What makes you proud of your ethnicity?

[blueskye]

Hi everyone! ❤️

This is my first time starting a thread and I'm excited to hear what others have to say about - What makes you proud of your ethnicity?

Please take a couple of minutes to reflect about this topic and then share with others.

Australia is a gorgeous place to live in and I'm proud to be an Australia. What makes me proud of my Chinese ethnicity though is that Chinese food is amazing! Dumplings, Dim Sum, etc.... some of the food looks wacky but gosh, very yummy!

I am also super proud of my parents who immigrated to Australia. Dad is fluent with English because he studied in Canada but my Mum came to Australia without knowing how to speak or read English. Dad worked in a white people dominated place, so he worked extra hard to prove his worth. Mum raised her 3 young daughters in a country that was foreign to her. Sometimes when I get mad at my mum when we have a disagreement, I try and remind myself of the difficulties she faced in the past. If someone chucked me in a foreign country where I had to live, buy groceries, catch public transport (mum didn't know how to drive for the first couple of years), didn't know the language.... that's scary! My parents make me proud to be Chinese.

Your turn! 🙂

[Guest_0087]

So I saw this post and I thought it might be a good one to respond to as I feel like there may be others who can relate, especially as it is of so much turmoil for me.

My ancestry is Indian, but I consider myself anything but. I am a 2nd generation Zimbabwean, who was brought up with a good mixture of my religion and social and cultural values. I consider myself quite modern and open minded. My last relationship was with a white non-muslim and I couldn't have been happier, so it hurt when that ended. I feel like having one culture to define me is a bit hard.

There are things in my Indian culture that I am grateful for, but I am not Indian at all. I am often considered 'the white boy' in my family. I have a lot of African/Zimbabwean things I would never trade for, or things from ancestry, but also like a lot of the things that Australian society has taught me. I don't think I could be proud of something, but I can definitely be grateful of it. I am grateful that I was born and grew up in Zimbabwe. I am grateful for the sacrifice my parents made in moving here. I am grateful for the things that define me (music tastes, dress sense, tv shows etc) I am grateful for some of the food and lifestyle ideas that come from Indian culture or Zimbabwean culture. I am grateful for...

I've experienced being judged and defined by my skin colour, or my religion, but I can guarantee that none of that could be further from the truth. Culture is something that can often define us, but I think it should be more about accepting them for ourselves, but not letting that dictate us or how we are around other people. I know for a fact there are certain cultures that we do not agree with, but that does not mean we have to engage with it, we can just acknowledge them.

I don't really know if this post makes sense, hopefully it does.

[Donte]

Thank you Zimbos05, I can relate to what you say like many others do too. Culture is such an individual thing as we all identify with various aspects of society and pick elements that we can relate with and we understand from our own unique experience. It really varies how much each partakes and involves themselves within the culture that represents us and we are our only benchmark. Culture, like language and faith keeps evolving together with the people who live by it and in it. We create it and is there to serve us. There are no two people of the same culture who are identical with each other no matter how many common things they may share. To put it very plainly, it's like a bag of oranges, a bag of lemons, a bag of grapefruits etc. Let's say the oranges represent one cultural group, the lemons another, the grapefruit another etc. We can clearly see the difference between these, however, if look closely, no orange is identical, no lemon is the same, no grapefruit looks exactly like the rest in the bag...simplistic analogy I know, but I think it helps us visualize diversity within diversity...

[Papa-Smurf-]

I'm proud of my white ethnicity because my people invented almost everything that makes an advanced society and our white cultures are so adopted by others as a default, people often don't recognize we have a culture and it belongs to us.

[randomxx]

l'm in other forums and have been a long time but unfortunately most are US dominated unless you want to search out specific places.

Well l can say that the US just sounds so messed up , their thinking and ways , mentality , we sound soooooo much better and that alone makes me very proud. Not only but also just thanking the Gods that l am the grounded and earthy Australian and of how grounded and earthy, still have our heads screwed that we all are here as compared. lt's a huge thing when you get to see just how messed up other places have become.

l'm also proud that we all live way way way down here , down under ha ha, that in itself is just so unique , love that aspect.

My mum was French they moved her when she was 12, my dad English Irish.

[have_a_nice_day]

Yayyy fellow chinese!!