The Diaspora

 

I am uncomfortable with the increasingly common use of the term “diaspora.” Before the 1960s, there was only one “diaspora” in common usage: the Jewish diaspora. Nowadays, everyone sees themselves as part of a diaspora. There is the African diaspora, the Irish diaspora, the Italian diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, and on and on.

This implies we believe our proper home is elsewhere. This implies in turn a lack of allegiance to the community in which we reside, and an alienation from our neighbours. This is not a healthy attitude.

It seems reasonable in cases when people are actually driven out of their original homeland and cannot return: a diaspora of Russian nobles after 1917, perhaps. The more so if the homeland had some special religious significance; such was the case with the Jews. They were indeed living in exile. “Next year in Jerusalem!” 

But if this is not the case, the usage seems frivolous.

If it is just a description of a group of people who emigrated somewhere, should we speak of a diaspora of the English to Canada, the US, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa? A French diaspora to Martinique and Quebec? A German diaspora to Eastern Europe?

We do not. We understand that English Americans are no longer English ethnically, and Quebecois are no longer ethnically the same as the French. Austrians are not Germans. They are their own thing. 

Diasporas are people living in exile. You are not a diaspora if you are free to go back, but do not wish to.

Given this new expanded usage of “diaspora,” I am a member of the Irish diaspora which is commonly referred to nowadays. I think it is even fair to say that the Irish in Canada, or the Highland Scots, were forced out of their homeland. 

However, it still seems absurd to speak in these terms. My Irish ancestors integrated to this new nation, and intermarried. My DNA is mostly Irish, but mixed. My culture, generations later, is not that of Ireland; it is Canadian. When I go to Ireland I find much that is familiar, but there I would not be home, and it would not feel like home. Nor do I have so much in common with my fellow members of the “Irish diaspora” in Australia or the Appalachian mountains of the US South. There is a common cultural substratum there, true, but they are Australians, and Americans.

It is as absurd to speak of an “African diaspora.” The culture of “African-Americans” is American. It is jazz, the blues, gospel, soul. All of this is mainstream America; and essentially all “African Americans” are racially mixed. Were an “African-America” to “return” to Africa, they would not even know which of the dozens of African cultures they were supposed to be returning to.

It is pleasant and commendable to trace one’s ancestry, and preserve one’s cultural traditions, and to cherish them. But to make being a “diaspora” part of your own identity is tragic. It condemns you to a life in exile.