On Ethnic Identity

I found myself answering a question on LinkedIn recently about whether one feels like having a different personality depending on the language you speak. As a bilingual, I thought my perspective could shed some light on the topic by stating a 'Yes' just like all the other people who commented on the post. However, I ended up realising I don't only feel like I have a different personality depending on whether I use Spanish or English to communicate; I also feel like I have a completely different social and even ethnic identity depending on what country I am in. Probably, it's because not owning a certain nationality may always keep anyone from feeling completely identified as "national material" or as any kind of majority in that community. However, this sense of feeling like having a different ethnic identity may also influence how oriented I am to saving other people's face when speaking English whereas I feel much freer to curse and to be pretty direct in Spanish.

I am very aware of the fact that ethnicity is a very sensitive topic and that, by stating that my ethnic identity changes depending on the language I speak, the country I’m in or to the person I’m talking to may seem like I don’t have an identity at all. Let us accept that assumption may be right, but let me explain what I think is going on.

Spain is the country where I was brought up. I learned Spanish as natively as it can get and also learned English at a British Kindergarten and an American Pre-school, where I learned how to read and write in English before I could in Spanish. When I was finally sent to Spanish school, they asked me if I could read or write, so I was set to skip one year at Spanish Primary School until… someone realised I read ‘Lee’ as /l’i/ (i.e. English) instead of /l’ee/ (i.e. Spanish), so I was sent back to 1st year in Primary School and was kept with my group on 2nd year for English lessons until… someone though it was better to have me in one group only -probably because they noticed I wasn’t making any friends- under the condition that I was not allowed to participate in English class until… someone decided to divide the group into high and low English level and, of course I was sent to the high level English class, where I was requested to memorise lists of vocabulary so that I could pass an exam requesting me to translate: e.g. esnseñar: to show

Well, it looks like this and many other answers were not correct because the list I had to memorise was an Irregular verbs list and ’to show’ is not an irregular verb even though it's a perfect semantic match for 'enseñar'… To be honest, I don’t think any kid who speaks English natively needs to memorise the list of irregular verbs… This means that I was in an odd position because I could speak the language and yet I couldn’t pass my ESL (English as a Second Language) exams…

At this point, and knowing this went on and on for almost 10 years, let me ask you this, would you ever feel part of this culture that is forcing you to fit in a place that is not yours? The truth is I never felt part of that community or any other Spanish community for many different reasons. From their teaching methodologies to their Catholic intrinsic culture in which I never got to fit either, or their food full of oily legumes and soups full of pork fat that I always found disgusting.

To be honest, I never did; I always felt like a foreigner without any roots there or anywhere else. The kind of person the others also perceive as a foreigner when you don’t speak or just are heard speaking English. The kind of person who is addressed in English by most museum guides, dentists, doctors, or random people on the street in Spain. All in all, the kind of person who gets her Spanish corrected by her English students because they assume you’re not Spanish.

I have friends from many different nationalities -even Spanish-, but I never feel Spanish until… I’m abroad and I miss my beloved and -very important- cheap fruit and vegetables, or when it’s Saint Fermin's Day and Pamplona (my birthplace) is celebrating their festivities even though I never got to participate in them, or when I’m in Texas and I miss clubbing and wining or miss not needing a car to go anywhere, or when I miss going out to an Open Mic and sing in front of an international audience, or when I encounter someone who is too strict with rules and I wish they were more Mediterranean, or when I swear in Spanish and I clearly offended all the Spanish speakers in the room because they don’t swear like we do, or when I’m sick and I’d rather have a universal health care system than a very expensive, private one that I can’t afford, or when I feel like it's not worth protesting or demonstrating because it never changes anything.

And I never feel British until… I need to wear sunblock and/or any head/face/arms cover again, all day long, because it’s summer and I’ve been allergic to the sun light since I was 14; or when I miss entering a library that really has old editions of the best books ever written which, indeed, you can touch without having to go through tedious red tape; or when I want to take my shoes off at a public space like an office or the library; or even when I faced a moment in live in which learning Elvish was an act of love for me; or when I’m in the Metro, Subway -or whatever train-shaped city public transport- holding my bag tight and I miss how safe it felt in London; or when I find myself using glottal stops; or when I watch Blackbooks or Fleabag and I can smell the streets and the carpeted indoor settings; or when I write a poem and think about it’s internal structure; or when I write an absurdist play and remember that the Brits get that kind of humour much better than the Spaniards or the Americans; or when someone tells me my resume should be reviewed by a native speaker because I wrote 'learnt' instead of 'learned'; or when I'm blown away by a Royal Shakespeare Company's performance; or when I read T.S Eliot or Rossetti, or when I add music to Blake's poems.

And I never feel Irish until… I read Yeats and connect with all the folk he is passing by, or Joyce, or Beckett, or Wilde!; until I sing ‘The wild Rover’ or listen to Loreena McKennitt’s delicate ’She Moved Through the Fair’. I'd say my connection to Irish culture is one of the most enjoyable and the one I know least about; probably because it started as an intellectual trip into it's literature and folk.

And I never feel American until… I participate in the most amazing experience by teaching almost everything I know about language, culture, science, and life experience to a bunch of Spanish kids -that I will always love and support- within a humanitarian project that I was involved in through the US Embassy in Spain, or when I want to celebrate July 4 because I think it is one of the most interesting and least violent victories in the history of human kind (thank you Prof. Sylvia Hilton for that), or when I am excited about Santa Claus -who has always visited my Spanish place apart from the Three Wise Men-, or when I get to enjoy how intercultural the US is compared to the multiculturality more present in Europe, or when I sing blues or jazz, or when I read Emily Dickinson, or Ginsberg, or O'Hara!

And I never feel European until… I need to express my opinion regardless political correctness, or when I say ‘coche’ instead of ‘carro’ for ‘car’, or when I choose ‘coger’ instead of ‘tomar’ for ‘grab’ (FYI, ‘coger’ is more like ‘F***’ to many non-European Spanish speakers), or when someone apologises for my British influence in English after I’ve given a talk, or when someone tells me that European accents sound too imperialistic, or when I am correcting writings and I need to check if ‘mija’ is considered a word in Mexican Spanish because I don't want to correct over any Spanish variety even if it is not the one I'm familiar with. Because, after all, there's beauty in variety; especially in linguistic variety.

In the end, I don’t know if this fits with having either many or any ethnic identity at all, but this is me. My ethnic identity changes with context and, as I was recently diagnosed with skin cancer, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel British for all the summers to come as I will keep on looking pretty guiri (i.e. foreigner who is normally North-European, drinks a lot, gets sunburnt with ease, and brags about their terrible burns as if they were tan) to Spaniards in the summer; wearing long-sleeved swimming clothes and keeping the sun exposure to a minimum. However, I'll never stop feeling American for every July 4 that I get to live, and Pamplonese for every Jul 6 to Jul 14 even when I don't enjoy watching the running of the bulls, as I relate to the party, the community and even family feeling apart from all the fun -and drinks- that is involved in those festivities.

As you may have seen already, I've been addressing the topic from a very subjective and personal approach, but that doesn't mean that I'm not aware of the fact that the sense of 'belonging' works in two ways: you need to feel you belong but the others need to feel it too. However, most times communities do not care about how you feel when they identify you as a member or an outsider. Of course, that affects the way one understands you're not seen as a member and feeds the feeling of being an outsider and vice versa. So, to be fair, I must admit that, although I may feel I belong to different cultures, I never feel fully accepted by any of them. As a result, I get to choose whether I want to feel rejected by all or just accept I'm me and I don't need to have one only ethnic label that completely fits me. To me, it's just like having many outfits you feel comfortable and natural in depending on the context.