Cultural Losses

The United States of America is, supposedly, a melting pot of cultures. The land of the free and home of the brave is supposed to be a place where many different cultures come together to create one country. A united country with many different, beautiful cultures within it.

This, of course is not often the case.

Within our country, and in its parent, Britain, before it, there is a tendency to erase or suppress other cultures and belief systems in order to serve a white, British, Christian group. Some cultures, like my own Irish ancestry, are better off; the cultures of the places we came from are simply erased from the mind in place of a “unified” American culture.

Other cultures, Native American cultures, non-Christian cultures, immigrant cultures, aren’t so lucky. Because they are more dissimilar from the “normal” American culture, they are erased through shame, laws, and even violence. It is a system of power made to benefit a select few and assimilate the rest.

I am privileged, even in the loss of my families’ cultural history. My family’s move into American culture was painless. However, sometimes I think about the history I could have know, the stories I could have heard, and the legends that I should have inherited, and it makes my heart ache.

I should have inherited three histories. I have lost three histories. The first was lost to adoption and social norms that tell me to hide my curiosity away. The second and third were lost to the call for a “unified” American culture. The third was also lost to the Catholicization of Ireland by the British. My brain likes to stay on the third lost history the most.

My legal name is a war between a British and American ideal and my ancestors in Ireland. On one side, I was given a first name from the Catholic bible; the family that was forced into a Catholic lifestyle by the British. On the other side, I have my Irish last name: a family history I never got to learn. It’s almost poetic.

This label is that war in my name, a war within myself. Can I claim a culture that was left behind by foolish ancestors of mine as a tool of survival? What culture is mine in a country broken into different pieces? Where do I belong?

My family and I are lucky, all things considered. We did not lose our lives, and our culture was not truly suppressed. And yet, I cannot help but wish to hold my own cultural history in my hands.

This story was based on Poetry Art & Design.