Acculturation In America

Heine (2015) defines acculturation as “the process by which people migrate to and learn a culture that is different from the original culture” (p. 258). Acculturation often requires for the individual to adjust responses of engrained life scripts in order to compensate for cultural differences. Often time acculturation results in alterations of a person’s social identity and self-image. Immigrants to the United States must negotiate a new culture. This paper seeks to understand acculturation into mainstream society as it relates to an individual’s experience past and present.

Mrs. B is a 40-year-old woman from Les Cayes, Haiti. She has been living in the New York City for 15 years. Mrs. B has never mentioned what made her immigrate to the United

States from Haiti she simply mentions that she often misses home. Mrs. B’s primary language is Haitian Creole, she knew basic conversational English before coming moving to New York but quickly learned how to read and write the language once she arrived in New York. I first met Mrs. B about three years ago when I started working at my current job. She works at the security desk in the lobby. During my first month working there I would often smile at her when entering the building, but never spoke to her, until one day she started a conversation asking me question about myself. Since that day Mrs. B and I struck up a friendship.
Culture shock is “the anxiety experienced by many people when they travel or move to a new social and cultural setting” (Irwin, 2007).

When interviewing Mrs. B I wanted to know what unsettling thing for her when she moved to New York and asked her what was the most shocking thing for her when she moved to New York City. She laughed and told me all the people, she never knew there could be so many people in one place. She continued to joke about all the people in New York and then noted that despite all the people it is still so lonely. She said “no one cares for each other, they don’t take care of each other. It’s not like that at home.” I asked what she meant and she gave me the example of her job telling me “I see these people every day, and they don’t know my name, they probably don’t know each other’s name, because it doesn’t matter to them.” I mentioned to her that it was a good thing she had family, referring to an elderly Haitian couple I had often seen her. I was very surprised to hear that she was not related to the couple at all she had met them randomly on the street one day and stayed in contact with them, checking up on them frequently. When I asked her why she took such efforts she simple said they were her people and they had to take care of each other.

For Mrs. B the most shocking thing of coming to America was coming to an individualistic society. For her a society were individuals place their own was very isolating as she was used to a culture where individuals where taking the collective into account. Mrs. B belief that she as a responsibility to the elderly couple is a result of her being interdependent. As Heine (2015) states “obligation to others are an important part of ingroup relations among interdependent people” (p.

215).
I then asked Mrs. B what was it like for her once her daughter was born in this new environment, specifically if she found anything odd about others perspective on how she raised her daughter. According to Bornstein and Bohr (2011) immigrant parents have ideas based on their original cultural context on what a successful parent is and how to rear a child properly, when they migrate to a new culture, they find others may possess different images of the successful parent and different strategies for childrearing. Mrs. B replied that there was something that had confused her when she was pregnant. She remembered specifically how someone had asked her about her apartment search. The question baffled her, as Mrs. B explained she was preparing to have a baby why would she be looking for an apartment. The individual explained to Mrs. B that she had assumed she was looking for a bigger apartment as she couldn’t remain in her one-bedroom apartment with a child, where was the baby going to sleep. Mrs. B, still confused explained, how this was the first time she became aware that most parents in the New York do not sleep with their younger children. “Not even in the same room! That’s just weird.”
Mrs. B continued to explained that she knew that by having a child she would need to get a bigger apartment, but it wasn’t something she had to concern herself for a while, as she did not see anything wrong with having a young child sleep with her parents. Mrs. B then explained that of course now that her daughter was a young lady she had her own room, because she wouldn’t have her sharing a room with a man.
For Mrs. B, the concept of co-sleeping with young children is natural and for her not co-sleeping was “just weird.” However, for the other woman the principal of autonomy ideal, “the belief that young children who are needy and vulnerable should learn to be self-reliant and take care of themselves” (Heine, 2015, p.179), was very important, and she assumed others held the same belief. Mrs. B also shows that she incest avoidance plays a role in the sleeping arrangements. When the daughter was young Mrs. B believed it to be natural for her to sleep with both parents, however, now that she is older and considered to be a lady Mrs. B find it inappropriate to have her daughter sleeping with her father. According to Heine (2015), “incest avoidance is often discussed as a cultural universal whose breach has serious consequences” (p. 178).
Mrs. B did note that when her son was born five years after her daughter, she did move him to his own room quicker than she had with her daughter. She stated that she doesn’t know why she felt more comfortable moving him out of her room, but she laughed remembering her then 8-year old daughter informing her that her son wasn’t a baby and her needed his own room. I asked Mrs. B if she thought this was because her daughter was become more Americanized and held some of those beliefs. To which Mrs. B replied that her daughter was probably just jealous.
I asked Mrs. B how did she feel about raising her children in a place that she felt to be so lonely and lacking community. She told me it didn’t affect her because she made sure she always had a community. According to Mrs. B “just because everyone else wants to only care about themselves does not mean me and my children have to.” Mrs. B says that she makes her children know the importance of community and taking care of what she calls “your people”. I asked her who “her people” were, wondering if she was referring to other Haitian immigrants.
Mrs. B explained that for her people were those she interacted with on a normal basis, such as the owner of the deli she got her lunch from or the lady at the Dunkin Donuts. Mrs. B then explained to me that all though they weren’t the same, they were still her community and could not understand how people could interact with these people every day and not know anything about their lives. Mrs. B explained that she was raising her kids to ask people how they were doing and actually listen and care about their answer.
Mrs. B explained to me that until she learned to create her own community in New York she was very lonely here and was constantly homesick. She explained that it was not until she accepted that even though her neighbors were different from her did not mean that they were not part of her community, that things got better. She said they were different but they were still different. In order for Mrs. B to feel as if she were a better cultural fit for the American cultural Mrs. B had to adapt her meaning of community. According to Berry (1997) “for most acculturating individuals, after a period of time, some long-term positive adaptation to the new cultural context usually takes place” (p. 13). For Mrs. B this occurred when she accepted that the people in her new environment as part of her community.
I noticed that those she was including to be her people were in fact similar to her. The majority of people Mrs. B was creating relationships with were immigrants to the United States like her. While all the individuals were from different cultures, they shared that they were new to the American culture. The individuals which Mrs. B adopted as part of her community came from cultures that had less cultural distance from her own than the American culture did. According to Heine (2015) “one factor that should predict a person’s success in adjusting to a new culture is the amount of culture distance between the heritage culture and the host culture” (p. 264). While it was a bit more difficult for Mrs. B to adjust the American culture as there was greater difference between her culture and the Haitian culture, it was easier for her to partake in other’s culture that had less culture distance to her own and were a bit more similar.