Armenian, Greek, What’s in a name?
Chris Terzian,
Gainesville, FL
As an Armenian and Greek individual, my race and heritage are known by the last three letters of my name (ian). It denotes my roots and my origins.
Designed to divide, conquer, oppress us.
Teale Greylord,
Madison, WI
I am an Armenian-American descendent of genocide and diaspora, it’s like living in the gray areas of identity, race, and recognition. Never forget.
Armenian at home; American at school
Ovsanna,
Los Angeles, CA
I am an Armenian immigrant living and studying in America with my siblings and my parents.
Colored people? What? Red? Green? Blue?
George Sakalian,
Sweden
These were my thoughts when as a small boy in the 1930’s i first heard of “colored people” with no explanation. I lived in an ethnically mixed neighbourhood in the U.S. and played with other small boys…black or white. I never thought of the black boys as being different until some time later when it was explained to me that they were inferior! This, of course, made no sense to me.
As for being treated as inferior, I have learned from my parents of how they had been treated when they lived in Turkey around 1915-1916. They were not acquainted at the time but both managed to escape when the Turks began their ethnic cleansing of Armeniens and other Christian minorities. Millions were slaughtered. They each came from large families and as far as they knew no other family members survived. The Turks still refuse to acknowledge what happened in spite of overwhelming evidence. President Biden’s acknowledgement of this reign of terror was welcomed.
Armenian, Tagalog, Ilocano, no. Wolof, yes.
Anoosh Jorjorian,
Santa Monica, CA.
My paternal grandmother came to the U.S. to escape the Armenian Genocide. My maternal grandfather jumped aboard a U.S. submarine during World War II because the Japanese Army put a price on his head. When they raised my parents, they wanted more than anything for their children to assimilate into America and so did not teach their children their first languages. I grew up a racial mystery, looking neither Armenian nor Filipina, but certainly not “American” either. In 2000, I moved to Senegal in West Africa. Whereas in the U.S. I am a woman of color, in Senegal I became a “white” woman. I understand the complexities and the arbitrary construction of race because I live it in my body every day. I blog more about this as Araña Mama.
Race is a story we tell
Charles McCoy,
Los Gatos, CA.
I grew up being steeped in the folklore of Irish and Italian cultural heritage, thinking I was “half Irish”and “half Italian” and listening to my grandmother crowing about only being Toscana and speaking Toscana ( the received Italian dialect). As I did my DNA testing, I discovered that I am genetically more Scots than Irish and on my mother’s side, which we were taught was 100% Italian, it turns out that I share a “perfect match”on my mtdna with a professor at King Saud University amongst other middle-eastern cousins who are Palestinian, Lebanase, Armenian, Turkish, French, etc. I think you get the picture. . .that is why I say “race”is a story we tell our children and our children’s children and somewhere along the way, these stories become fact for our “cultural”and racial identities. Turns out, the whole world is one big family!
