The danger of substantial assimilation into American culture is the feeling of loss when trying to identify with any one part of your heritage. When you pull yourself in too many directions, you feel as if you might never fully belong amongst one group of people. This is especially seen in the children of immigrants who grew up in American schools while learning about their parents’ culture at home. Being a multiracial daughter of two immigrant parents, I experience this firsthand. Even though I am half-Dominican, can speak Spanish and know the culture well, my cousin still calls me a gringa when she sees me.Growing up away from my Dominican family all of my life, only seeing them every other year or so, distanced me from them, and so I am treated as family but also simultaneously as a guest. I have an accent, I don’t know their daily news, or their slang, and they treat my status as a New Yorker as a novelty. My Chinese side hasn’t been as nearly explored as my Hispanic side. I eat the food and celebrate Chinese New Year, but know no more than that. Rarely do my Chinese cousins see me, and on the few instances we meet, we are strangers. Yet I hesitate to call myself an American. Maybe that is due to the fact that the definition of American and American culture is unclear to me. Or perhaps it is because I long to fully belong to one of my two families, but they see me as a foreigner.
However, I am proud of the two cultures I’ve grown up in. They’ve allowed me to have rewarding and different experiences and both ethnicities have influenced my personality. America itself perpetuates the idea of cultural sharing and immersion. Especially in New York City, different cultures present themselves at every turn. But it is the loss of being able to inhabit the land full of one dominant group of people, and this idea that you have to adopt American values, dress differently, speak differently, and have your children do the same, that strips immigrants of parts of their cultural identity and creates future generations with a diminished sense of tradition and culture. I fear that my grandchildren will not know how to speak Spanish well, will not have the same values that me and my family share, and will become liberated of any form of tradition. Although they will adhere to this accomplishment of “progress” we have in American society, slowly history and a people may be lost forever.
