For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.
Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.
It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.
My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.
The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.
Women are outperforming men in almost every sphere of life in our society and the women of East Indian ancestry are no exception to this rule. They have broken the cultural mould.
I've got German, Cornish and Scottish ancestry. It might help explain my affinity for forests, the sea, and fatty foods.
My grandmother, my mother and my aunts and their friends were all of southern Chinese ancestry, and they were all strong figures. Though if you asked them who was the head of their families, they would have said their husbands; and yet it was the women who ran everything.
I definitely think my ancestry has something to do with my politics. And I think being deeply suspicious of government and communists is implicit in a lot of first-generation immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe. My mom came over from Romania when she was a kid and they fled the commies who took their family hemp farm.
Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.
