Earlier this week a SM tipster (thanks Ami) sent us word of this article in Time Magazine that does a pretty good job of examining the second generation Asian American experience:
The American story is, of course, made up of successive influxes of immigrants who arrive in the U.S., struggle to find a place in its society and eventually assimilate. But the group of post-1965 Asians was different from the Jews, Irish and Italians who had landed earlier. The Asian immigrants’ distinctive physiognomy may have made it more difficult for them to blend in, but at the same time, their high education and skill levels allowed them quicker entrée into the middle class. Instead of clustering tightly in urban ethnic enclaves, they spread out into suburbia, where they were often isolated. And it was there that their kids, now 20 to 40 years old, grew up, straddling two worlds–the traditional domain their recently arrived parents sought to maintain at home and the fast-changing Western culture of the society outside the front door. The six people at the New York City dinner are members of that second generation and–full disclosure–so are we, the authors of this article.
In the paragraph above you see a very concise reason for why the experience of South Asian immigrants living in the U.S. is different from those living in European countries, and totally different from those living elsewhere abroad. The fact that immigrants here spread to isolated suburbs helped them assimilate more quickly, while at the same time encouraging them to embrace inclusiveness by identifying with other immigrant populations.
If you were to draw a diagram of acculturation, with the mores of immigrant parents on one side and society’s on the other, the classic model might show a steady drift over time, depicting a slow-burn Americanization, taking as long as two or three generations. The more recent Asian-American curve, however, looks almost like the path of a boomerang: early isolation, rapid immersion and assimilation and then a re-appreciation of ethnic roots.
I enjoyed this article because I felt that they were describing my own experience quite accurately.
As a child growing up in Pennington, N.J., Fareha Ahmed watched Bollywood videos and enthusiastically attended the annual Pakistan Independence Day Parade in New York City. By middle school, though, her parents’ Pakistani culture had become uncool. “I wanted to fit in so bad,” Ahmed says. For her, that meant trying to be white. She dyed her hair blond, got hazel contact lenses and complained, “I’m going to smell,” when her mom served fragrant dishes like lamb biryani for dinner. But at Villanova University in Philadelphia, Ahmed found friends from all different backgrounds who welcomed diversity and helped her, she says, become “a good balance of East meets West.” Now 23, she and her non-Asian roommates threw a party to mark the Islamic holiday ‘Id al-Fitr in November, then threw another for Christmas–which her family never celebrated. “I chose to embrace both holidays instead of segregating myself to one,” she says.Asian Americans say part of the reason it is so hard to reach an equilibrium is that they are seen as what sociologists call “forever foreigners.” Their looks lead to a lifetime of questions like “No, where are you really from?”
