What's in a label?

First off, please go read this story:

"White African-American Suing NJ Med School for Discrimination"

Hmmm....

Let's see - my wife grew up in Africa, her folks still live there. In fact she's spent more time living there than she has in the States. For years she has identified herself more as an African than an American in many cultural ways - for she often feels a foreigner in the country she is a citizen of. Plus let's consider the fact that her ancestry includes within recent generations Cherokee, various Celts, and the other mixes common to our immigrant nation. So, is she an American, and African, a Native American or what?

Or there's me. Who in the past three generations has seen a mix of Ute, Scots border/English, German, Russian and who knows what blend together under one roof. I've always identified with the native side, whereas I have other family members who don't want to imagine anything non-Caucasian being mixed in. The same as she has family who still thinks her mom "married a Yankee" because her father is from Virginia originally. And these are just the labels we deal with in our own families, much less when dealing outside that kith & kin.

Now we've blended that together in our children, who will have their own time figuring out which label they wish to use. And whichever they choose, they will also face the labels society puts upon them both by their own choices and by their appearances...

But who gets to decide, and what makes it so? Does the fact of someone's ethnicity make them "more" or "less" an American, or an African, or an Asian than another? Or does geography decide it? I know whites from Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong, and just about every place else - does that make them African, Mexican, or Asian? The same as I know blacks from America, the same zip codes in Mexico, and the Philippines - are they still "African-whatever?" How many generations does it take for us to realize that we define our own cultures and needs, not what we look like? Because honestly, the majority of "African Americans" in this country have been here for generations - long past the point of having any cultural connection to another continent; the same as again a great majority of Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and whatever else you choose have also long been separated from their land of origin.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for maintaining your family identity and roots - for by remembering our pasts we can place ourselves in the context of the present. But we also need to learn when to move beyond these labels and embrace the place we have come to.

I certainly don't expect my brief musings on the subject to fix the cultural problems that continue to plague this planet. But I'm curious as to anyone else with similar experiences & your thoughts on the subject.