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IDENTITY CRISIS IN CROSS-CULTURAL KIDS

Identity Crisis in Cross-Cultural Kids

October 23, 2015

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Identity Crisis in Cross-Cultural Kids “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the graduating class of 2015!” announced the headmaster, as 45 of us seniors stood to face the audience. Although a graduating class of 45 students from a high school may seem small, we stood there representing 15 different nationalities. This is not a rare thing in an international school like mine, where many students come from different backgrounds. We were all cross-cultural kids in one way or another. Ruth Van Reken, co-author of the book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, invented the term cross-cultural kid (CCK). It is defined as “a person who is living or has lived in—or meaningfully interacted with—two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during childhood (up to age 18)” (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009, p. 31). One problem that many CCKs face is having an identity crisis. I was able to survey friends that are CCKs about the causes of this, and a majority of them have faced this problem at one point in their life. The results showed that there is mainly one underlying cause for a CCK to have an identity crisis: the assumption that a person can only belong in one certain culture. Six out of the fourteen responses mentioned a CCK having an identity in a mixture of cultures. As one of the answers explained, “growing up in multiple cultures gives you a mixed background making you uncertain of which one you like more [and] which one you are more comfortable in.” The easiest aspect of this mixture that can be seen by outsiders is language. I am what experts in the field of study about CCKs would call an educational CCK. I am Japanese and was born and raised in Japan; however, I went to an international school where the culture was very American. My first language was Japanese but I learned English right after. Whenever I speak with people who know both languages, I automatically start mixing both languages

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because that is the most comfortable thing to do. It may seem weird to people who are only fluent/grew up with one language, but for CCKs this is very relatable. Although not all aspects of it are as easy to recognize as language, CCKs are comfortable being a part of a mixture of different cultures. One respondent stated, “[t]here is the pre-assumption that one has to be a part of one type of community to be able to have identification among society.” When there is an assumption that a person can only be a part of one group, CCKs are forced to choose one culture and many times this can destroy their identity because they have to throw away parts of it. This is why they dislike the question, “where are you from?” because it only allows for a simple answer, and their lives aren’t as simple as people assume it to be. As mentioned before, CCKs build their identity around a mixture of cultures. I have built my identity around being both Japanese and American. Yet to Japanese people I am not fully Japanese and to Americans I am not accepted as an American. I belong to neither. The mixing of languages, for example, cannot be understood by a majority of the people who speak either language. In response to the question: “What causes an identity crisis in CCKs?”, another respondent answered, “Not knowing which culture you fit into, but also not feeling accepted in either one.” This feeling of not being accepted in neither one of the cultures that CCKs associate themselves to produces the identity crisis. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a good idiom that can be used for CCKs. Something that could cause a CCK to be uncomfortable with possessing traits of more than one culture is societal expectation. Society expects people to act a certain way. In America I have been asked countless times why I speak English so well even though I’m Japanese and have never lived in the U.S. before college. In Japan, I’m given weird looks when I do the same thing that my non-

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Japanese friends do because I’m expected to act like a “normal” Japanese person. I am also expected to fit into the Japanese culture at home. My parents are both Japanese and expect me to switch gears from the American culture at school and act very differently. When society or family expect a CCK to act a certain way, it causes confusion for the CCK. In most situations, CCKs will have an identity crisis during their teenage years when they try to fit in with the others around them. They start worrying about what others think about them and they experience a time of transition in their lives. One of the respondents, who is halfAmerican and half-Japanese and has lived in both countries, says that he started doubting his identity when he was called ‘foreign’ by some of his peers in school in the U.S., even though his first language is English. His peers may have just said it as a joke, but it affected him to rethink about his identity. Unlike me, who spent all of my life until high school surrounded by CCKs, some are the only CCK amongst their friends. When these CCKs recognize that they are not exactly the same as their peers and feel like nobody understands them, they will start to have an identity crisis. Half of the responses mentioned not being able to fit in to one society as a cause of having an identity crisis. Another respondent, who recently went back to Korea for college after living in Japan for many years, commented that being away from a certain culture for a while and then going back to it is when one would experience an identity crisis. He had gotten used to the lifestyle in Japan, and this made him feel different than the locals of Korea. The place that used to be his home now made him feel out of place. A question that many CCKs are unable to answer is: “Where is home?” This seemingly straightforward question for non-CCKs, is a deep and complicated question to answer for those that have moved multiple times, or have different connections with different places all over the

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world. CCKs that have lived in multiple environments may have multiple identities because they have built different relationships in each one. Each of these identities is a part of who they are and they cannot leave it behind. I personally experienced an identity crisis while in high school. I didn’t feel 100% Japanese but I didn’t feel like I was American either. I decided to make up a definition for myself so that I would be comfortable with who I am. I am Japanese with an international education. According to personal responses to my survey from CCKs, the main cause of CCKs having an identity crisis is the assumption that one can only belong to one culture. This assumption must be abandoned by society as the number of CCKs increase (Van Reken & Bethel). Each and every person has a different life story and that must be respected. As President Barack Obama (2004), who is a CCK, said in his memoir, “[m]y identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.”

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Reference Obama, B. (2006). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance (First large print ed.). New York, NY: Random House Large Print. Pollock, D., & Van Reken, R. (2009). Who Are “Cross-Cultural Kids”? In Third culture kids: growing up among worlds (Rev. ed., p. 31). Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Pub. Van Reken, R., & Bethel, P. Third Culture Kids: Prototypes for Understanding Other CrossCultural Kids. Retrieved from http://blog.crossculturalkid.org/what-are-cross-culturalkids/...