More thoughts on Being White

I think the side of my genetic make-up that is the most puzzling to me is the 1/32 part that is Native American (what does it mean to be 1/32 something anyways?).  But sometimes I think, what exactly is the story of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  No one in my family has ever really talked about her.  Heck, I don't even know what tribe she was from.  But I just wonder how she became part of my family.  How did she meet my Great-Great-Great Grandfather?  Was the family okay with them being married?  Did they make her completely leave her culture behind?  Or did she choose to leave it behind?  Or did she actually leave it behind, or did her kids just not own that identity?  

And that's something else that has been puzzling me recently - choosing your own cultural identity.  I didn't even realize until college that choosing your cultural identity was even an option.  And I've been thinking about it a lot more recently after reading Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, where he talks about consciously deciding to self-identify as black.  And I started to wonder what makes people do that?  He could have just as easily identified as white, or even as mixed.  But he chose black.  And that is what he is.  He is black.  No one has to tell him that he is black.  He made the decision, and now there is no question about it.  

As I think about this idea of self-identification, I wonder what happened with the children of my Native American ancestor.  What happened in the lives of her children, mixed Native American and white.  Did they make the conscious decision to identify as white?  Were they forced into identifying as white?  Or did they actually identify as Native American, and it was the next generation that dropped the cultural identity of their grandmother?  Whoever first decided to identify as white, did they do it just because they looked more white than Native American?  Or did they identify as white because they would benefit more from being white than being Native American?  None of these questions really have any answers, but all I know is that somewhere along the way, our "Native Americanness" was lost.  

And I wonder, did I even have to opportunity to identify as Native American?  I mean, there's so much mixed up in my blood, but in some tribes, even the smallest amount of native blood qualifies you for membership.  Could I have identified as the tribe of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  Could I still now, even though my whole life has been built around my identity as a white American.  

All of these percentages are kind of confusing to me anyways.  "I'm 1/32 Native American."  What?!  What the crap does that mean?  And I believe that I've heard somewhere that you have to be 1/8 to claim minority status for applying to colleges, etc.  Why does a person who is 1/8 have more right to claim minority status than someone who is 1/16?  Or even 1/32?  Why do we always have to speak in numbers?  How do you reduce a racial or cultural identity to a simple fraction?  

And what does all of this mean for me... the Scotch-Irish-British-Native American?