Blog Prompt 2

 

        Growing up as a black Muslim woman it was always hard finding a common ground between a specific community. My identity was never specific to a group of people especially being from two different nationalities. I’m both Mozambican and Ethiopian and at times it felt like I didn’t belong to a specific nationality, I couldn’t neglect either side of me as in some way each contributed to my identity. Side note, both countries consist of entirely different cultures and traditions. So, I found myself at a young age attaching myself to people who relate to my struggle. I made my own little community of friends who also shared this identity crisis of being a third culture kid. I wouldn’t entirely say that those who wouldn’t share the same experience were exactly ‘outsiders’ but I was an outsider to them as I wasn’t entirely from one place. I would find it difficult to be within groups of people who weren’t open to the international community. By groups I mean international students who are open-minded to different cultures. This may seem to be a large pool of people, but it surprisingly isn’t. This experience is obviously different from my parents, for example, they were born and raised in Ethiopia and their circle consists of mainly traditional Muslim Ethiopians and even a specific ethnic group. Further exemplifying how we could have different interpretations of who’s an outsider or not even within the same household. They had the ability to grow up within a single culture all throughout their brain development stage. Making it easier for them as adults to categorize who’s the ‘other’ and who’s not. Whereas on the other hand I was raised in an entirely different country to the culture and religion within my household. Which almost made me an outsider in a sense, and thus I had to rely on my new-found identity to create my own community of those who could relate to this struggle.

        I don’t believe I have a concrete perception of those who I consider ‘the other,’ but rather I find myself avoiding those who aren’t accepting of a globalized community. This in some way is ironic, because as an international student the expectation is to be able to relate to all different cultures and ethnicities and that is the case however not all cultures and ethnicities are open to having this open-minded concept. Keep in mind being a third culture kid isn’t a constant battle of identity, there were great benefits such as not allocating people as ‘others.’ because I was the other. Growing up I understood that the practical effects of othering mean excluding other people due to differences that could be overlooked. And because that was a major part of my identity crisis I wasn’t inclined to dictate who belongs and who doesn’t.