By Coy Jacky
According to the U.S. Census, in 2013, 40 million Americans were first generation children of immigrants. That is 12% of the total U.S. population. In 2021, it is estimated that one in three Americans will be a child of immigrant parents, and looking at my own friend group, I would say that is true.
To most Americans, leaving behind loved ones and a culture you know, to come to the unknown, is profound. Still, so many people choose to do it. The children of immigrants are the bridge between these two worlds. It cannot be an easy task to grow up in a household which still adheres to traditions and beliefs that, once you step out of that household, may seem constantly questioned by a culture and society with its own set of traditions and beliefs. Do these children feel grounded and part of the American family?
Everyday, children of immigrants wake up and face a clash of cultures in their lives. They are expected to act one way around their family and once they turn the other cheek, feel pressured to remove that part of themselves and act more in accordance with American culture. Even in a country as culturally mixed and meshed together as America, there is still a dominant culture, it just might not be as easy to pick out. Take something simple like bread, for example. An immigrant Egyptian family might be accustomed to pita bread. Bread of all shapes and sizes, including pita bread, might be available at the grocery store, but American culture has unspokenly decided the king is the American loaf. When that immigrant child has lunch at his American school, he might be rocking the pita wrap, but when he looks around the lunch table, his friends have pb&j’s smashed between two slices of Wonder bread. That immigrant child may feel out of place. In his head, he might be creating a world where he is different.
I myself am the child of one immigrant parent. My mom grew up in Egypt, and when my parents met, my dad asked her what it was like growing up there. She said it was normal. She asked him what it was like growing up in Colorado. He also said it was normal. When you straddle two cultures it’s “normal.” Normal is what you know, relative to your surroundings. If you feel out of place because your lunch is different, it’s easy to blame it on the pita.
Today in society people ask children of immigrants, do you feel American? Do you feel like you are part of the culture? I would say I feel like I belong to two cultures. I have a culture at home and when I leave my house I mesh into the other one, seamlessly. Sometimes of course there are clashes but my friends who are “born and bred American” have clashes with their parents too. The clashes are similar too. You are not wearing the right clothes, you are staying out too late, and playing that “horrible” music, to name a few.
The rhetoric we hear so often in the mass media has us believe that there is this world that is against immigrants and their children. My mom told me that her lifelong dream was to come and live in America. She said she would watch TV and read the news and ascribe to American culture through music and dress. In truth, now that I’m her American kid, I have never felt like that world is against me, but now, I feel lucky to be part of both and I know my other immigrant friends feel the same.
Coy Jacky is a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder.
