Posted in Uncategorized on May 14th, 2019 by Cherrita Thao
This story is relative to anyone who struggles with self-identity due to being bicultural. Much like Laddy’s story, I grew up the same way. The majority of my classmates were Caucasian. I’m Hmong. At first I didn’t notice a difference back in my elementary school years, since no one really cared what skin color you had. The only things that mattered were how fast you could run, how well you could dodge a ball, how quick you could read, and how good you were at catching a football. It felt good to feel like you were not socially different than the next person just because of physical features. We were family. However, as life went on, things became different. The concept of family became an illusion. People began branching off to their little clicks, so exclusion was becoming more apparent. It was in Middle School that I started experiencing bullies, racism and discrimination. It never occurred to me until then how much Hmong people were being put down, not because of their skin, but also because of their culture. People would snicker at us for speaking our native language, make fun of the foods we brought to lunch, and assume we were all lower class citizens with no brains. This lead me to stray away from my ethnic culture and adapted to the dominating one. Still, I was never able to truly connect with my Caucasian friends, as the experiences they had outside of school grounds was never the same as mine. Life at home was drastically different.Shouamee Yang, a Hmong student who works closely with International studies in UW-Whitewater, knows the past Laddy and I have been through. Although not personally experienced herself, she shares her observations she’s made with her peers growing up.
Being bicultural leads you four ways through life: assimilation, separation, integration or marginalization. Assimilation is what I first went through growing up. It’s an individual who does not want to maintain his/her ethnic culture and identity, but seeks to completely adapt with the dominating culture. Separation is rejecting the dominating culture and only sticking to his/her ethic culture and identity. Integration is where I’m at now, where you’re maintaining your ethic culture while interacting with the dominant culture. A balance of two, so to speak. Finally, marginalizing is rejecting both cultures. In the case for many, a lot reject their cultural roots, in order to assimilate with the dominating one. It seems to be the most common path to take while growing up in an area where you’re a minority.
Being bicultural has their own struggles, but what if you’re a mixture of just everything? Multiculturalism can be different when it comes to finding who you truly are. It may lead to not really going with any culture, but just basing yourself solely on the land in which you were born in and accepting that as who you are, despite your multiculturalism. Sometimes it becomes a little different finding the root of who you are. In this case, Mary Htoo, a girl who considers herself multicultural because her family has lived in many different countries, shares her story of how she came to find her identity.
Brandon Bliesner, half-Filipino and part Italian, had his own struggles growing up. His mother is a full-blooded Filipino and his father, an Italian with other unknown European mixtures. In the past, he was more inclined to say that he was half-Italian first before then commenting that he’s also half-Filipino, because he used to be almost ashamed of his Filipino heritage. Now, he fully embraces who he is and is proud to have finally found that integration of his two sides. He shares why identity is important to begin with.
Like Brandon expresses, figuring out who we are is extremely important, because it’s the foundation in which we build ourselves on. Our morals, values and character makes us who we are, and cultures usually have different ethical teachings. If the two cultures have clashing viewpoints on a topic, it becomes difficult to choose which side to take. This leads to the individual alternating behaviors based on their environment, which leads to confusion and consistency in their character. Not a healthy lifestyle to live by. Edgar Lozano, a Mexican-American, shares his pride with us as he’s found his identity. He’s truly proud of who he is and I think one day we’ll all achieve that same level. In Edgar’s case, he’s found the perfect balance, thus fully integrated both his Mexican culture with the dominating American culture.
Down below are pictures that display cultural students living in America. These students are all apart of UW-Whitewater Everyone fights their own struggles, but in the end, we all help one another to finding and appreciating who we really are. Marginalization is probably not the best choice, as it’s only denying yourself where your roots were from. People that have experienced integration or even accepted that they’re generally just multicultural or anything else for that matter, show to be the happiest and hold family or self pride. That confidence makes life a lot more happier, and lived with more purpose.
