Fri 16 Mar 2007
A few years ago, my (Irish) sister-in-law gave Aitch a green t-shirt that said “Irish Prince.” I kept in the drawer for awhile. It was too big for him, but that’s not really the reason. First, I try to avoid “prince” and “princess”-themed gear. This is my child; I’m raising him, not worshipping him. More importantly, though, I didn’t want to turn my baby into a walking ethnic joke, which is what the ironic contrast between the Irish shirt and his Asian features seemed to suggest.
Coming up on St. Patrick’s Day 2007, Aitch is big enough to fit into the t-shirt. Today, the kids were invited to wear green to celebrate the holiday early. I thought about putting the shirt on him, and all that it implies. Then I suddenly remembered “Lisa.”
Lisa was one of my few Jewish classmates in high school. I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, populated by descendants of German immigrants, and there were very few Jews that publicly identified as such, but Lisa was open about her culture. She showed pictures of her bat mitzvah and talked about what her family did for Seder and told us about traveling to Israel. Her last name was obviously ethnic.
So on St. Patrick’s Day, when she showed up in a green t-shirt with green ribbons in her hair and a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” button, we thought it was a joke. One of the teachers kidded her about being Irish for the day, and she responded, “But I am Irish.”
It turns out that she was born to Irish parents, both raised Catholic, but her parents divorced and her mother remarried a Jewish man. Both mother and daughter converted, and Lisa took her stepfather’s name. She had never mentioned this before; I guess the St. Patrick’s Day costume was her way of sharing the rest of her story.
So I decided that having my little Korean boy wear an “Irish Prince” t-shirt couldn’t be an ethnic joke, because he himself — Korean features, Irish last name — was not an ethnic joke. And I put the t-shirt on him this morning.
Most of the other kids were wearing shades of green, but one of the three adopted Chinese girls in his class was wearing a nearly identical t-shirt that said, “I’m so cute, I must be Irish.”
Oy vey.
March 17th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
This reminds me of a guy I went to medical school with. He was a very observant Jew — no working (or even turning on lights) on Saturdays, yarmulke, lots of kids. He had dark curly hair and slightly olive skin, which made me assume he was Sephardic.
Until I found out that he was also attending the African-American student meetings. Turns out he was born to an African-American guy and a Mennonite woman, then adopted by a liberal Jewish couple, then went to Israel on a trip at age 17 and decided he should become Orthodox.
Made me a lot less likely to make ethnic assumptions from then on.