‘So, Where Is Your Family From?’

Depending on the race of who you’re asking, this can be an awkward or racist question

Picture taken by author while in Norway.

I received 23andMe results on Friday after years of wondering the exact breakdown of my ethnicities. There were a couple trace amounts of surprising ancestries, but for the most part, it confirmed what we had already guessed at: too many Northern European origins to feel much attachment to or even keep track of.

Like many white families with their histories stretching centuries in a colonized country, we have no certainty surrounding every family line’s origins, no tangible connection whatsoever to any heritage.

With the earliest immigration to the U.S. being with the Mayflower’s arrival in 1620, and the most recent being around the 1870s, it’s difficult to know my lineage. Even my 23andMe results gave me a vague “15.4% broadly Northwestern European.”

The most “recent” family migrations — from Czechia, Norway, and Sweden — still occurred too long ago to develop attachment to these places. Any foreign tongues died with our ancestors a while ago. No family could be traced there. No recipes or traditions kept alive from the motherland.

Sure, my visits to Scandinavia and Czechia inspired some ancestral pride. But still, how could I say I was…