When I read the thread title...I didn't even think of background or ethnicity. I thought I would come to read all sorts of 'favorite things' type of posts. Or things of that nature. I, having come from some unpleasantness in the past, choose to define myself by where I am now (California) and the things and people that are around me now. When folks ask me my ethnicity I will answer I am Californian, knowing that is not what they want to know. For purposes of my skin color, hair and eye color, I suppose what they want to hear is Scandinavian. But I know nothing about my own set(s) of ancestors, (does that make me bad?), and very little about their ways of life and/or how they came to America. I grew up in Wisconsin...but feel no pangs of longing for that area. I am who I am because of all I've gone through to get to the point where I'm at now. I am happily non-ethnic....I sort of LIKE the term mongrel.