Most people claim to be Cherokee because it's the cool thing to do now, I call them pretendians. They don't know anything about the Cherokee people other than watching Dances with wolves and buying a dream catcher which is as common as a night light. The identity crisis is getting really old, what is the deal with people wanting to be something they are not? It's as silly as a blue eyed blonde hair liberal European wearing a keffiyeh.
White people's idendity has been stolen from them. It's taboo to be proud of white heritage, it's taboo to celebrate one's own cultural background if you're white or advocate for the interests of white people as a group.
This leaves a gaping cultural hole. To be whole human beings, it must be filled with something.
Some people turn into wiggers and get obssessed with black culture, listen to rap music, wear "urban" styles, date blacks, etc. Some people get obssessed with anime and claim they wish they were born Japanese. Some people do everything they can to put down their own white race in hopes this gives them as an individual more 'cred' with other people (in reality, this just causes them to be even more despised). I even think a portion of the gay community might be there because some white people want a group to belong to and they feel like this gives them an identity, something to advocate for and something to make them have equal status with the 'diverse' crowd. Some people turn to non-Western religious like Taoism and think they're all multicultural and nonracist for doing so when in reality the
only reason they were attracted to that religion or others that were foreign to the West is because they weren't traditional Western religions. I think to a lesser degree some people might get involved obssessively with fandoms of various kinds because of this lack of sense of community and identity, such as being the number one Trekkie in their town (or being overly involved in other fandoms). I notice a big majority of people in various fandoms like that tend to be white.
If white people would accept who they are, own it, embrace it, and live their own culture, they wouldn't feel such an obssessive need to grasp onto something else to make them feel whole.