"Why does ones ancestry need to govern a life?"

It doesn't govern my life - do we all appear that stupid to you? I'm not doing my family history because I need some sort of guidance of how to live my life, but because I want to understand where I came from, where my family fitted into the great scheme of things.

"From reading these posts, it seems that in the UK there is a cultural trait to go overboard on aspects of heritage that creates some sort of belief that one has to rigidly follow a stereotype."

I think you're misunderstanding this Ron.Many people in the UK are very interested in their family history, as are people in the states - I don't hear you criticising Big Mick or Azizi for their interest in their family history or heritage, and I can't see what the difference is between them and me. In fact, they are more defined by their history than I am, as I'm in the process of discovering mine.

"This whole "class" idea is something that remains in a psyche of people in the UK where it has a different viewpoint in the U.S.    I would hope that we are free-thinkers and not governed by stereotypes of our own creation - we can easily go beyond that if we recognize the boundaries that we have created."

Don't confuse the class thing with what I'm talking about here, they're not the same thing. The class system in the UK is a despicable hangover from the old feudal system that unfortunately is proving difficult to get rid of. You'd not believe how many people define themselves by class in the UK, and wear it like a badge. Read Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw for a witty and insightful view of how class works in the UK.