Neither a Pole nor a German – a Silesian – about recognizing one’s own ethnicity

The inspiration for the article is Zbigniew Rokita’s book “Kajś. A Tale of Upper Silesia”. It allowed the author to reflect on the issue of ethnic recognition of a human being as the basis for constructing an ethnic identity. The theoretical context consists of two theses: the first one (following Hannah Arendt) says that human beings always come to this world as new, as strangers, and to make their humanity more real, they need to act and speak; the second thesis (following Martin Heidegger) refers to the “truth of being” and proves that human habitation in the world is complicated. Attempts to understand the relationship between ethnic recognition and identity allowed the author to formulate the thesis that ethnicity is nothing else but knowledge about one’s family, community and the land inhabited by generations. The recognition of ethnicity itself can have three stages: 1) anecdotal identity; 2) attractive identity; 3) patched identity.