My Jewban kid and his Cubish dad
-
- January
- 21
Ethnic identity has been sort of a complicated issue for my son. He’s always known that his mom is Jewish and I’m Cuban, which makes him half Jewish and half Hispanic. But a Cuban guy with an Irish last name always has another story to tell, so he’s got the Anglo thing mixed in there from a few generations back, and his mom’s family is originally from Eastern Europe. The Jewish end has mostly dictated his faith, as his mom has been more observant of her faith than I have been of mine. At least we’re all white, so there’s no confusion with race.
Obviously, most of us are mutts these days anyway. But the real complication has always come in how my son is to refer to himself. He had to choose a culture to write about for a recent school project and he chose, with my encouragement, to report on his Jewish heritage. But what exactly is he when you mix it all in?
Well, thank God for the Urban Dictionary, which points out that my son is a Jewban. We even got confirmation on this from Wikipedia, just to make sure we were on the right track. Armed with our new resource, we were able to take it one step further and determined that I’m not just Cuban: I’m Cubish.
Now, we don’t really subscribe to labeling people as a general rule, but it’s just nice to know in a pinch. If only we can get the U.S. Census up to speed we’d be good to go.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
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Well I have a pet peeve and that is Jewish is a faith not a nationality. I don’t care that it has been turned into a nationality , the fact is it isnt.
And would want America to win. Same goes for the other countries. Yes we shouldn’t go to war .. yeah. But I am tired with people harping on anything other than being American. I honestly could care less how people show their faith in religion. But i dont expect when i ask your other heritage for you to answer catholic so why Jewish? 
Being catholic just makes you religious. being American is just that. are you cuban first or american it’s semantics. even i fall under that. I used to say i am italian american mutt. lately i just say i am an american mutt.
because honestly, what would i do if we went to war with Italy? I would hope I could still get some good imported Mortadella
If i ask a Muslim their nationality I could get a plethora of answers None of which tells me they are Muslim. Unless i ask their religion.
Tell your son he was born american
I have gotten on my soap box lately on speaking English and also the fact that this is america and you either are or your not … remember we have the freedom to do many things we also have Duties which many people forget.
Just my 3 cents …
Thanks for the post, Steve.
But, well, the whole entry was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But, yes, being Jewish would pertain to faith, although a case could be made — and one I subscribe to — that there is also a cultural identity that transcends religion.
Nonetheless, part of the point of my blog posting was the whole confusion over ethnicity, faith and nationality. I am white (race), Hispanic (ethnicity), Christian (faith) and Cuban (nationality). My ex is Jewish (faith and culture), white (race) and descended from Eastern Europeans (geographic identity).
As I said, we are all mutts to some degree anyway, and I just found it amusing that someone had put a title on our particular ethnic and national heritage. Of course my son knows he’s an American. But he also knows that all of our ancestors came form somewhere, and celebrating that was, I thought, part of being an American.
But what do I know? I’m just a Cubish guy with a Jewban kid.
Jorge, take your son to the National Geographic website and be part of the genographic project
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html
I think that’s a great way to teach kids where we ALL came from!
I hear ya Jorge. Tongue in cheek is great and i fully understood the humor. But lately with the fiscal crisis etc. I wish we could all just pull together and be Americans. or just plain human, and throw out that which divides.
with that. i guess its better to be cubish than cubist
Well put.
And just when we thought this stuff was simple, check out the three definitions for cubist in the Urban Dictionary:
1. A person that can solve the Rubik’s Cube and understands the methodology behind it.
2. An artist who uses Cubism techniques to provide an absract quality to his/her work.
3. A person who works in a cubicle and is hardly seen ever seen outside of it during working hours, does not engage in office banter, office politics,office gatherings or discussions.
It’s fine to be tongue-in-cheek with this stuff, but some people actually take it seriously. That’s where I get off the bus. Steve C. is right.
It’s good that people no longer stick to their own narrow ethnic group. That means that at some point, all this nonsense has to fall of its own weight, because it just becomes too confusing. That seems to be happening already.
I’m unclear what “this stuff” is that people take so seriously. Ethnic pride? I don’t know where we got so paranoid that we actually feel threatened by someone celebrating their ethnicity. I wasn’t born in the States, my son was. We’re both Americans. But we’re Americans who appreciate where we’re from, and at no point does it threaten our loyalty or commitment to our country.
Or are we all of a sudden talking about another subject?
Jorge, I’m sure you can see that when focus on ethnicity or religion or race is taken beyond a certain point, the results can be bad.
People shouldn’t be limited as to what they can do in life by factors like that. It seems to me that such an emphasis on ethnic factors that separate people can add to limitations, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There’s nothing wrong with ethnic pride, but I see a lot of people who go well beyond that, and base their whole view of the world on their ethnicity. I don’t think that’s good. Ethnic pride is a good thing that can become bad when taken too seriously, leading to prejudice against and disdain toward those who don’t share that same background.
Understand that I have virtually no ethnic pride myself, so that clearly impacts on my view of this issue.
Ethnic or religious pride can be harmful when it is taken to the extreme and imposed on others. But I think most people have an inclusive sort of pride. They do not want to impose their culture on others, rather, they want to share it in the same way that you would want to share a good restaurant or movie with a friend. In the US we have greatly benefited from these shared cultures. I live in Brooklyn, and it truly is a melting pot. The great thing about the US is that we retain some of our different cultures (including pride, why retain it if you aren’t proud of it?) while at the same time having the overarching shared experience of being Americans, or residents. I feel this very strongly, especially in New York. We come from all over the world, but we are all New Yorkers. The two are not exclusive.