The geneology of me

I have an announcement to make. It's an announcement I haven't made in a long time:

I'm a first-generation American.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I, the whitest of all white girls, a stereotypically English-speaking-only capitalist ultra-consumer no-knowledge-of-history American-type person, am of the first generation in my family to be born in the USA.

This used to mean something. Growing up on the East Coast (where practically everyone was white), people were interested in my experience of being first generation. They would ask me questions like, "When did you parents move from Canada" or "Do you know French?" (Answers: 1950's and no)

I found this was not so in Los Angeles. I'd be talking to someone, maybe a latino or asian person, sometimes someone would tell me they were first-generation. I would say "me too!" thinking we were in the same boat. They would laugh, "it doesn't count for you!" they would tell me. I always felt kinda bad about that. Just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm not first-generation too! I totally understand that the more different the original country from the USA in terms of race and culture, the bigger deal it is to be "first-generation," but to dismiss me like that is pretty rude.

That's probably my biggest pet peeve: being dismissed. That's probably why I'm still pissed about this subject and writing an entry about it, even though I stopped telling people I was first-generation years ago and haven't been dismissed since. I need to get over it.