The U.S. is often perceived as a “melting pot,” a heterogeneous mix of immigrant cultures and backgrounds that mesh to form a homogenous American identity. In reality, the U.S. is often a conglomerate of groups of immigrants who come to the U.S. and remain distinct entities instead of contributing to a collective identity. Immigrants often tend to remain in clusters with individuals who share the same background for familiarity and comfort. This poses a cultural identity dilemma for their children, the second-generation immigrants who are born in the United States but grow up in an immigrant home.
In a document analysis study conducted by Min Zhou in 1997 titled Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants, Zhou examines the idea of immigrant assimilation and how adapting American culture does not necessarily lead to integration into American society. According to Zhou, ethnic groups remain distinct based on degree of acceptance by the host population. She states that “immigrant children are generally eager to embrace American culture and to acquire an American identity by becoming indistinguishable from their American peers” (Zhou 1997). Then where does their parents’ home country’s culture fit into this “American identity?”
Cultural identity is extremely multi-faceted and consists of language, food, dress, traditions, and much more. In an inductive study I conducted in a sociology class, I decided to examine the relationship aspect of cultural identity. I took a small sample of second-generation Korean-Americans and interviewed them, asking a series of questions about their backgrounds and their parents’ backgrounds and what they perceive their own cultural identity to be. I also asked them questions about their dating histories, racial demographics of their friends and romantic partners, and how their parents perceive racial selectiveness in dating relationships and friendships. In approaching data analysis, I looked for patterns that recurred across my respondents’ experiences and thoughts and shaped my argument based on those patterns, of course taking into account the limitations of my small-scale study.
What I found wasn’t very surprising. Similarly to Zhou’s findings in her study, children of immigrants are more eager than their parents to embrace American culture as their own (Zhou 1997). Their parents want them to form romantic relationships with others of Korean descent, but my respondents showed contempt for their parents’ bias toward Koreans. One of my respondents stated that her mother wants her to have a traditional Korean wedding, but in order for this to happen, her partner has to be Korean. It makes sense from an immigrant mother’s perspective. In this respondent’s case it’s easier for the mother who isn’t fluent in English to relate to her daughter’s spouse if the guy is Korean. But from my respondent’s perspective, it’s not culturally acceptable to have a race filter on the guys she sees as potential romantic partners. In terms of friend relationships, the parents seem to not have much of a preference as to the race of their child’s friends, but ironically most of their child’s closest friends are Korean anyway.
Based on these findings, I argue that second-generation immigrants’ feelings regarding relationships differ from their parents’ feelings, but their actions indicate a sort of bias toward people of Korean descent that may result from the surroundings their parents choose to raise them in. After all, no matter how forward-thinking and racially accepting a second-generation immigrant may be, if he/she was born in a Korean neighborhood surrounded by Korean people, music, and food, he/she will inevitably be comfortable around Koreans. The neighborhood one grows up in is generally something that is imposed on children by their parents. Thus, my respondents’ parents’ decisions to have their children grow up in neighborhoods of a certain demographic appears to be correlated with their children’s sense of connection to other Koreans. In the same way, my respondents that grew up in non-Korean neighborhoods were more likely to find fault in their parents’ bias toward Koreans.
Because second-generation immigrants are born in the U.S., they lack an immediate connection to the country that their parents come from. This connection seems to be evident in their parents’ lives and cultural identities, but when the parents try to impose the same connection onto their children, the children are conflicted. Immigrant parents often come to America in pursuit of a better life for their children, but often, attaining the American Dream comes at the cost of cultural diversity in immigrant backgrounds. In other words, it doesn’t pay to be different. This leaves second-generation immigrants without a clear direction as to how to approach their cultural identity. Therefore, studies on immigration and cultural identity in the U.S. are extremely important because they can help us to better understand the medley of cultures that make up the American population, and may shed light on the elusive definition of American culture.
