Nationalism and Race: It’s all a matter of sex

(First and foremost, I would like to avoid misconceptions and unnecessary arguments by defining the word “nationality” not the birthplace of one’s parents or one’s grandparents or one’s great-great-grandparents, but as the place where one was born. While such a definition may contradict your Oxford, I am making it clear now that my main discussion is about birthplace and race, not citizenship; as to avoid being double-standard in my own arguments like the case of another blogger in town who oftly contradicts his own arguments.)

I noticed lately that there is this little commotion regarding the question of one’s own nationality: parochial or not.

Now let me discuss my take on the issue.

There are two things that we human beings could never choose or buy.

Nationality and race.

While you can change your own citizenship, such as Einstein who renounced his German for an American one, one could never change one’s nationality.

Just like Simon has put it, being an Indonesian, British, American, or Malaysian national is not something that you can choose by free will.

So, what’s the nationalism fuss all about?

It simply means that your parents had sex there.

The same thing goes with one’s race, it depends upon your parents’ ancestry in the first place, no question asked.

Well, if you are a Caucasian and you want your children to be half-Chinese, you can always marry a Chinese. Then, what race would your children be? Half-Chinese half-Caucasian, of course! You still can’t change your children’s race into half-Chinese half-Latino, unless your wife cheated with a Mexican, that is.

While you may choose half of your children’s race, you can’t choose a single blood drop of yours.

If you were born as a Jewish in Germany, so be it. You can’t purchase another race, not even by the latest scientific improvements!

Frankly, I myself used to wish that I was born as a half-Japanese half-Caucasian, as to get a better look and posture than what I am now. And that time I wasn’t proud too in being 85% Indonesian with a slight tinge of Portuguese and Arabic ethnicity as the way I am now.

Having been born elsewhere notwithstanding, I learned to accept myself as the way it is: an Indonesian ethnic. There’s no way to change it, you can only accept it and love the way you are now.

While you may conceal your own nationality by lying, your race is something that you couldn’t change, and it lives in every inch of your body, within your pigments, skin, hair, blood cells, and pupil. Yet you’re still forced to walk around with it.