Most people who know me are aware of my complex cultural background. I grew up in Afghanistan, India, and Malaysia as a Third-Culture Kid, which tends to lead people to assume me to be more culturally aware than the average person.
I would like to posit, instead, that I’m hopelessly inexperienced when it comes to any individual culture; I’ve spent the same amount of time immersed in cultures, but that time was split between four main cultural groups.
doing the math
For a moment, let’s imagine that I have multiple persons within my psyche, each representing one of my cultural identities.
- My Afghan self is six years old
- My Indian self is three years old
- My Malaysian self is seven years old
- My US-ian self is four years old
To over-extend this metaphor to make my point, I’m no more experienced than a monocultural seven-year-old in any one culture. While my cultural input has been broader than most people, any extra depth has come purely from the heightened ability to compare and contrast what I see.
appropriation
I’m not really complaining about this situation—I’ve come to terms with it and, in the long run, think TCKs like myself get the better end of the deal.
That said, it’s difficult to express my cultural identity. Looking at me and hearing me speak, nearly everyone would assume myself to be fully “American”. But, going by the math I did earlier, that only makes up twenty percent of my actual cultural experience and, by extension, a minority of the cultural values and practices I desire to express. To add to that, I don’t have much real knowledge of US culture—people are regularly shocked at how few cultural touchstones I’m aware of.
But if I adopt the behaviors of the other cultures I’ve been a part of, it looks very like appropriation to those who don’t know my full story. That makes it difficult to really express my feelings and beliefs honestly with people I don’t know very well.
conclusion
I’m not really going anywhere with this article. I’m not arguing a point. I’m just trying to set down my thoughts in a way that I can easily point to them if questioned. Perhaps it’ll also give my readers a deeper insight into what makes me tick. (And, of course, I can link here whenever people express surprise when I miss a cultural reference.)
If you’ve had similar feelings or—better yet—are also a TCK, I’d love to hear from you and talk about our shared experiences! The “Third” culture is the one which we can most easily claim, but by definition it isn’t tied to a geographical location and we don’t meet each other often. My email address is below this article, I eagerly await your thoughts.
