Trying too Hard?

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

14 Dec 2006 01:00 PM

I have to make two dishes when I go to a potluck.

I realize this doesn't sound like much of a problem. But here's the thing: our preschool has several potlucks a year. It's a very diverse community and the invitation is always the same: bring a dish from your family's ethnic heritage.

Well, my family has at least seven different ethnic heritages. Six of them are some form of European. These are represented by my son. The seventh is Korean, represented by my daughters. My son and a daughter were both students at the preschool. I always worry that if I just bake my staple Irish Soda Bread, others will think I am ignoring the girls' heritage. But if I bring just Korean food, will I seem-perhaps especially to be people who are both ethnically and culturally Asian--to be trying too hard, pretending to be something I'm not?

Our Korean doctor once told me that he was invited to speak on a panel of Korean professionals, and one of the panelists was a White adoptive mother of Korean kids. "She thought she was Korean, I guess," said the doctor in a somewhat puzzled voice. I remember thinking that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. Yet, at adoption conferences I've seen Korean music bands made up entirely of White adoptive parents. I wondered if they felt silly performing in front of "real Korean" guests, but then I decided maybe the kids would feel proud of the Korean culture when they saw that their parents valued it enough to invest so much effort in it. I was once at an early childhood education event where they wanted to demonstrate different languages and asked people to count in any language they knew, so I counted in Korean. But when my church wanted people to read prayers in the four languages most representative of Catholics in our city-English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean-but couldn't contact a Korean parishioner on a day's notice and asked me to read, I declined. I probably could have stammered through it with my two quarters of community college Korean, but it would hardly have seemed representative of the community. But if my daughter does it when she's older, it won't seem odd at all. Even if I have to tutor her in the Korean.

Interesting, hm?

Learn more about Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism.

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