The new neighbor down the street asked about my ancestry. I told him I was Swedish and Norwegian and maybe something else.  The maybe was a rumor that a great – great grandmother on my mother’s side entertained the sailors for money and who knows where the father was from.  It may or may not be true, but I like spreading the story. I am certain my neighbor’s curiosity about my ancestry was not sinister in any way.  However, it gave me pause.

Recently I saw a posted meme listing things about “us” vs. “them.”  One item stated “us” – Americans, not Muslins.  The logic was stupid, I have no doubt, the intent was sinister.

Nobody picks their ancestors, yet we did not get here without them.  Ancestral paths are long and often twisting.  The ancient world was brutal.  I suspect along the line we all have ancestors who ranged from almost saints to truly evil.

Fortunately, who our ancestors were, does not predetermine the settings of our moral compass.  No matter who our ancestors are, trying to be a good decent person is probably the best path for any of us to actually be a good and decent person.

The bottom line is our ancestors got us here, how we move forward is no longer their fault.  Sure, circumstances such as inherited propensity for addiction can cause us to stray from the straight and narrow but blaming our ancestors for what we did with what we got seems a stretch.

None of us is perfect. What would perfect even look like?  But here is the deal.  A good and decent person does not assume someone else is not a good and decent person based on that person’s heritage.  That is just wrong.  We judge others by their individual actions not the actions of their ancestors.

If you go back far enough, all of our ancestors come from South Africa. As we migrated from one region to another, over many thousands of years, slight differences in DNA developed between groups in different regions.  Persons from different regions often had different skin tones, certain body types, propensity for certain diseases and the like.  Today, it is possible to test a person’s DNA and estimate what regions their ancestors inhabited.

To be clear there is only one species of human, Homo sapiens.  All of us share about 99.9% the same DNA.  When they test for differences between us they look at the 0.1% of our DNA.  Persons from every region can and do successfully mate with one another.  We have about the same amount of variation in our DNA between persons within our primary ancestral region as we do between persons from different ancestral regions.

In the past 500 years or so, new transportation methods allowed persons to more rapidly move between the regions.  For example, in the 1700s, ships brought people from Europe and Africa to South and North America.  The people native to both North and South America were nearly wiped out by disease that the Europeans had developed an immunity to.  Today, ships, planes, trains, autos, motorcycles, and who knows what else are mixing the populations between regions.

The population of almost any region on earth now has mixed ancestry.  The results of the Ancestry.com DNA test never came back 100% South African. All of us have ancestors who migrated over time.

I was born in the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis. That hospital is now HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center). I have lived in the Twin Cities my entire life.  Over 3.28 million people live within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  The ancestries represented within this region include people from every continent (except maybe Antarctica) and most countries within those continents.

Virtually every one of the 3.28 million people who live here are not native to the area.  The thing is because we live there now, the Twin Cities metropolitan area is now part of our ancestral line.  All descendants of the 3.28 million people living in the Twin Cities area will have ancestors who were from the Twin Cities area, even if it was just a short while.

Me saying I am Swedish and Norwegian actually means three generations ago I had some relatives who lived in Sweden or Norway.  Thus, I can say I am from Sweden and Norway.

Sure, you can pretend some who live here are “them.”  However, once we live in the same area we are from that area. Everyone who lives here is an “us.”

If you live in the Twin Cities area, you are from the Twin Cities area.  The Twin Cites is part of your heritage.  Since the Twin Cities has people from all corners of the earth, like it or not, so does your heritage.  The Twin Cities region has people of many religions and many who are not religious.  It has educated people and those not so educated.  It has the cultured and the not so cultured.  It has the rich and poor.  It has all sexual orientations.  It is a diverse area by virtually all measurements of diverse.

Yes, we and our ancestors come from many different backgrounds. Our children and our children’s children don’t even see most of the silly things we think made us different one from another.  The result is an area with an amazing diversity and richness of culture.  It is not always easy for those of one culture to understand those of another. Sometimes it can seem threatening for some.  Yet,  together we are what America is and always has been.

So, let me end with this thought.  We should each do our best to be a good and decent person.  Look around a bit and realize you are part of a wonderful community where we judge people by what they do as individuals, not by some weird idea that we should be judged by our heritage.  The golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  However, remember, most often the “others” are not them, we are all us.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com