My mom is African-American, Native-American, Irish, and Creole

The words of Jurnee Smollett-Bell — “My mom is African-American, Native-American, Irish, and Creole, and my father is of Jewish, Russian, and Polish descent. It’s made me who I am. Because of my diverse background, I think I can relate to many different people, different stories, and different communities.” — rise like a hymn to the beauty of heritage, identity, and unity through diversity. In them, she speaks not merely of ancestry, but of the deep truth that a soul woven from many threads carries within it the wisdom of many worlds. Her words remind us that to belong to many origins is not confusion — it is strength, for it teaches the heart to see beyond borders, to hear beyond language, and to love beyond tribe.

When Jurnee speaks of her mother’s and father’s lineage, she is describing not just genealogy, but the living fabric of history. Each strand of her heritage — African, Native-American, Irish, Creole, Jewish, Russian, Polish — carries centuries of struggle, survival, migration, and faith. Together, they form a human mosaic, a living testament to how identity can be both specific and universal. Her very existence becomes an embodiment of the world’s interconnection: a mirror reflecting that every people, no matter how distant or distinct, shares the same yearning for dignity, belonging, and love.

This idea — that diversity is a source of wisdom — echoes one of the oldest truths known to humankind. The ancient Greeks spoke of cosmopolitanism, the belief that all men and women belong to one universal city — the kosmos. The philosopher Diogenes once said, “I am a citizen of the world.” What Jurnee expresses, though born of modern lineage, springs from this same timeless understanding. Her diverse heritage has not divided her; it has expanded her empathy, enabling her to walk into many stories and understand many hearts.

Her words also recall the journeys of history’s great bridges — those who carried many identities within them and, through that, brought understanding to divided worlds. Think of Frederick Douglass, born into the cruelty of slavery but educated by his own will, who spoke to both the oppressed and the powerful because he understood both. Or consider Madeleine Albright, born in Czechoslovakia to Jewish parents who fled the Nazis, later becoming an American diplomat — her layered heritage giving her the insight to navigate nations in conflict. Like them, Jurnee reminds us that those who contain many worlds can help heal the distance between them.

Her words also hold gratitude — an acknowledgment that she is the product of countless journeys, sacrifices, and survivals. To have such a heritage is to carry history not in books, but in blood. The Native-American spirit of reverence for the earth, the resilience of African ancestors who endured chains, the creativity of the Creole tradition, the endurance of Jewish exiles, the melancholy and strength of the Irish, the intellect and heart of the Slavic peoples — all live within her. Her identity is not fractured but symphonic. And from that symphony comes her ability to see the world not through the lens of difference, but through the harmony of shared humanity.

The ancients would have said that such a soul is blessed with metis — the wisdom of multiplicity, the ability to adapt and understand many ways of life. To relate to “different people, different stories, and different communities” is to fulfill one of the highest purposes of being human: to bridge what is divided. Her diverse ancestry has become her education of the heart, teaching her that every culture holds truth, every tradition holds beauty, and every person carries the spark of the divine, no matter how unlike oneself they may seem.

From her reflection arises a lesson for all generations: identity is not a cage but a crossroads. We are not diminished by the complexity of our heritage; we are enriched by it. Each of us carries within us the legacy of countless ancestors — some known, some forgotten — who survived, migrated, and loved so that we might live. To honor them is to live openly, to see others not as strangers but as reflections of our shared origin.

So let Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s words be a teaching for our time: celebrate your complexity, for in it lies connection. The world does not need more walls of difference; it needs hearts that can contain multitudes. When we learn, as she has, to see our own diversity as a bridge rather than a boundary, we come closer to the truth that the ancients long proclaimed — that though our faces may differ, our essence is one, and from many roots grows a single tree of humanity.