Isabelle Strauss
McLean, VA

I feel boring when I fill out race and ethnicity on a form – I’m white, nuff said. Or maybe not. My father’s family is of Anglo-German descent, fairly common in the US, but my mother came to the US as an immigrant. Growing up, I spoke a different language at home, I had “weird” food in my lunch box, and my mom and I voted for president for the first time together because she became a US citizen around the time I turned 18. But because I’m white, I feel that my mother’s culture is not given the value it deserves. I’m not white and Hispanic, I’m not white and (insert racial diversity here) and so no one thinks I represent a different culture. Maybe this is generational – but I think race is not what’s important in distinguishing individuals and communities.

To me, race is just science; whether your body produces more or less melanin based on evolution to the heat or cold or sun or wind, etc, over hundreds of thousands of years. But culture is what makes us who we are. Culture gives us the language we speak, the food we like, what music we listen to, which god we pray to, and many of our values (the list can go on and on). We now have lots of boxes for racial diversity, but where’s the box for my cultural diversity?