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 Thirty Percent: Culture, Language, and “Asians” in America

Asian/Pacific Islander. This classification includes approximately three to four billionpeople on this planet, about thirty percent of the world’s population. There iscertainly a reason to question this, “broad category for people who share only avague geographic continuity, without a common ancestry, culture, or language.”

 This issue of classification is one of the first issues I will identify for Asian/PacificIslanders from 18-30: cultural identification crisis.

In America, where the majority of Asian Americans are Chinese, often this group isprimarily identified with the racial category. The lack of knowledge, exposure, andrealization that there are a wide variety of ethnicities under this racial category canlead to cultural frustration for young Asian Americans. Those from smaller ethnicbackgrounds can feel as though their culture is not significant to their peers anddisrespected on the whole by the country. This is a prime cause for identificationissues, and cultural and familial conflicts.

 The other two conflicts for younger Asian Americans I believe are significant:language and nativity issues, and cultural intersectionality.

Many youth in this age group are the children of immigrants who came to thiscountry at an older age and do not have a significant grab on the language. Thisissue is significant especially for first American-born generation Asian Americans.

 They will often be translators for their parents or grandparents. A great deal of responsibility and pressure is placed upon them at young ages, resulting inemotional and mental stress that will translate throughout their life course.

Finally we have cultural intersectionality. As mentioned previously, while theexistence of their ethnic groups and cultural differences may be unknown to manyAmericans, these traditions are significant to many Asian Americans. Additionally,they may face discouragement in faltering from the strict traditions of the culturethat they are raised in.

Moving to 18-30 we can see that cultural significance and language barriers presentissues with social groups, from coworkers, to friends, and even romanticrelationships. The struggle for cultural differentiation in the face of culturalassimilation assigned by a third party could be extremely stressful and emotionallydraining, putting a hold on the progression of relationships between different ethnicand racial groups. Additionally, the distress caused by this can cause a clinging tocultural intersectionality and the divide it can provide from native cultures, resultingin a loss of language comprehension as older relatives begin to adopt declininghealth.

In Asian Americans 60 and over, language barriers and nativity become moreimportant for these individuals are, in some cases, going to be the last generationscompletely aware of their language. Those that do cling to the language in anattempt to cling to cultural significance as a methodology of combating culturalidentification crisis are impacted in several ways. Socially they are limited to certain

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peer groups, economically they are unable to pursue certain careers andeducational opportunities.

Cultural identification crisis becomes especially important here as it can detractfrom the emotional and mental health of these individuals, this is an aspect of well-being that not only becomes more important with age. Additionally, older Asian

Americans, who have little ties to the countries that their families emigrated from,might have strong ties to their cultural traditions, and in the face of growing culturalintersectionality from their children and grandchildren might be alarmed or evenfearful for the continuation of the ideals they hold dear.