by Jackie D

Created on: April 05, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

This was a touching topic. I am first generation Italian/Sicilian. I cherish my culture and have very fond memories of my childhood and the celebrations of being "Italian". Traditions during the Holiday's, the food we ate, the songs we sang the games we played. My mother and her family of 13 siblings, kept this spirit alive. As they passed on, slowly these traditions and celebrations of our culture died with them. The generations that came after my mothers family including mine, allowed those traditions to almost disappear. Now I have a family of my own. My children are multi-cultural and multi-racial. They are of Italian, Black, American & Canadian Indian, Irish, Dutch, Hawaiian, Puerto Rican and French descent. How do we embrace their cultures? Which one do we celebrate? In American society and according to the white man's science, if you have one drop of black blood in you, you are black. Now I don't cook Italian food during the Holiday's, I cook what some may classify as a combination of various foods. I failed to maintain the traditions of my Italian culture, but I am not disappointed with that. Many of my friends make comments that I black and only white on the outside. Sometimes that offends me because I am proud to be Italian, I am not offended because they make the statement that I am black, I am offended because they make these statements just because the man I love is black, most of my friends are black and my children are "black". It is true, I've embraced the black culture but I am so proud to be Italian and wouldn't change it for anything. I love being Italian, I love my history, but I also embrace and love the history and culture of my husband and my children. When my daughter was younger I wouldn't allow her to participate in a Thanksgiving project at school because I do not agree with participating in a Holiday that celebrates the slaughtering and cannibalization of Native Americans because that is what the pilgrims did. I appreciate and respect all cultures and races. I believe that because of this so-called "melting pot" we have to adopt new traditions because we are becoming a new culture. For my family it will be a combination of the past, the present and the future. We will create our own traditions because that is what time will do. Everyone has different beliefs, but mine are that we all came from Africa and people evolved from there, moved to different regions and developed their own traditions and cultures. So the times that we are in today are only caught up in another phase of evolution. We are just in the middle of it and we are experiencing it. We should all embrace it and create our own traditions for the future of the new culture.

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