Becoming American By JEREMY OLSHAN Immigration is more than moving from one place to another. It’s a long and complex transition.
Madhulika S. Khandelwal, examines this transition in her book, Becoming American, Being Indian: An Immigrant Community in New York City. A professor at Queens College, Khandelwal is director of the Asian/American Center. Much of her fieldwork has focused on the immigrant communities of Queens. An immigrant herself, Khandelwal says she never intended to stay in the United States and initially could not have imagined ever "Becoming American."
Was there a "Eureka" moment for you, when you realized you had become an American? Some people expect that to happen in a short time. But it doesn’t – you can’t really put a number on it of months or years. It was a gradual decision to stay here, and that is becoming pretty common. There is a sense that once you come to the USA you can’t go back .That is just not true. That moment was pretty spread out, as it is for most. People start getting invested in their social lives and personal lives. They buy a house, raise children, and gradually begin to settle down here. But in the last four or five years, when I realized I’d almost been in the U.S. as long as I was in India. That shift started happening. Came up to the same level as what is happening in India. That’s when you begin to feel like you are losing touch with every day life in India. It’s a process. A major part of my work has been on immigrants, but also the Queens community. And that has played a big role in getting more involved and identifying more with the USA.
How does the diversity of a place like Queens affect that process? I felt very comfortable about the diversity of people in Queens. It appeals to the other immigrants. A definite plus. You don’t feel alone. Recognizing the strength that the diversity of the people brings can be greatly helpful.
On the one hand, I was coming from India – which is also very diverse. But arriving here, we are also introduced to American notions of race and racism. I remember a South Asian cab driver said to me that "the mayor tells us we are racist, but we didn’t even know about racism until we arrived. We are ourselves the victims of racism." So from all these different parts of the world, immigrants get introduced to the American way of doing things.
What advice would you give to someone just beginning this transition? It helps to know more and learn more about American history. Not the nationalistic political history, which can be very sketchy. You have to go beyond that and learn about the struggles of different peoples in this country. That can be extremely helpful. It’s also important to join and participate in any aspect of American life that means something to you. There is no one way of becoming American. No one aspect that is the American life. Some people equate America with only moneymaking, and there is still this idea that all you have to do is come here and become rich. But you soon learn that a lot of Americans, regardless of how much money they have, are not at all happy. We all need to think a little about that. And most importantly, there are more support services. Before, immigrants had to create these support networks and survival strategies by themselves. Earlier immigrants had fewer skills, and less support.
What in your own experience helped you? What helped me was thinking and becoming more active in what I called the community and academy link. More community study. Working with immigrants has been very rewarding. Academically I consider myself a scholar of community, immigrants, and Queens. It’s funny how outside of the borough I am known as a Queens person. "There’s so much Queens in you," people tell me. And I didn’t realize that had become such a part of my identity. Another thing that has helped immensely is my connections with some of the women’s organizations.
Do you think in some ways immigrants have a greater handle on "Being American" than non-immigrants? Well one big plus is the ability to think internationally. We can learn so much more from developing countries. This helps us becoming aware of the nontraditional ways of becoming an American.
How does one handle having that kind of dual identity? When people come here, they feel a tremendous amount of isolation. Partly because of the more individualistic nature of American society. Leaving families, relatives, and a familiar social network behind, they are rootless and history-less here. Quite a thing to build that from scratch. A lot of immigrants go through that struggle. How to stay connected to one’s own family, while connecting with their community, and in the broader context their new home. It can be painful. People do it in different ways. Most immigrants have a real problem surviving in this country. I was having a conversation with some of my friends who have been in the USA much longer than I. They talked about how painful it is when one’s parents are getting older, and can’t travel. The pain of having to leave ailing parents to come back for a job. We go through this all the time. There is a kind of bi-national or international identity that an immigrant lives with. People come here thinking the USA is a place of work, and afterwards they will go back, because this is not a culture that always cares of and respects people in their later years. But people in their 60s and retiring often tell me that they feel they can no longer return.
How does one balance their old traditions with the new – particularly when it comes to children? Well, I do not have children, but from my own observations and study it’s a huge challenge. The bottom line is that no culture or tradition has survived in this country without adapting. Immigrants tend to want to keep things authentic and pure. To preserve and almost fossilize the past. But that’s just impossible. Culture is part of people and society. Culture has context. Traditions always change. People remake them according to where they are. Culture must be lived, and just being aware of that is important. It’s best to become partners with children in continuing traditions, because in the end it is futile to try to preserve everything as it was. The younger generations have always faced that in the USA.
When Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants came to New York, they were initially considered almost to be another race. Generations later they are now considered to be "white." Do you expect the same kind of "whitening" to occur for the more recent wave of immigrants? Well, it’s true that groups have changed. But other groups like Chinese, even if they have been here for several generations, are not "white," and not seen as Americans. So I don’t believe it’s an automatic and natural process. It may happen in the next 100 years, but you can’t take it for granted. How will the children of Muslim families that have been discriminated against after 9/11 feel in the next generation? These things are ongoing. Many of us don’t think of ourselves as Asian. We don’t talk about religious identity. South Asians, and Latinos: these identities are just forming. Just look at the Latino phenomenon. Are they going to leave individual national identities behind? Asians are going through the same thing. Who is an American? Does an American person have a certain face. Certain accents? In Queens we are very fortunate that these traditional notions are challeneged everywhere you look.
|
