Is it possible to live completely in two cultures at the same time?

Monday, April 21, 2008

Is it possible to live completely in two cultures at the same time?
I have spent the last several weeks observing refugees, asking questions, and listening to their stories. Some, quite honestly, have taken my breath away. I can't even begin to describe how easy my life is. One of our new friends casually mentioned that her family members were killed in the war and then she ran away. Two of their siblings shot down before her very eyes. Then a teenager, she ran for her life. On her own. . . no one but herself to count on. Ten years later she is a successful womean in downtown Minneapolis with a very good job. And we get so annoyed because a refugees' accent is thick? Give me a break. Man, we only know just a tiny glimpse of the story.
I talked with a lady who directs a center which runs an after-school program for refugee students. She vividly described the tension of these students face in living in two worlds. There is the treasured, conservative, African culture of their parents coliding with the hip-hop culture of America. What a drastic switch. I can only imagine the search for identity. Am I American? Am I East African? Am I both? Who am I? Everyday they are caught between cultures, sorting through the entaglement. On top of working through just the general funkiness of beeing thirteen - zits, hormoes, and self-esteem. Anytime I see students hanging out having fun, it makes me smile. I only know half of how far they have come.
I have pretty much been the minority in the culture where I have lived for the last six years. I have learned what it actually means to be "white". We don't generally even think of it until we stick out like a sore thumb. Refugees know what it means to leave their country. They know what their original culture was. And, they are learning what this new culture is. They dare not become too integrated in fear of losing their heritage. . . .yet they aggressively move forward to gain an idenity in the here and now. The question I've been pondering for the last couple weeks is this: Is it possible to completely live in two cultures at the same time?
I'm not sure it is. For me it's quite compartmental. I flip the switch on and off depending who I'm around. When I'm with white people, I'm fairly brief, casual, and talk about movies. When I'm with Africans I talk about anything I want because they aren't in a hurry. My rate of speech speeds up with my white friends and I use slang. I put the colloquialisms to a halt and ask a lot of questions about family with Africans. I flip this switch on and off several times throughout the day. I'm now back in the majority culture in the US. Though most of my neighbors are African, I still have white people to talk to. I think this helps me in relating to this "on-off" switch that is being flipped everyday by my neighbors.
If anybody is interested, let's discuss this a bit.
1. Do you think it's possible to "live completely" in two cultures at the same time?
2. What can we do to help others keep their cultural identity and integrate simultaneously? (Not just a matter of African stuff. . . this happens all the time w/ different personality types)
3. What is the worst advice we could give to someone living in two cultures at the same time?