{"id":48849,"date":"2016-08-25T16:06:24","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48849"},"modified":"2016-08-25T16:06:24","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:06:24","slug":"like-dalmia-i-self-identify-as-belonging-to-more-than-one-culture-i-have-fought-for-at-least-a-decade-with-newspapers-about-how-my-national-and-ethnic-origins-should-be-described","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48849","title":{"rendered":"Like Dalmia, I self-identify as belonging to more than one culture. I have fought for at least a decade with newspapers about how my national and ethnic origins should be described."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Like <a href=\"http:\/\/theweek.com\/authors\/shikha-dalmia\" target=\"_blank\">[Shikha] Dalmia<\/a>, I self-identify as belonging to more than one culture. I have fought for at least a decade with newspapers about how my national and ethnic origins should be described. I reject the hyphen (the term \u201chyphenated identity\u201d was first struck by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Horace_Kallen\" target=\"_blank\">Horace Kallen<\/a> in his 1915 essay \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.expo98.msu.edu\/people\/kallen.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Democracy Versus the Melting Pot<\/a>\u201d), which looks far too much like a minus sign to me: black minus British, Irish minus American. Always, I ask to be described as British and Sierra Leonean. I did this after many years of being described in various ways: British-born Sierra Leonean, British of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sierra_Leone\" target=\"_blank\">Sierra Leonean<\/a> origin, or\u2014erasing my Scots mother from the picture altogether\u2014simply as Sierra Leonean. (Notably, never have I been described by British papers as Scottish.) But I am both. I belong to both worlds; not just culturally but physically, I move between them. I have family in both, own property in both, have paid taxes in both. I now live in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\">United States<\/a>, where I also pay taxes. As a so-called transnational, I belong to a growing class of people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Aminatta Forna, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48847\" target=\"_blank\">Your Nationalism Can\u2019t Contain Me<\/a>,\u201d <em>The Nation<\/em>, August 25, 2015. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/your-nationalism-cant-contain-me\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/your-nationalism-cant-contain-me<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like [Shikha] Dalmia, I self-identify as belonging to more than one culture. I have fought for at least a decade with newspapers about how my national and ethnic origins should be described. I reject the hyphen (the term \u201chyphenated identity\u201d was first struck by Horace Kallen in his 1915 essay \u201cDemocracy Versus the Melting Pot\u201d), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8228,2831],"class_list":["post-48849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-aminatta-forna","tag-the-nation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48850,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48849\/revisions\/48850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}