In this video that I have shared, the speaker shares her experience as a South Indian child who moved from Los Angeles to Singapore at the age of seven.  The speaker, Smrithi, shares the impact of being a minority in a new place and the impact of the assimilation process in her life.  

In her story, she shares how her family made sure that she was immersed in her culture growing up.  Her family enrolled her in traditional dance lessons, music classes, language classes and provided her with role models from her South Indian culture.  She discussed how she felt secure in her South Indian culture, but also recognized that living in Los Angeles, she was a minority.  As a result of her parents immigrating to the United States, she would likely fit in the minority category of immigrant minority.  She would be considered an immigrant minority because she did experience language and cultural differences in her upbringing.  

At eleven years old, Smrithi and her family moved to Singapore.  Initially, she noticed the ethnic diversity and that Singapore is a nation made up of immigrants from South Asian countries, including South India.  She was surprised to be around people who looked more like  her and that her culture was more common in her new city.  In Singapore, she and her sister attended an American International school.  As Smrithi stated, “as I would soon find out, I was a majority in the city and a minority at school” (2:37).  At school, Smrithi began experiencing bullying. This caused her to begin to alter her appearance in an effort to assimilate with her peers.  She discusses straightening her curly hair and using lightening creams on her skin.  Her goal was to hide her physical South Indian traits and blend in with the Euro-centric appearance of her classmates.  Additionally, she stopped speaking her language, stopped bringing South Indian foods to school, and stopped watching South Indian movies.  At this point in her life, Smrithi still fits into the immigrant minority category, but now it is impacting her in a different way.  It is evident that she feels a significant amount of pressure to “blend in”, or assimilate, with the majority culture that existed in her school.   

References:

Ogbu, J. U. (1987) Variability in minority school performance: A problem in search of an explanation. In Anthropology & Education Quarterly Vol.18 No.4 [pp.312-334].