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By globalistgirl, on April 23rd, 2008

Racism and Essentialism

A few days back, I found out in my cultural psychology class that it is true that those expats who believe in essentialism (with respect to either culture or race) have more problems integrating. A study was done at Bei Da of foreigners in Beijing (by sending out researchers to talk to foreigners at Sanlitun, nonetheless) that correlated essentialist views of identity with failure to integrate into Chinese society. It’s not a surprise, perhaps, but I’ve often wondered if it really could be so. I have my answer.

Essentialist views of identity are responsible for a great deal of the cultural marginalization that third culture kids can encounter. The ‘push’ to be one nationality or another, once race or another, whatever stark choices we are asked to make – stems fundamentally from the idea that we have some sort of magic ‘essence’ inside us, bestowed by some unclear combination of genetics and birth place, that determines who we are. Perhaps one of the strongest resistances third culture kids as well as multiracial people in race-salient environments face comes from the emotional discomfort and lack of closure we create for people with essentialist views of identity.

When your parents don’t give birth to you anywhere remotely close to where your genes evolved, it becomes hard to argue that there is magic essence in your birth place that can make you completely different from your parents. (Of course, unless you abandon essentialism and acknowledge the role that society plays in shaping us.) On the other hand, when you repatriate and act like you’re a foreigner, it is hard to argue that genes and ethnicity holds magical essence powerful enough to eradicate cultural divides. (I myself am an example of that.) Multiracial people challenge essentialism, even when they’ve only lived in one country. Third culture kids challenge essentialism in both ways mentioned above. And multiracial third culture kids just give people identity politics dyspepsia.

I’ve seen expats do some (to me) bizarre things that just seem maladaptive for themselves, things that don’t hurt or annoy the locals but cause significant inconvenience for the expats. I’ve gotten the feeling before that expats do impractical things in host countries (like after 4+ years in China, wearing diamond and gold earrings to markets) because they think that if they integrate, they will disappear somehow. As if not wearing expensive jewelry that serves as an identity marker in their home country but means something else in their host country will make their identity erode day by day. It sounds and seems so ridiculous to me that I figured that there must be some fantastically compelling emotional reward for doing these sorts of things that I’m unaware of. After some more observation, thinking about what I do instead and why I do that, I started to zoom in on identity issues.

Perhaps it is fair to assume that expats who are integrating poorly are simply afraid, then. Identity is a very potent thing, as third culture kids that identify as such know, and maybe pre-move training for expats ought to include an explicit discussion that challenges essentialist views of identity in a constructive way, by showing how you will not disappear if you adjust to a new culture. In fact, if you expatriate for the first time as an adult, you are virtually guaranteed that you will never cease to be what you started out as culturally. The odds that you are so good at cultural adjustment that you forget all about your life so far are so small, they can be dismissed. You are far more likely to not integrate enough, and have daily frustrations and problems as a result. Out of the two, the latter is clearly the case to worry about.

April 23rd, 2008 | Tags: , , , | Category: Cultural Marginalization, Outsider, Racism, Third Culture | 2339 comments

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