Has anyone ever told you that you’re not [Caribbean, Asian, Hispanic] enough?

Well, no one has actually told me directly that they didn’t think that I was Haitian enough, but people sure have made me feel that way. Sometimes it’s just by making fun of the mistakes I make when speaking Haitian Creole – or it’s completely dismissing me from a conversation about childhood experiences because having grown up in the US, I couldn’t possibly understand.

While I haven’t let these experiences deter me from holding on to my Haitian roots, I think that many immigrants and/or children of immigrants who have spent the majority of their childhoods in the US are not as inclined to “fight the good fight”. Eventually, they gravitate more and more towards the American culture because there is actually more acceptance among those peers. I don’t know how many Haitian-Americans I have met who have completely lost the ability to speak Haitian Creole because they stopped trying altogether after being made fun of so many times for their accents.

As an adult, I started to wonder if people had established measurements of culture. For instance, does something I didn’t know or couldn’t say relating to the culture make me less Haitian? By virtue of being raised outside of Haiti, am I automatically losing points on the cultural meter? Can someone actually be more Haitian than another person?

What are your thoughts?

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Even today, I can distinctly remember what type of “talk” was considered to be disrespectful/inappropriate around adults. As a parent now, I am struggling with what is acceptable for “modern children” so that I don’t cause irreparable damage to their development.

My six-year old is very smart. She’s very curious about the world and can be very introspective about complicated issues. With that said, she also has very little self-restraint. I can remember having questions about many of the same things that she does (why is there a certain age for doing certain things, what does “dead” mean), but I was not as comfortable as she is in voicing them.

What I’ve realized is that what was considered disrespectful for my parents, is considered healthy development for parents of my generation. Although I have made great progress in accepting these changes, I also think it’s healthy to teach a child self-control at an early age. I think it’s important for them to know when it is appropriate to interrupt a conversation and what subjects are strictly for the home/family. Having this ability is what I think allowed my parents to take us just about anywhere without worry. So I’m working on this, keeping in mind that there is that fine line between disrespect and curiosity. 

Do you have a similar problem with the conversational habits of children today versus when you were a child? How do you address them without hindering your child’s development? Or, do you think that children should be allowed to say what they want, whenever they want? If so, why?

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