Thanks again, everyone, for the reassurance you're giving me. I think what I'm doing here is working out the stuff that I need to work through but that is a little off-topic from what I'm doing with T. Or that I'm expected to be able to do on my own, maybe. Some of it I've written to T also, but it isn't what she chooses to comment on. Anyway, I do appreciate the feedback.

Here's a little more explanation regarding the comment about it's not too good to be European-American. As a kid, I always wanted to be Chinese. Obviously that didn't work out too well, but I tried to hang out with the Oriental kids in high school. There was a boy I liked all through 4 years, and even after I moved away although he wouldn't write back to me (except once when I was taking a Chinese class, and wrote to him a little bit in Chinese - he said his parents were impressed). I noticed that when I went someplace with him, he avoided being where we would be likely to be seen. When I asked him about that, he said that he was embarrassed to be seen with me because I was white.

I also picked up from my family that there was something wrong with being who we were. My father's family left Norway after WWII. My grandfather had a job during the war working for the Germans at a POW camp. That wasn't really cool, even though there were pretty much no other jobs available, and he did what he could to help out the prisoners (like pausing by the fence with the cart of food he was supposed to feed to the pigs, because the prisoners were starving, and they grabbed out whatever they could from the cart - people in the town also gave the prisoners the crusts from their sandwiches if they could get away with it). I heard from my father many times that the Germans marched right into Norway and occupied it, and were entirely surprised that the Norwegians didn't embrace them as cousins, since the Nazis considered Scandinavians to belong to the Aryan race and therefore to be part of them. My family didn't do a lot to preserve our heritage and culture, and I regretted that. When I asked my father about it, he pretty much said that when he was growing up, he had to try to blend in because Norwegians were associated with the Germans, and in the U.S. in the late 40's and following years, that was bad. Just plain being an immigrant was also not very well-accepted.

Those stories came back to me when I was in classes that covered multiculturalism, and I tried to suggest that my culture should be considered too, and that I was bi-cultural because I am first-generation American, and there are some cultural differences that I experience. I was told that I was wrong because it's all still European-American, part of the majority culture. Here's where my twisted thinking comes in. First of all, I drew pretty impermeable lines between people who have minority vs. majority status. The majority oppresses the minority, so therefore the majority is bad, so that's not what I want to be. It must be better to be minority, then. That's all very rigid and messed up. I end up feeling bad about who I am, and about things that can't be changed. People are who they are - white people can be good or bad or in-between, and so can people who are minority. I do like my Scandinavian heritage, and honestly I am proud of that, but I can always find a way to make myself feel bad about something. It doesn't stop me from learning about that culture, learning the language and traditional arts, etc., and I do enjoy that.

And back to loud socks. I think I ought to teach knitting classes so everyone can make loud socks for themselves. Maybe the way I dress wouldn't be odd if more people learned how to come up with their own creations. Want to look at where I get a lot of my inspiration lately? http://www.knitty.com It's an online knitting magazine, and some of the stuff they publish has an unusual kick to it. I never reproduce anything exactly - I add my own variations, but it's kinda similar. I think it would be amusing to look through the patterns (including the ones in the archives) even if you're not a knitter. And if you want to learn, I could probably help you with that.
The world needs more loud socks, etc.!