We have several new families with young children at church. Families with six, five children, it’s so beautiful, it brings me to tears. But what I want to talk about is something different.
One of the new girls at church is the daughter of Ukrainian parents. Klara and this girl glomped on to each other like nothing I’ve ever seen. Klara doesn’t grant her friendship easily and takes a long time to warm up to people. She’s extremely choosy in her attachments. But with this girl the attraction was instant and intense. By culture, these girls are completely American. Neither speaks a word of Ukrainian or has much interest in her parents’ origins. They love pizza and cheeseburgers, play with labubus, recite American play rhymes, and can spend hours debating the origins of the 6-7 routine. But there is something that goes deeper than culture. It’s genetics, the call of the blood. Human beings are not solely made out of words. We are physical beings before we are anything else. These two girls fixated on each other because they have a shared biological link.
I experience something similar with my Ukrainian Fulbrighter. Politically, we are the polar opposites of each other. My Ukrainian is weaker than my English or Spanish, so speaking to her requires an effort. We belong to different generations, and our life experience is radically different. Still, the way I feel around her is unlike anything I feel around colleagues with whom I have much more in common in pretty much every way.
Ethnic enclaves are not a good idea, is what I’m saying. It’s not about intentions or conscious decisions. There are powerful biological forces inside of each of us. It flatters our egos to pretend that this is not the case and that we are entirely the product of our own desire. But there are many things in all of us that we cannot control. God created the universe with Logos. But we are not God. We don’t create ourselves, or at least not entirely.
Clarissa's Blog 
What is a nation besides an ethnic enclave? How can multiple nations exist within a State without the State becoming an empire?
Nations are good things. Empires…?
LikeLike
A common ethnic background certainly helps but most Western countries are bonded by relatively common cultures — sometimes based on religion, but more often only accepting oher overall similiar social beliefs.
My late uncle always claimed that multi-ethnic Canada did not bond well until WW2. Before going overseas, both my grandfather and great uncles had warned them to only seek Canadian medical assistance due to the residual class system of the British. He claimed that the military joined them into a single almost familial force, and being murdered as untermensch by the SS Hitlerjugend certainly reinforced that bonding.
LikeLike
True. The most successful nation-states are not mono-ethnic. But they have a very clear and dominant ethnic group in charge.
What I suggest is that we lose our fear of taking about the biological basis of ethnicity and how it defines culture.
LikeLike
Agree, if the different ethnicities are capable and willing to intermarry, the resultant offspring will forge a new nation — hopefully with the better parts of the original cultures. If not we can have the endless complaining of the pampered Québécois, and now unfortunately, possibly some Muslims.
LikeLike
Yes and no.
Christianity is still a far better basis for shared culture than race, and every passing year solidifying this for me.
I have more shared culture with black churchladies and Catholic abuelas now, than I have with “white people” generally, and that shared culture is: the Bible.
This started being true back in the 90s when the more openminded evangellies realized that for prolife purposes, Catholics were actually their allies and not the enemy. All increase since then.
ethyl
LikeLike
My grandfather was part of an SA division captured by Rommel in North Africa. He apologized to them for not having enough German guards and needing to hand them over to Italians, which he considered beneath their Aryan dignity.
People who volunteered for Germany also did pretty well for themselves back in SA after the war.
https://samilhistory.com/2018/04/14/rommels-aide-de-camp-was-a-south-african/
LikeLike
Are great.
LikeLike