Gianlupo, my point was NOT to insult anyones heritage but to explain that a persons looks are a poor source of reference in today's day and age.
rumble bee your mentioning that he looked like an American teenager is not relevant to his family lineage.
northern Italians, who were not conquered by the moores in the dark ages, tend to retain the lighter hair lighter skin of their ancestors. but the southern Italians Spanish Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples who were conquered by the moores have had their bloodlines permanently altered. you say you are part Spanish, well that also makes you part Moore, that is where your dark hair and dark skin tone come from. that is your bloodline.
do you describe yourself as Moore? or do you describe yourself as Italian?
i doubt that very many people in Europe, America, Canada ect can claim a true blood decent without a mixing of some type somewhere in their history, we have been intermixing for hundreds of years. so now its become a matter of your parents names. if your parents both have Italian last names then your heritage is generally seen as Italian, same for Greek French ect.
a friend of mine was pure Irish, black as any light skinned African American, but pure Irish by heritage. his parents both had historical lineage in ireland going back 300 plus years. but his family also has interracial mixing going back as far as they can trace, so in their coming together the genetic lines created a dark skinned Irishman. if you ask him he will tell you he is Irish, he doesn't say African Irish, just Irish.
to look at him you would come to a different conclusion than his family history would show. does this make him less Irish?
so again my point was not to insult or degrade anyones bloodlines, but to point out that in today's day and age guessing their lineage by their looks is very inaccurate.
as far as language goes, well that's all in where you grew up. I'm from new hampshire, everyone spoke English here when i was a child so there was no need to learn the French that my farther speaks fluently. does that mean my heritage is less French because i didn't want to learn the language? or that I'm less German because my mom didn't learn the language of her farther and then pass it down to me?
if the Italian part of his history is what he chooses to embrace and be proudest of then why judge him on it?
where ever your ancestors come from is really of no value.
be proud of yourself as a person, live with integrity, treat others with the level of respect that you want to be treated with and hold your head up, everything else is just window dressing.
FLOTSOM
