The Modern Common Sense of Things: Whose ancestry matters more: Sarah Jessica Parker’s or mine?

by Karen! Garcia | March 4, 2010 | Montana Kaimin

I’m not Mexican. I know it is hard to believe, but even though my last name is Garcia, I don’t hail from Mexico. Sorry to have been so misleading. To drop another bombshell, I don’t speak fluent Spanish.

I can speak the language about as well as anyone else who studied it throughout high school and then neglected it for an entire college career. And I am half-Cuban, on my dad’s side, hence the surname. I know; your mind has been blown.

As prevalent as these irritating (yet harmless) assumptions about my background have been throughout my life, I maintain little to no interest in my Cuban heritage or ancestors. But, I possess just as little curiosity about the distant family history of my mom’s side (Swedish and something else?). I suppose I am indifferent to the whole concept of lineage, which is why the Web site Ancestry.com and the television show “Who Do You Think You Are?” fascinate and confuse me so.

Before the Game Show Network was so insolently removed from my cable package, I remember seeing all these commercials featuring hyper-concerned individuals perusing the Internet for some shred of information about their distant relatives. There were ads for Ancestry.com, a site that lets you scrutinize compiled census records and other mind-numbingly dull documents for facts about your bloodline. They also offer a service where you can “hire a professional” to do all the legwork for you.

If this little Internet business were not enough to baffle me, Ancestry.com recently partnered with NBC to launch the television show “Who Do You Think You Are?” which is a derivation of the British program of the same name. Viewers watch as celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Susan Sarandon publicly embark on a quest to discover their extended family tree.

I don’t know whose roots I am less interested in: Lisa Kudrow’s or my own. And that conundrum is exactly the point. Both seem equally irrelevant to me.

It’s not so much a lack of interest as a lack of import. If I were to use Ancestry.com, I am sure I would stumble upon compelling, quirky or just plain entertaining pieces of information; they just wouldn’t have any significance to me as an individual living in 2010. Is this self-absorbed? Probably, but I don’t profess to be anything but.

In November 2009, I managed to get in contact with Mexican-American broadcast journalist Maria Elena Salinas. A prolific reporter, she is a co-anchor, columnist and co-host for a variety of Spanish and English language television shows and publications, and has interviewed as many world leaders as any other female journalist currently in the business.

We spoke primarily about journalism, but at one point she remarked on my admitted disinterest in my Cuban background: “I think it’s to your benefit to know who you are and where you came from. It depends on whether you just want to coast through life existing or whether you really want to live and know who you are.”

This aggravated me, as it implied that my apathy about being Cuban somehow indicates I am “coasting through life.” Who I am has nothing to do with who they were. My relatives, in the very distant past and the very recent present, do not inform who I am. Which is not to say I have no interest in them or that I don’t care about their lives, but I care in a context that has nothing to do with how I understand or define myself.

It is your choice where you draw your sense of identity from; I am neither righteous nor deplorable for disregarding family lineage in my attempt to carve out a sense of self. I don’t know why this has never been important to me. I suppose I just don’t understand how what people related to me did ages ago is any more relevant to my life than what people completely unrelated to me did ages ago.

“Sooner or later people are interested in who they are,” Salinas told me. “It hits you at different times. Maybe when you have your own family then you might be interested in knowing more about your background.”

Somehow I doubt it. But if I do for some reason become concerned, I guess it is good to know I can just fork over some cash via PayPal and let some nameless “professional” do all the work for me.

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