or have no culture because the majority of white people aren't loud about it?
Ok, I'm stopping ranting right now, because racial double-standards really get under my skin and I could go on for hours. Maybe because I've always been told I wasn't equal with everyone else (in a bad way... also, I feel this strongly about all forms of equality, not limited to but including gay rights and women's equality). Probably because every time a racial double-standard has affected me, I've been on the short end of the stick.