Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

Mizrahi frames identity less as an inherited essence than as an ongoing act of affiliation. By pairing “American television” and “American food” with “my ethnicity was my choice,” he suggests that everyday consumption and cultural habits can be as formative as ancestry, especially for someone negotiating immigrant or minority backgrounds within U.S. popular culture. The final sentence—“It still is”—turns ethnicity into a present-tense practice: something continually selected, revised, and performed rather than passively received. The remark also carries a subtle critique of rigid ethnic gatekeeping, implying that belonging can be shaped by desire, exposure, and self-fashioning—an idea resonant with a fashion designer whose work centers on constructing public selves.