Sabrina here! Even though I wasn't in the video, I edited the whole thing and nearly cried while doing it. Seeing Melissa chat with her grandpa reminded me of my own own. It was nice to work on this video and see my friends talk through and explore how being cross culture is it's own... culture. I wish younger Sabrina had a video like this, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you want to see more videos from us, be sure to check out: ua-cam.com/users/answerinprogress
Sabrina, we’re super curious about your culture too! Will you be talking about that in future uploads? I might’ve missed it as I’m pretty new to this channel, so if someone knows!
Imagine a child who grew up in Spain. The child's mother is French and the father is Vietnamese. Then when the child was 12, the family moved to Canada. Four-culture kid. Now imagine, if both of the parents are Four-culture kids.
Humanity a few generations down the line. They will learn to cope with it, and I hope we will lose that whole "where are you from?" attitude. Frankly, being central European where this whole phenomenon isn't as common yet, we find this question kinda offensive, racist. "I see you are different. WHAT different?" I mean, yes, acknowledge it. But don't make it such an important point in our interaction. That being said: When I first saw Melissa in this video, my mind did EXACTLY go there: "Hmmmmm... I think mostly south Asian."
@@HotelPapa100 I can see how that question could be seen as racist, but it makes me chuckle. Then again, I've always felt that racism isn't necessarily in the "words" themselves, but the intent behind the words :)
This is one of those videos that makes you kind of tear up because its a thing you've felt for so long but you never knew how to express it. I grew up moving back and forth between countries and its such an isolating feeling because there's no one who really has that exact experience and this video sort of understands that which is pretty amazing
People need to stop obsessing over belonging to any culture and move on to identity based on shared philosophies, ethics and values. You'll suddenly find people who get you anywhere in the world.
I've always found as a cross culture kids that all of my friends are either also cross culture, have travelled a LOT or have experiences something else which seperate them from the culture (eg disabled, queer)
This video hit me so hard. I have grown up and lived in multiple countries and each one has contributed to who I am. So when people ask where I’m from, I start to sweat. I am not Asian enough for one side of my identity and I am not European enough for the other. I am just stuck somewhere in the middle. And it’s hella complicated and confusing. So when people ask me where I’m from - short answer: my passport nationality (even though it couldn’t be further from my identity), long answer: I have a list of countries, you may want to sit down for a while.
Even though I’m white, when people ask where my brown friends are from, it upsets me a lot :/ because a lot of them are long-time American families, and I’m the one with really strong connections to immigration and refugees. People assume bc I’m white and they aren’t that they are “other” and I’m the same as them. So when I make a remark about my immigrant heritage, theyre surprised. Idk it just fuckin pisses me off my Grandma was super brave and came to a country she knew nothing about when she was a teenager, trying to escape genocide, and she built a loving family from nothing. She fought against nazis before she left, but just because of the assumptions that people make, I don’t often get to say that :/ idk, sorry if this is insensitive, I’ll delete it if it is.
Hey Mysty, thanks for sharing your story! I totally understand where you're coming from and what you're commenting on doesn't sound insensitive at all :)
The "but where are you reeeaaally from" got me. My cousins and I visited Gettysburg when they were really young, and a guy dressed as Abraham Lincoln decided to figure out where we were from. So he asked that 4-8 year olds multiple times. "Where are you from?" "Texas!" "No, where are you From?" "Houston!" "Ok, but where is your family from?" "...Ohio?" Abraham Lincoln looks at my parents, who respond to his exhausted plea: "The Philippines."
@Tin Tea I'm not sure? I think he was a paid actor who was supposed to periodically quote/perform the Gettysburg address, but when we saw him he was just kind of existing in a large room. This was like 8 years ago.
This is pretty much the Canadian condition: there's no strong overarching culture, and everyone has a unique background, so it's a little confusing. Even "white" Canadians tend to have pretty unique backgrounds/history.
As a white Canadian, I don't know much about where in from. I know im part French, but I know in also English and Duch, and I think there's a bit Brazilian native somewhere. I don't know if that's the normal amount to know about myself either, but I know in Canadian, and that's good enough for me.
Idk if most Canadians think this way, but I really like the idea that we're all from different cultures and that they're all worth celebrating and sharing. My city has Mosaic, a multicultural festival comprised of different venues celebrating heritage. From dance, fashion, and food to other traditions. Due to our particular area's population, we have two Ukrainian pavilions.
As a white American I feel a large lack of cultural identification. A while back I watched an IG live of Sonya Renee Taylor’s where she mentioned that white immigrants in the US (and Canada by extension I would believe) left a lot of their cultural heritage behind in pursuit of the privileges afforded to whiteness. Different than the juggling of different identities as a person closer to their immigrant roots - but still creates that lack of solidity in a cultural identity for many.
@@helenhass4652 this thing happened to me but by accident. I'm white, I don't get this whole heritage-thing, it never made sense to me. I'm myself 100% wherever I live but I never had any privilege back in Poland as I was unwanted and discriminated there my whole life (despite being legal resident). After moving to America this problem just disappeared from my life automatically. Feels nice and I didn't have to sacrifice anything. ^^
I'm Japanese , Mexican and Italian, German. It was confusing growing and I did feel really disconnected from any culture. So was nice to learn I wasn't the only one that feels this way.
Very wholesome! I definitely resonate with the “just be yourself” ending. I’m half Chinese half Czech living in America. and I’ve been told I look South American and Hispanic etc. like I visually don’t represent either of my ethnic identities so that does make me feel like an “other” sometimes. But that doesn’t matter because that doesn’t stop me from taking part of my cultures in a way that works for me.
I totally get you! I'm half Chinese/white but look very racially ambiguous and always have people guessing because I don't have the Asian eyes. I feel like I'm in this limbo because I have a very small amount of white family, so growing up had a weird mix of Chinese culture at home whilst growing up in a western country; it's the whole 'not white enough/not Asian enough' on either side but not being able to fully identify with either properly to fit into either box.
damn i was dry eyed the whole way through then right after she talked to her grandad i teared up so bad cuz i miss my grandma and ive forgotten so much of one half of my culture i feel so guilty
I’m a bit scared of having children. I am Caribbean and my partner is from China. I don’t want my children feel like they don’t fit in. Hopefully I can guide them and give them helpful tips that can make their journey better as a cross culture kid.
Mixed race is the master race and everyone can contribute ;) Your kids, no matter what, being human, will find a way to not fit in. This way just makes that way predictable. There's plenty of reasons to not have kids just as there's plenty of reasons to have them, such as in your case, making a more genetically healthy child who is significantly less likely to inherit genetic/hereditary diseases
Don't worry, they will build their own culture mostly from the society in which they will grow, enriched from what you and their father have to offer. They might feel confused or even lost at time in the process, but they will make it, this is the natural, spontaneous process (in my personal experience).
Reflection :). I felt this so much. My parents are Nigerians (Yoruba) and immigrated to Australia. I was born here and only visited Nigeria once when I was very little but I have no memory of it, and I was obviously brought up in Aussie culture that greatly contrasts to theirs. I always felt iffy about saying I'm Nigerian even though that's my ethnicity because I experienced very small instances of it, don't know the country like someone who lived there, and I can't speak the language. And even when I did/do, I always feel like I'm not Nigerian enough to do so, even without being the token black kid and having school kids who didn't help but reinforce that I'm not a 'real' black person (official coconut since 2001 ayy). I definitely related to Melissa and Taha where the way they connect to the culture on a day-to-day basis was with food, in my case Jollof rice is my poison, and it's the one instance where I don't have to question anything. But at the same time it's not like I'm 'interacting with culture because I'm eating rice' (I'm gonna coin Taha's quote to express the mess that is being a cross culture kid)
YES to THIS VIDEO. The struggle is real. As a first gen immigrant who moved as a young kid to Canada, I constantly feel like I'm facing an identity crisis (graduating uni soon so there's another crisis lol). A question that my high school social sciences teacher asked the class was whether we saw ourselves as "Canadian-[respective ethnicity]" or "[respective ethnicity]-Canadian." It's been five years and I still think about that question.
@@yokelenglengits ultimately a question of whether you see yourself more as a Canadian or as your ethnicity. Generally the longer a family has been in a country the more they associate with that country. Especially due to public schools causing a lot of shared experiences between kids, even if their home lives are different. You could view the question as "how assimilated are you?" but that phrasing may be considered to have yucky connotations. And the original is meant to help students figure out their identity at one of the most confusing times in their lives, not ask if they've converted to the one true culture.
When I discovered the book about third culture kids I legit cried as I understood a lot of how I reacted to my experiences in childhood, especially the feeling of never feeling rooted. That has always been a pretty strong feeling all my life.
I'm not multicultural but my child will be. I am always a little worried about how to incorporate both cultures into my child's life. This video made me realize that it really is just the 'small' things like food that matter a lot when connecting to a culture.
Oh!! I never thought there were studies in this! Thank you so much for talking about the subject! I myself was born in Russia but lived in France since I was 6 y.o. and I never could answer properly to others when french people kept asking about my russian experience of life and vice versa, because I really had neither and both, and I haven't met lots of kids that had similar experience for a while (until I started university that is, which is super late). Confused culture kids is for sure the right way to say this, and it really put me at ease knowing it's more common than I thought !! Thank you so much again! :)
Same!! I was born in New Zealand but mostly grew up in Taiwan and my parents are Taiwanese and it's all very confusing (and even more so when I meet people with similar backgrounds but totally different ways of identifying themselves)
For me it’s the music of Mexico. My dad lived most of his life in Mexico City and always plays 60s rock and roll songs that he grew up on and it gives me this warm and nostalgic feeling. I lived for a year in elementary school and have visited there in recently as well and the music of the mariachis and the rock and roller music he plays is just gives me this sense of community. (I’m Mexican-American)
my dad moved from a small town into my city about 40 years ago and while they are pretty close it's still different from where he grew up, about 4 years ago he found a store that sold a type of bread from his town, in 40 years he had never seen it in this city and he was so excited for me and my sisters to try it. He spend hours telling us about his childhood, the bakery that used to sell them and how he would collect coins to buy it, for him this bread was a bit of culture he could share with us and thanks to this video im realizing this now
This video made me realize how disconnected I am from my own culture, whatever that is. I don't struggle with it as much as others do, I moved to America from Thailand when I was ten, and Thailand is pretty westernized so there wasn't a horribly jarring difference in fashion and architecture. Still, I never celebrated Christmas or Thanksgiving and I don't get to celebrate Songkran anymore. Anyways, great video, I love this new format.
REFLECTION Loved the video. My family is from Southern India and we live in Western India. Although it's not the same as a different country, I always felt like a cross culture kid because the culture outside my house is different in so many ways from that of inside my home. Thank you for the video. Keep up the great work!
Yeah I got you , Even growing up in different states within the country makes me feel like cross culture. As I always feel left out some in other things.
I'm from Trinidad, born and raised, but moved to Canada for University (and hopefully the rest of my life) . When I tell people that fact it's often a mixed bag of confusion, for as you see I am a tall lanky white boy. Like my identity is a card trick to impress the people I meet. Let me say, hearing your grandfather talk took me back home, I could feel the warmth of my island bloom inside me. Thank you for that.
This was fantastic! My family moved from England to Australia when I was 12. Even though the culture of both countries is much closer than a lot of other places, the differences still left me feeling pretty lost through my late teens and early 20s. It's so good to have the words to talk about those feelings!
Oh my gosh I never thought there was a term for this. Im British-Irish and was raised and have been to the Middle East a lot and then have been living in England for the latter half of my life so far so I struggle a lot with figuring out my cultural identity. Thanks to my family not really knowing much about our own Irish culture ive never gotten to celebrate any Irish traditions or cook any Irish foods or do anything like that but hopefully later on in my life I will finally get to explore my culture.
I find it so interesting how as a mixed race Taiwanese American kid I relate so much to all of the various other third culture kids. Like, there's something about living at the intersection of different cultures that is both a unique and amazing but also confusing experience. I also think that third culture kids are the bridges between our global world. Because when countries stop thinking about "my children" and "your children" and start thinking about "our children" we have so much more motivation to build a globally equitable and prosperous world and put aside our differences.
As someone who was raised in one culture, but not raised at home, I strongly empathise with this. I can relate to the "never really fit in" and the Uno / playing cards allegory. Nice work team!! I love listening to you guys.
I can totally relate, and salute you for sharing your points of view! I am also a Cross Culture Kid: an American who grew up in Germany, with some adopted siblings from China and Thailand. I felt like my family was the only anchor of identity I knew, everything else was a mix of "everything yet none of it". I even relate to the deep confusion of the question "Where are you from". I always loved my open-minded outlook, but the rootlessness got to me for a time. I came to terms with it about 2 years ago. I am a Christian, and I basically felt that I am not at home in a place or with people, but with God and my faith. Now, I still love my food, family, and cultures and friends, but I no longer have the pressure to make them my anchor. I still feel the confusion or awkwardness when talking to people who never went anywhere. But I can draw from the strengths of being a Cross Culture Kid without apology. Hope all you Cross Culture Kids out there find roots and freedom all at the same time! You guys have something to give to the world. We are bridge-builders, creatives, and simply interesting people. Don't let the confusion stop you from living a full life in community with others!
Trinidadian-American here When Melissa’s grand father spoke I was immediately beamed with joy and thought back to my own grandparents because the accent is the exact same and I had the pleasure of speaking to my paternal grandparents over the past few days.
As a fellow half-Goan, this really hit home just how isolating and confusing it can be growing up with such ambiguity. Really happy to see it covered in this way, thank you for making this!
I'm Mexican-American and I totally feel this. My mom immigrated from Juarez, Mexico when she was around six months old so she doesn't exactly identify as an immigrant since she's pretty (as she'd describe it) white washed even though she's more involved in our culture than me. My dad's Tex-Mex (Texan Mexican.) Sure, I may be Mexican by blood, but I never really felt as connected to the culture as my parents, other than food and some music. I do know a little Spanish but not enough to speak it, people in my community called me white washed for that. I wish I was more involved but I just never was. I remember being little and going to my abuelita's house and her cooking authentic food from our culture, her being a full blown immigrant from Juarez, and I loved it. Every time we would go to her house, she'd make me sopita, and it was so comforting. I get the whole food thing.
I'm half Puerto Rican, and I gotta say, the food you made in the Let's Cook! chapter really looked similar to some comida we have 😄 Definitely different, but similar
I resonate with this video so much, wow. This is the first time I've heard of the concept cross culture kid and I feel like I finally know how to describe myself (I was born in Brazil, but I moved to Spain when I was only 9 months old, 14 years later I moved to Brazil again and lived there for a year and, finally, I moved to Argentina, where I've been currently living for three years) . Also, I relate so much to the elaborated explanation given by Melissa to answer the "where are you from?" question, I think I've memorized the exact words and tone to use so I don't really even have to think about what to say.
Growing up multi-cultural isn't something that is talked about enough. I'm half Chinese, a quarter Mexican, and a quarter Honduran is the basis of my mix. From what I understand, I may have some other cultures mixed into me as well. So the "Where are you from??!?" "What ARE you?!?" questions were always way too common in my life. I grew up in Los Angeles and just say I'm from L.A. and people always question more. Thanks for making this video. It's easy to feel so alone when people ask questions regarding my identity, so it's nice to feel valid seeing others who go through the same identity struggles I've dealt with in my life.
I think you are whatever culture you feel closest too. I was born & raised in the US to 2 parents from Jamaica but growing up I felt much closer to Jamaican culture and spent a whole lot of time there growing up & i'm there regularly now. Even though I grew up here in the US it always felt like a foreign country to me & Jamaica has always been home.
I relate to this so hard. My mom is Danish, my dad is Norwegian. I was born in Denmark and lived there until we moved to China when I was 6, where I went to an international school. The majority of the students there were American or Korean. We left China when I was 17 and moved to Norway. I finished high school at an IB school there, then moved to another city in Norway where I lived in an international community working for a non-profit. If anyone asks me where I’m from, I say I’m half Danish, half Norwegian, but grew up in China and went to an American international school. If people want to know more, they’ll ask. I wish I did have one “label” I describe everything.
Being an American raised in Belgium, this video would have really helped my past self with the sense of isolation I felt from not understanding the culture around me and not being able to share the culture I enjoyed at home to my Belgian friends. Thank you very much for this video.
Oh wow this video really helps put words to “that awkward feeling” I feel when my Chinese americanness is pointed out. Thank you for making this, it really would have helped me when I was younger, but it still amazing to see now.
Welp, since I'm half Chinese-Jamaican, I'm probably within 6th cousins of Melissa given how relatively small the number of Hakka Chinese who ran off to the Caribbean in the 1800s was
"I can just be me" may sound corny and cliché, but it's unbelievably true honestly. It's less about "oh I'm doing whatever I want" and more about "I don't _have_ to be in this box or that box, and I can decide how I want to make myself". It's a very subtle, but powerful thing.
this group of friends is so cute and wholesome, I love seeing them interact with each other, and I just really love this channel and the ideas it tackles! plus, the editing and visual graphics are TOP NOTCH, I honestly think this channel deserves so much more attention
This was so lovely, and so well put together. I find it funny how the research montage and the zoom call with Taha/Sabrina is becoming a staple of these videos. Also you really lulled me into that surfshark ad I was so zen watching the montage. I'm like Taha, British Pakistani, and when I was like 5 when I was asked where I am from I took my hand and used it to slice down my face and chest while saying 'i am half british and half pakistani'. I've made a lot of effort to retain the Pakistani in me, learning Urdu in earnest, learning how too cook food that isnt pasta, wearing kurtas even to school when I built up the confidence. But despite all that I feel most at home here, in Britain, where I was born, and the prospect of living a life expected of a Pakistani woman is chafing, and my ideas and ideals are so so so different from my parents and cousins by virtue of the environment i grew up in and progressive ideas I have been exposed to. Its hard and complicated. It's been even weirder recently, trying to justify to myself wanting to be proud of britain with its colonial history and current entrenched xenophobia and racism but, hey ho. Excellent video
So sad I missed the premiere. Great vid though! Your grandpa was so sweet, and I'm excited to read Third Culture Kids. If anyone else wants to buddy read it, lmk so we can chat!!
Parents illegally came to America from Mexico. My two cultures, my languages, my environments clashed. After many years I do not relate to either and just consider myself closer to gamer and internet culture more than anything else. I feel closer to the memetic of ideas with how games and internet evolved thru the 90s to now. It resonates so much when seeing videos of old lore from internet stories or watching some play a game from old game systems. Even now I get influenced by Twitch, twitter, reddit and UA-cam and not just the proximity of people around me, except for food cause home made frijoles are the best
I feel this so much, and my mashup of cultures isn't nearly as complicated as many people's (I'm British/Canadian/American). It's crazy to think how many cross-culture kids there are out there unsure of exactly who they are. my heart goes out to all of you 💙
I've been fortunate (?) enough to "pass" the cultural litmus test in Canada and not get asked. However, straddling the line between family cultures as well as childhood neighbours' cultures has allowed me to appreciate the difficulty of fitting in. This has led to where I am running my university intercultural club and helping students from all cultural backgrounds feel comfortable in their own skin, share their traditions with others, and learn from others about their cultures and traditions. Oh, and (before COVID), there was always amazing food at every event 🙂 This video really cemented the thoughts I and many of my club members have been tackling for a while, so bravo on putting that together so brilliantly!
My dad is from two cultures, my mom from one, I was born in another, and raised in another. Sort of three and a half cultures (we moved from where I was born when I was two, so not a lot of exposure to that culture). The food has definitely reflected this. My mom learned how to cook my dad's culture's food from my paternal grandma, who had a restaurant, and my dad also knows some things. My mom also cooks from her culture, which she learned from her mother/my maternal grandma. It's really interesting and we've always been proud of our mosaic-like multicultural and international (we have people living on 4 different continents) family.
so true, I grew up being influenced by so many cultures (i live in a multicultural country and city) that weren't my own ethnicity that idek any more what culture is
Thanks Melissa and Sabrina. These are the important conversations. I was reminded that simple is better and at the best, equally at a dinner table. Food is how I learned to love cultures and it might be the best way to keep sharing.
While i am not a cross culture kid this video reminded me of the first months of lockdown, i am not a great cook and i missed all the traditional dishes from my own city (where i live) but i never knew how to cook. So i learned a bit about recepies and learnt that most traditional foods are designed for little ingredients or for limited attention time while cooking, these were made for stay at home moms who had to care for kids and the house, also for houses where families can only aford one meal a day when i first tried them it felt nice to know that no matter where i am, i can bring a little bit of home with me and that was surprisingly conforting
Thanks for this video as a "Scot" with Latin American parents it's nice to hear someone express the kind of thoughts Ive had for a long time. Personally asides from food I really feel that sense of connection on warm, still, evenings.
Cultures are so interesting to me. I love seeing how others live and coming to understand not only what things mean, but also some of the practical reasons it might have came about (spoilers, ancient ancestors do be survivin). Culture is cool af
My REFLECTION is the worst in the morning, barely see myself :-D Interesting thing to deal with. You do not need to have "unclear" roots to feel disconnected, unfunctional family gives that mismatch too, pretty easily unfortunately.
Malaysian Chinese/British here who grew up going back and forth between both countries. So many things are, *flails hands*, confusing but the main thing that bugs me is that wherever I am never fully feels like home. Always being "technically a tourist" very much sucks when you just want to belong in some way.
Jamaican here, I feel this so much my family is extremely mixed, and I don't even feel connected to Jamaica at times and food really does help. I'm part Lebanese and there are some Arabic places near my house and every time my family gets take out from there I feel at home in a sense even though I've never been to the Middle East, curry goat has the same effect for Jamaica. Food is a main way me and my family connect and without it, I would feel lost. When people ask me where I'm from I say Jamaican, but sometimes they ask for more details and the bit at 0:43 sums up how I feel perfectly.
This is a video I definitely need right now. My parents immigrated from Cameroon and we had friends from all over the world (most from Germany, Italy, China, Japan, Puerto Rico, and India) so it feels like I’m in between worlds even though I was born and raised in the US. I just had this sense that no matter what I tried, I’d never fit in. Media and food has been my important bridge to connecting with people and thank goodness today’s tech makes it a lot easier.
I know that you'll probably never read this, but to Melissa and Taha, thank you for making this video. You have no idea how valuable it was for me to hear from another cross-culture kid. In recent years especially, I have felt more and more insecure about my status as mixed, especially since my family history is a big jumble of people moving from place to place. I felt like two puzzle pieces were forced together to create me, and I was never meant to be. In short... I didnt feel whole. I didn't feel like both cultures and I didnt feel like neither, and I didnt know what to make of that. Because that was all there was in my mind. But you guys showed me that it is possible to be something entirely different. I am my experience, and that experience is entirely unique. In short, you helped me feel whole again. Thank you for that.
I am German, French, and Romanian married to a Cantonese Chinese man... I was born and raised in MI USA and my husband is the first generation in the USA from Macau/Hong Kong, they were based in Pennsylvania... My husband and I now live in Utah and I am now pregnant with our first son :D so he will have quite a rich culture I think. My husband still has lots of family in Hong Kong and Macau - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. So I definitely see us visiting a good amount of time and our kid will 100% know Cantonese as well as English as my husband and his family speak it almost exclusively. I am quite proud to have a son with such a rich history already and I will try my best to share, teach, and experience every part that will make him, him
Being born and raised in NY until I was 8, then my parents and I moved to Mexico (to different Cities and Villages) came back to the States when I was 15, left the States when I was 17 and came back when I was around 21. I can say it’s been a good cultural mixture, Knowing what concepts (wrong or right) each other place has from the other opens up to an unexplainable seeking of answers that I enjoy (at times) 🙄 How different people react, interact and speak to you can truly impact how you think of that One place.
This is really interesting, and while race has never been a factor in the "where are you from" question for me (I'm white and living in Australia), I feel a lot of this as a South African living in Australia. Moved when I was 4, but somehow have still retained elements of my accent. Not enough that saffas can identify me as a fellow saffa, but enough that aussies can identify that I'm not Aussie. I don't remember enough about South Africa to feel strongly about it, but I was raised with a South African mind-set and values, which are different to the Aussie mind-set and values. I'm immersed in Aussie culture but have always felt separated from it. So I definitely get this idea of "not one or the other but both but also not" that seems to be spoken about here.
As someone whose family has been in the same region for nearly 300 years, this is all pretty foreign to me. Super interesting to hear about your experiences; lots of stuff I hadn't heard of or been exposed to. Also, what is this spotify playlist I spied in the first portion? I searched for it but nothing came up.
As CCK I really relate to this. I just learned in Jan about TCK and CCK identities and it felt like coming home. Finally having words to describe what I feel, why certain questions both me. And becoming more comfortable in my complex identity. This video means a lot, I'm 21 now and I hope younger CCK get to see this, in general, everyone who identifies with it because it truly helps to become comfortable with oneself.
I live in Trinidad and I'm also brown. I would never imagine my life anywhere else because I love Trinidad and it's people. I made me so happy to hear you talk about it, it made me happy to hear your grandfather talk in the Caribbean dialect and hear his journey and to see you try to make doubles. You may not see this, but thanks for making this video! - much love from a fellow brown kid
What's wild to me is I get that question all the time. "no but where were you from originally?" And the wild thing is the answer is the US and they won't accept it! I'm mixed race white/black and both sides of my family trace back generations to the US. My dad is the decendent of slaves and my mom's side came over with the first wave of the Irish to the states. Just how far back do I have to go to be considered a "real american"? It's insanity. Americans say garbage like "why can't people just assimilate?" When they won't even let people like me be American. It's pants on head nonsense.
Food is the only thing left of my mother's culture in my family. In some ways it's easier because there's not really two cultures I'm between, but I always wonder what things I'll never know or what my ancestors would think of me…
This video came across my recommended around the same time I started looking into my Guyanese roots!! I feel disconnected in a different way but watching this video was such an emotional experience! This was truly amazing! Thank you for such a lovely look into your life! I feel a little less lost knowing how many people are just like me.
It feels so strange to feel so strongly about a video, but having grown up as a military kid who has struggled with my identity for years, this video struck a chord. Thank you for the work y'all have done on this topic and for helping me down the path to finding *something* It's so strange that desire of belonging to a culture or identity is so pervasive. I had always felt strange in that, but it is comforting knowing I'm not alone in that struggle.
This video was so well done - like your other videos are already impeccable, but this one... Hit really close to home. Without getting into details, it made me nostalgic and now I'm a teary-eyed mess :') I love both my cultures, but I feel sometimes like I don't know where to place my identity. It felt really good to have that validated and to know people share that very specific feeling. The grandpa's conversation felt like I was at home with my own grandma. Seriously, 10/10 ~
I feel like I fit in the category where I’m not a third culture kid, but _super close_ to being one. My great grandparents on my father’s side moved to the US from Hungary. They were Jewish, and spoke both Hungarian and Hebrew. Now I live in the United States, only a native speaker of English and knowing only a few Hungarian words and some Hebrew prayers. I’m barely Jewish. My dad specifically raised me to be very atheist. The only Jewish holiday I celebrate is Hannukah, otherwise I follow the big popularized Christian holidays, because I’m in a Christian area. In most definitions, I’m white. My mom is white and from Europe and Scotland, and my siblings and I are light-skinned. I grew up knowing myself as Jewish, but even that is hard for me to say outright. Can I be Jewish without ever having a bah mitzvah? Without knowing any of the extra Hannukah prayers beside the first? While celebrating Christmas and Easter? There’s a long history of the Jewish people never belonging to any specific ethnicity. They come in many different skin tones, speaking many different languages, in many different countries. And in nearly every place that Jews tried to make a home, they faced adversity. Before the recent changes in the Middle East and the revival of Hebrew, most Jewish people lived in small pocket communities scattered across the globe, or, like me, so diffused into the surrounding culture that their identity is questionable. It’s saddening to think about, that I have direct familial branches that faced the Holocaust, but feel like have lost my cultural connection to them. Aside from food. Matzo, geld, hummus, couscous paela, and latkes are home to me. My family gathers around Hannukah yearly to eat more traditionally “Jewish” food. That’s the one time I’m Jewish. It’s weird feeling like an outsider in a place I was born and raised, celebrating the same holidays, having the same skintone. There’s no reason I should feel like an outsider, the influence of immigration runs cold after my grandparents. I should be at home, but I’m not. Edit: I also want to add that even though I have a desperate desire to fit into my surrounding culture, it’s battling with my need to not disconnect from my history. I want to draw pride from my Jewish ancestry, learn Hungarian, and keep my (Jewish-sounding) last name. I want to have a place among the people around me, but I also don’t, because I have a need to embrace my roots. I also hate being white. White people get so much privilege that I don’t deserve any more than a dark-skinned Jew. Whiteness is often synonymous with bigotry. I don’t want to be that.
aaghsebsvshd I’ve never related more to a UA-cam comment. Your story almost exactly mirrors my own and it’s interesting to see that there are other people like me.
@@durdleduc8520 definitely. I always felt so strange being Jewish and not being comfortable saying that I am. I never really identified with my ethnic identity or religious one as I was raised atheist. Being Jewish for me has always felt strange, especially living in America where I look just like everybody else and no one questions whether or not I'm American. Thank you for sharing your story, its kind of nice to know that there are others like me.
I am from à Hungarian jewish family that fled Hungary to Western Europe, and my parents (holocaust survivors) HID from us 3 children that we were jewish for as long as they could. I was around 11 when we found out (huge shock). This was not a rare behaviour among holocaust survivors. So I feell very disconnected from that part of my heritage, i know nothing about Jewish things and culture... I'm a Buddhist ! Only my elder brother embraced Jewish religion as an adult but still keep very low profile. Our parents were complete atheists, or so I guess as religion was never ever discussed at home. I don't think you should see your heritage and your US culture as conflicting, you are just hurting yourself, there is no reason for that, you just happen to have a mix of cultures which is fantastic, just like a huge portion of humanity.
The concept of nationality the way we knoe it is so young and so illogical that it doesn't make any sense for many people out there. Don't worry, you don't even have to call yourself anything other than a human being that is simply connected to several cultures.
The little discussion on food definitely hit home for me. I'm half-chinese half-white, but my dad came to Canada at a very young age so there's a disconnect between the culture of my grandparents and me. To add to that I grew up in a very very Asian city, so I grew up with my grandparents and their culture, but also felt outside of it because my home life was much more of a typical white suburban Canadian family. I was always the only white kid, look mostly white, was always told "you're so white" but also never felt at home with being a White Canadian either. I also most easily connect to my family and heritage through food. Going out and having dimsum like I did with my grandparents when I was young, or nostagically recreating dishes my mah mah cooked me. It makes me feel happy and at home and reminds me of them.
So my Mum is armenien and russian (with roots to eastern asia) my dad is ukrainien and georgan both grew up in ukraine. I grew up in Western Europe. And i‘ve always felt so disconnected from every culture i‘ve interacted with. I am not russian enough or austrian enough or xyz enough to take up space in any of those cultures. It is really weird because most of my friendgroup are austrian so they do not understand what’s that like. It is nice to know I am not alone.
as a japanese british person myself i relate so much! I grew up in a very white place so until very recently i'd been (subconsciously) trying to deny myself of my japanese identity and trying to be "white" to fit in (to the point poc friends would call me a white girl lmao).. i think its when I saw taha's tweets when i realised that both identities can coexist!! In /reflection/, although i hated feeling different as a child, I'm so grateful to my parents for raising me international :)
I remember once I had a project about culture. I told my teacher I didn't have a culture and she said I have united states culture, but I couldn't explain how I didn't have enough knowledge of either of my cultures to do the project properly. I didn't do that project, but now I realized I have a culture, it's multicultural.
We are litterally made of the food we were fed by our mother as a child. I found out how deeply this impacts us when I was "stranded" for years in a totally different part of the world, eating only local food with no access to "my" food (that I called jokingly "real food"). I thought I was detached from such materialistic matters, it turned out to be a really tough experience !
This is so touching as a multiple culture kid, mother is Portuguese, father is Angolan, born in Mexico, raised in Russia, Norway and the DRC, it’s hard to identify yourself after seeing so much
This video is 3 years old as of me watching it, and even though I identify as African American and grew up in an African American culture in the United States, I understand the concept of this video way more than I care to admit. I am constantly looking for more information about my family here in the United States, about my African roots, and what it means to be an American and how all of that can collide like a 10 car accident during rush hour. Melissa, thank you for making this video. I wish you the best on your journey, and may you and I find the answers we're searching for.
Sabrina here! Even though I wasn't in the video, I edited the whole thing and nearly cried while doing it. Seeing Melissa chat with her grandpa reminded me of my own own. It was nice to work on this video and see my friends talk through and explore how being cross culture is it's own... culture. I wish younger Sabrina had a video like this, and I hope you enjoyed it!
If you want to see more videos from us, be sure to check out: ua-cam.com/users/answerinprogress
thanks for making this video, x culture kids rise up ✊😔
Can we request the recipe that Melissa made in this video? It looked delicious!
I felt all the things in this video as an Asian-American. This was a really good video. I'm looking forward to the next videos!
Sabrina, we’re super curious about your culture too! Will you be talking about that in future uploads? I might’ve missed it as I’m pretty new to this channel, so if someone knows!
I almost cried too
Sabrina really do be looking different
I think she cut her hair🤔
Lynn Burch ya I think you’re right
@@labadaba5088 yeah kinda
Derek Welk nah she still looks south Asian but southeast asian before...?
Derek Welk wait I’m confused now
Imagine a child who grew up in Spain. The child's mother is French and the father is Vietnamese. Then when the child was 12, the family moved to Canada. Four-culture kid. Now imagine, if both of the parents are Four-culture kids.
woah
thats... deep bro
Poly-cultural?
Humanity a few generations down the line. They will learn to cope with it, and I hope we will lose that whole "where are you from?" attitude.
Frankly, being central European where this whole phenomenon isn't as common yet, we find this question kinda offensive, racist. "I see you are different. WHAT different?"
I mean, yes, acknowledge it. But don't make it such an important point in our interaction.
That being said: When I first saw Melissa in this video, my mind did EXACTLY go there: "Hmmmmm... I think mostly south Asian."
@@HotelPapa100 I can see how that question could be seen as racist, but it makes me chuckle. Then again, I've always felt that racism isn't necessarily in the "words" themselves, but the intent behind the words :)
Taha has a charismatic way of conveying his thoughts.
6:46 that one motion said so much and it just clicked instantly. The sheer compression of information. I couldn’t help but burst out in laughter
As a Caribbean person hearing that Guyanese accent and seeing someone make doubles warms my heart
I hate to be "that person" but what she did to the bara made me uncomfortable. It crunched 😭
This is one of those videos that makes you kind of tear up because its a thing you've felt for so long but you never knew how to express it. I grew up moving back and forth between countries and its such an isolating feeling because there's no one who really has that exact experience and this video sort of understands that which is pretty amazing
i know! i nearly cried when i saw what the video was about
People need to stop obsessing over belonging to any culture and move on to identity based on shared philosophies, ethics and values. You'll suddenly find people who get you anywhere in the world.
So true, all my life I felt only my sister really understood me but now I see I was wrong :')
I've always found as a cross culture kids that all of my friends are either also cross culture, have travelled a LOT or have experiences something else which seperate them from the culture (eg disabled, queer)
This video hit me so hard. I have grown up and lived in multiple countries and each one has contributed to who I am. So when people ask where I’m from, I start to sweat. I am not Asian enough for one side of my identity and I am not European enough for the other. I am just stuck somewhere in the middle. And it’s hella complicated and confusing. So when people ask me where I’m from - short answer: my passport nationality (even though it couldn’t be further from my identity), long answer: I have a list of countries, you may want to sit down for a while.
"I am interacting with culture because I'm eating rice"
Lol
I made the cheese sandwich. I did it. It was me.
CURSES
You are the impostor!!!
Thank you for your contribution.
D: GASP
As someone who hasn't seen the full video yet, your comment and its replies has me in bits
Even though I’m white, when people ask where my brown friends are from, it upsets me a lot :/ because a lot of them are long-time American families, and I’m the one with really strong connections to immigration and refugees. People assume bc I’m white and they aren’t that they are “other” and I’m the same as them. So when I make a remark about my immigrant heritage, theyre surprised.
Idk it just fuckin pisses me off my Grandma was super brave and came to a country she knew nothing about when she was a teenager, trying to escape genocide, and she built a loving family from nothing. She fought against nazis before she left, but just because of the assumptions that people make, I don’t often get to say that :/ idk, sorry if this is insensitive, I’ll delete it if it is.
Hey Mysty, thanks for sharing your story! I totally understand where you're coming from and what you're commenting on doesn't sound insensitive at all :)
I completely understand. I am the opposite side of that. I am 4th generation American but people don't expect that because of the color of my skin
So, where ARE you from? 🤭
@@jonahs92 i’m from norway! my great grandparents were Sámi, and it’s super important to me how brave they were.
@@hermionieismyqueen2097 Oh, cool!
The "but where are you reeeaaally from" got me. My cousins and I visited Gettysburg when they were really young, and a guy dressed as Abraham Lincoln decided to figure out where we were from. So he asked that 4-8 year olds multiple times.
"Where are you from?"
"Texas!"
"No, where are you From?"
"Houston!"
"Ok, but where is your family from?"
"...Ohio?"
Abraham Lincoln looks at my parents, who respond to his exhausted plea:
"The Philippines."
Why not just ask what ethnicity are you? Straight to the point.
@Tin Tea I'm not sure? I think he was a paid actor who was supposed to periodically quote/perform the Gettysburg address, but when we saw him he was just kind of existing in a large room. This was like 8 years ago.
Ulgh, what point were they trying to make with that question?
This is pretty much the Canadian condition: there's no strong overarching culture, and everyone has a unique background, so it's a little confusing. Even "white" Canadians tend to have pretty unique backgrounds/history.
As a white Canadian, I don't know much about where in from. I know im part French, but I know in also English and Duch, and I think there's a bit Brazilian native somewhere. I don't know if that's the normal amount to know about myself either, but I know in Canadian, and that's good enough for me.
I would fit right in. :3
Idk if most Canadians think this way, but I really like the idea that we're all from different cultures and that they're all worth celebrating and sharing.
My city has Mosaic, a multicultural festival comprised of different venues celebrating heritage. From dance, fashion, and food to other traditions. Due to our particular area's population, we have two Ukrainian pavilions.
As a white American I feel a large lack of cultural identification. A while back I watched an IG live of Sonya Renee Taylor’s where she mentioned that white immigrants in the US (and Canada by extension I would believe) left a lot of their cultural heritage behind in pursuit of the privileges afforded to whiteness. Different than the juggling of different identities as a person closer to their immigrant roots - but still creates that lack of solidity in a cultural identity for many.
@@helenhass4652 this thing happened to me but by accident. I'm white, I don't get this whole heritage-thing, it never made sense to me. I'm myself 100% wherever I live but I never had any privilege back in Poland as I was unwanted and discriminated there my whole life (despite being legal resident). After moving to America this problem just disappeared from my life automatically. Feels nice and I didn't have to sacrifice anything. ^^
I'm Japanese , Mexican and Italian, German. It was confusing growing and I did feel really disconnected from any culture. So was nice to learn I wasn't the only one that feels this way.
Well, that makes my home country + three of my favorite cuisines.
Lol axis powers + mexico
@@joeyshmoey6659 that’s horrible but so funny now that you pointed it out.
you all over the place
wao bello!
Very wholesome! I definitely resonate with the “just be yourself” ending. I’m half Chinese half Czech living in America. and I’ve been told I look South American and Hispanic etc. like I visually don’t represent either of my ethnic identities so that does make me feel like an “other” sometimes. But that doesn’t matter because that doesn’t stop me from taking part of my cultures in a way that works for me.
I totally get you! I'm half Chinese/white but look very racially ambiguous and always have people guessing because I don't have the Asian eyes.
I feel like I'm in this limbo because I have a very small amount of white family, so growing up had a weird mix of Chinese culture at home whilst growing up in a western country; it's the whole 'not white enough/not Asian enough' on either side but not being able to fully identify with either properly to fit into either box.
Kai same
damn i was dry eyed the whole way through then right after she talked to her grandad i teared up so bad cuz i miss my grandma and ive forgotten so much of one half of my culture i feel so guilty
I’m a bit scared of having children. I am Caribbean and my partner is from China. I don’t want my children feel like they don’t fit in. Hopefully I can guide them and give them helpful tips that can make their journey better as a cross culture kid.
Mixed race is the master race and everyone can contribute ;)
Your kids, no matter what, being human, will find a way to not fit in. This way just makes that way predictable. There's plenty of reasons to not have kids just as there's plenty of reasons to have them, such as in your case, making a more genetically healthy child who is significantly less likely to inherit genetic/hereditary diseases
Cyber Sushi "mixed race is the master race" Nah. Its just a race.
Cai Hui I dunno man, I thought it was clever.
Cyber Sushi
I joke about mixed race being superior, all the time :)
race is pretty silly, honestly
Don't worry, they will build their own culture mostly from the society in which they will grow, enriched from what you and their father have to offer. They might feel confused or even lost at time in the process, but they will make it, this is the natural, spontaneous process (in my personal experience).
Reflection :). I felt this so much. My parents are Nigerians (Yoruba) and immigrated to Australia. I was born here and only visited Nigeria once when I was very little but I have no memory of it, and I was obviously brought up in Aussie culture that greatly contrasts to theirs. I always felt iffy about saying I'm Nigerian even though that's my ethnicity because I experienced very small instances of it, don't know the country like someone who lived there, and I can't speak the language. And even when I did/do, I always feel like I'm not Nigerian enough to do so, even without being the token black kid and having school kids who didn't help but reinforce that I'm not a 'real' black person (official coconut since 2001 ayy). I definitely related to Melissa and Taha where the way they connect to the culture on a day-to-day basis was with food, in my case Jollof rice is my poison, and it's the one instance where I don't have to question anything. But at the same time it's not like I'm 'interacting with culture because I'm eating rice' (I'm gonna coin Taha's quote to express the mess that is being a cross culture kid)
YES to THIS VIDEO. The struggle is real. As a first gen immigrant who moved as a young kid to Canada, I constantly feel like I'm facing an identity crisis (graduating uni soon so there's another crisis lol). A question that my high school social sciences teacher asked the class was whether we saw ourselves as "Canadian-[respective ethnicity]" or "[respective ethnicity]-Canadian." It's been five years and I still think about that question.
What's the difference
@@yokelenglengits ultimately a question of whether you see yourself more as a Canadian or as your ethnicity.
Generally the longer a family has been in a country the more they associate with that country. Especially due to public schools causing a lot of shared experiences between kids, even if their home lives are different.
You could view the question as "how assimilated are you?" but that phrasing may be considered to have yucky connotations. And the original is meant to help students figure out their identity at one of the most confusing times in their lives, not ask if they've converted to the one true culture.
When I discovered the book about third culture kids I legit cried as I understood a lot of how I reacted to my experiences in childhood, especially the feeling of never feeling rooted. That has always been a pretty strong feeling all my life.
I'm not multicultural but my child will be. I am always a little worried about how to incorporate both cultures into my child's life. This video made me realize that it really is just the 'small' things like food that matter a lot when connecting to a culture.
"Where are you from?"
"I eat Pelmeni."
"I didn't ask that."
"Yeah you did."
Oh!! I never thought there were studies in this! Thank you so much for talking about the subject! I myself was born in Russia but lived in France since I was 6 y.o. and I never could answer properly to others when french people kept asking about my russian experience of life and vice versa, because I really had neither and both, and I haven't met lots of kids that had similar experience for a while (until I started university that is, which is super late). Confused culture kids is for sure the right way to say this, and it really put me at ease knowing it's more common than I thought !! Thank you so much again! :)
Same!! I was born in New Zealand but mostly grew up in Taiwan and my parents are Taiwanese and it's all very confusing (and even more so when I meet people with similar backgrounds but totally different ways of identifying themselves)
For me it’s the music of Mexico. My dad lived most of his life in Mexico City and always plays 60s rock and roll songs that he grew up on and it gives me this warm and nostalgic feeling. I lived for a year in elementary school and have visited there in recently as well and the music of the mariachis and the rock and roller music he plays is just gives me this sense of community. (I’m Mexican-American)
rock rules
Ayye Mexican American here too
Idk about you, but that food segment with her grandpa and the cooking was beautiful
completely agree! it gave me fuzzy feelings and really transported me somewhere
my dad moved from a small town into my city about 40 years ago and while they are pretty close it's still different from where he grew up, about 4 years ago he found a store that sold a type of bread from his town, in 40 years he had never seen it in this city and he was so excited for me and my sisters to try it. He spend hours telling us about his childhood, the bakery that used to sell them and how he would collect coins to buy it, for him this bread was a bit of culture he could share with us and thanks to this video im realizing this now
Imagine being born in, being from, and living in the same place your whole life
Never had the time or money, unfortunately.
Can’t imagine.
Why would that be weird
Wow triple whooosh!
Yo guys, maybe think of the topic of the video?
This video made me realize how disconnected I am from my own culture, whatever that is. I don't struggle with it as much as others do, I moved to America from Thailand when I was ten, and Thailand is pretty westernized so there wasn't a horribly jarring difference in fashion and architecture. Still, I never celebrated Christmas or Thanksgiving and I don't get to celebrate Songkran anymore.
Anyways, great video, I love this new format.
REFLECTION
Loved the video. My family is from Southern India and we live in Western India. Although it's not the same as a different country, I always felt like a cross culture kid because the culture outside my house is different in so many ways from that of inside my home.
Thank you for the video.
Keep up the great work!
Gujju?
I felt that.
I have similar thoughts from my experience living in different parts of the US as well, although definitely not to the same degree
@@yashmoitra no. I'm from Andhra and live in Maharashtra
Yeah I got you , Even growing up in different states within the country makes me feel like cross culture. As I always feel left out some in other things.
I'm from Trinidad, born and raised, but moved to Canada for University (and hopefully the rest of my life) . When I tell people that fact it's often a mixed bag of confusion, for as you see I am a tall lanky white boy. Like my identity is a card trick to impress the people I meet. Let me say, hearing your grandfather talk took me back home, I could feel the warmth of my island bloom inside me. Thank you for that.
I always get excited when I hear my country Trinidad on the Internet
these conversations about culture are so important! i love hearing everyone’s personal experiences
This was fantastic! My family moved from England to Australia when I was 12. Even though the culture of both countries is much closer than a lot of other places, the differences still left me feeling pretty lost through my late teens and early 20s. It's so good to have the words to talk about those feelings!
I love the idea of soup, where everything is tossed in and mixed together and you get what you get
Oh my gosh I never thought there was a term for this. Im British-Irish and was raised and have been to the Middle East a lot and then have been living in England for the latter half of my life so far so I struggle a lot with figuring out my cultural identity. Thanks to my family not really knowing much about our own Irish culture ive never gotten to celebrate any Irish traditions or cook any Irish foods or do anything like that but hopefully later on in my life I will finally get to explore my culture.
I find it so interesting how as a mixed race Taiwanese American kid I relate so much to all of the various other third culture kids. Like, there's something about living at the intersection of different cultures that is both a unique and amazing but also confusing experience. I also think that third culture kids are the bridges between our global world. Because when countries stop thinking about "my children" and "your children" and start thinking about "our children" we have so much more motivation to build a globally equitable and prosperous world and put aside our differences.
Well we can all agree that
That food looks SO TASTY
As someone who was raised in one culture, but not raised at home, I strongly empathise with this. I can relate to the "never really fit in" and the Uno / playing cards allegory. Nice work team!! I love listening to you guys.
I can totally relate, and salute you for sharing your points of view! I am also a Cross Culture Kid: an American who grew up in Germany, with some adopted siblings from China and Thailand. I felt like my family was the only anchor of identity I knew, everything else was a mix of "everything yet none of it". I even relate to the deep confusion of the question "Where are you from". I always loved my open-minded outlook, but the rootlessness got to me for a time. I came to terms with it about 2 years ago. I am a Christian, and I basically felt that I am not at home in a place or with people, but with God and my faith. Now, I still love my food, family, and cultures and friends, but I no longer have the pressure to make them my anchor. I still feel the confusion or awkwardness when talking to people who never went anywhere. But I can draw from the strengths of being a Cross Culture Kid without apology. Hope all you Cross Culture Kids out there find roots and freedom all at the same time! You guys have something to give to the world. We are bridge-builders, creatives, and simply interesting people. Don't let the confusion stop you from living a full life in community with others!
That's really beautiful! And you hit the nail on the head, I think. Thank you for sharing!
I never knew this term existed! It's so nice to finally have a term for my existence 😊 thanks for making this video I didn't even know I needed.
Trinidadian-American here
When Melissa’s grand father spoke I was immediately beamed with joy and thought back to my own grandparents because the accent is the exact same and I had the pleasure of speaking to my paternal grandparents over the past few days.
Also I love doubles for the record
Hearing Trinidad and seeing our culture in this video made me so happy🇹🇹
As a fellow half-Goan, this really hit home just how isolating and confusing it can be growing up with such ambiguity. Really happy to see it covered in this way, thank you for making this!
I'm Mexican-American and I totally feel this. My mom immigrated from Juarez, Mexico when she was around six months old so she doesn't exactly identify as an immigrant since she's pretty (as she'd describe it) white washed even though she's more involved in our culture than me. My dad's Tex-Mex (Texan Mexican.) Sure, I may be Mexican by blood, but I never really felt as connected to the culture as my parents, other than food and some music. I do know a little Spanish but not enough to speak it, people in my community called me white washed for that. I wish I was more involved but I just never was. I remember being little and going to my abuelita's house and her cooking authentic food from our culture, her being a full blown immigrant from Juarez, and I loved it. Every time we would go to her house, she'd make me sopita, and it was so comforting. I get the whole food thing.
I'm half Puerto Rican, and I gotta say, the food you made in the Let's Cook! chapter really looked similar to some comida we have 😄 Definitely different, but similar
I resonate with this video so much, wow. This is the first time I've heard of the concept cross culture kid and I feel like I finally know how to describe myself (I was born in Brazil, but I moved to Spain when I was only 9 months old, 14 years later I moved to Brazil again and lived there for a year and, finally, I moved to Argentina, where I've been currently living for three years) . Also, I relate so much to the elaborated explanation given by Melissa to answer the "where are you from?" question, I think I've memorized the exact words and tone to use so I don't really even have to think about what to say.
Growing up multi-cultural isn't something that is talked about enough. I'm half Chinese, a quarter Mexican, and a quarter Honduran is the basis of my mix. From what I understand, I may have some other cultures mixed into me as well. So the "Where are you from??!?" "What ARE you?!?" questions were always way too common in my life. I grew up in Los Angeles and just say I'm from L.A. and people always question more. Thanks for making this video. It's easy to feel so alone when people ask questions regarding my identity, so it's nice to feel valid seeing others who go through the same identity struggles I've dealt with in my life.
I think you are whatever culture you feel closest too. I was born & raised in the US to 2 parents from Jamaica but growing up I felt much closer to Jamaican culture and spent a whole lot of time there growing up & i'm there regularly now. Even though I grew up here in the US it always felt like a foreign country to me & Jamaica has always been home.
I relate to this so hard. My mom is Danish, my dad is Norwegian. I was born in Denmark and lived there until we moved to China when I was 6, where I went to an international school. The majority of the students there were American or Korean. We left China when I was 17 and moved to Norway. I finished high school at an IB school there, then moved to another city in Norway where I lived in an international community working for a non-profit.
If anyone asks me where I’m from, I say I’m half Danish, half Norwegian, but grew up in China and went to an American international school. If people want to know more, they’ll ask.
I wish I did have one “label” I describe everything.
Being an American raised in Belgium, this video would have really helped my past self with the sense of isolation I felt from not understanding the culture around me and not being able to share the culture I enjoyed at home to my Belgian friends. Thank you very much for this video.
Thanks for the ad length bar. Very much appreciated.
Oh wow this video really helps put words to “that awkward feeling” I feel when my Chinese americanness is pointed out. Thank you for making this, it really would have helped me when I was younger, but it still amazing to see now.
Welp, since I'm half Chinese-Jamaican, I'm probably within 6th cousins of Melissa given how relatively small the number of Hakka Chinese who ran off to the Caribbean in the 1800s was
"I can just be me" may sound corny and cliché, but it's unbelievably true honestly. It's less about "oh I'm doing whatever I want" and more about "I don't _have_ to be in this box or that box, and I can decide how I want to make myself". It's a very subtle, but powerful thing.
I never thought a story about food can make me so emotional
this group of friends is so cute and wholesome, I love seeing them interact with each other, and I just really love this channel and the ideas it tackles! plus, the editing and visual graphics are TOP NOTCH, I honestly think this channel deserves so much more attention
I totally relate to the feeling of food being the deepest connection to my culture!! This video is awesome
This was so lovely, and so well put together. I find it funny how the research montage and the zoom call with Taha/Sabrina is becoming a staple of these videos. Also you really lulled me into that surfshark ad I was so zen watching the montage.
I'm like Taha, British Pakistani, and when I was like 5 when I was asked where I am from I took my hand and used it to slice down my face and chest while saying 'i am half british and half pakistani'. I've made a lot of effort to retain the Pakistani in me, learning Urdu in earnest, learning how too cook food that isnt pasta, wearing kurtas even to school when I built up the confidence. But despite all that I feel most at home here, in Britain, where I was born, and the prospect of living a life expected of a Pakistani woman is chafing, and my ideas and ideals are so so so different from my parents and cousins by virtue of the environment i grew up in and progressive ideas I have been exposed to. Its hard and complicated. It's been even weirder recently, trying to justify to myself wanting to be proud of britain with its colonial history and current entrenched xenophobia and racism but, hey ho. Excellent video
So sad I missed the premiere. Great vid though! Your grandpa was so sweet, and I'm excited to read Third Culture Kids. If anyone else wants to buddy read it, lmk so we can chat!!
Parents illegally came to America from Mexico. My two cultures, my languages, my environments clashed. After many years I do not relate to either and just consider myself closer to gamer and internet culture more than anything else. I feel closer to the memetic of ideas with how games and internet evolved thru the 90s to now. It resonates so much when seeing videos of old lore from internet stories or watching some play a game from old game systems. Even now I get influenced by Twitch, twitter, reddit and UA-cam and not just the proximity of people around me, except for food cause home made frijoles are the best
I feel this so much, and my mashup of cultures isn't nearly as complicated as many people's (I'm British/Canadian/American). It's crazy to think how many cross-culture kids there are out there unsure of exactly who they are. my heart goes out to all of you 💙
I've been fortunate (?) enough to "pass" the cultural litmus test in Canada and not get asked. However, straddling the line between family cultures as well as childhood neighbours' cultures has allowed me to appreciate the difficulty of fitting in. This has led to where I am running my university intercultural club and helping students from all cultural backgrounds feel comfortable in their own skin, share their traditions with others, and learn from others about their cultures and traditions. Oh, and (before COVID), there was always amazing food at every event 🙂
This video really cemented the thoughts I and many of my club members have been tackling for a while, so bravo on putting that together so brilliantly!
*SHE IS ADDRESSING ALL OF MY PAIN IN THIS VIDEO THAT IVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO PUT TO WORDS OMG THANKS*
- Sincerely another confused guyanese 🇬🇾🇮🇳🇺🇸
My dad is from two cultures, my mom from one, I was born in another, and raised in another. Sort of three and a half cultures (we moved from where I was born when I was two, so not a lot of exposure to that culture). The food has definitely reflected this. My mom learned how to cook my dad's culture's food from my paternal grandma, who had a restaurant, and my dad also knows some things. My mom also cooks from her culture, which she learned from her mother/my maternal grandma. It's really interesting and we've always been proud of our mosaic-like multicultural and international (we have people living on 4 different continents) family.
I was literally watching one of your videos for my class the second you premiered this, no lie
I identify with this on a spiritual level. It also brings up the conversation of "what is culture?"
so true, I grew up being influenced by so many cultures (i live in a multicultural country and city) that weren't my own ethnicity that idek any more what culture is
I almost cried watching, thank you for this. Recently someone from my own origin told me I dIdN't LoOK FrOM ThErE...
Thanks Melissa and Sabrina. These are the important conversations. I was reminded that simple is better and at the best, equally at a dinner table. Food is how I learned to love cultures and it might be the best way to keep sharing.
You know my nanny's favourite saying about not forgetting the bowl you were baked from seems rather fitting with all the food
While i am not a cross culture kid this video reminded me of the first months of lockdown, i am not a great cook and i missed all the traditional dishes from my own city (where i live) but i never knew how to cook.
So i learned a bit about recepies and learnt that most traditional foods are designed for little ingredients or for limited attention time while cooking, these were made for stay at home moms who had to care for kids and the house, also for houses where families can only aford one meal a day
when i first tried them it felt nice to know that no matter where i am, i can bring a little bit of home with me and that was surprisingly conforting
Listening to your grandpa is really sweet; I'm glad you had a chance to ask him these kinds of questions. I failed to take that opportunity with mine.
Thanks for this video as a "Scot" with Latin American parents it's nice to hear someone express the kind of thoughts Ive had for a long time. Personally asides from food I really feel that sense of connection on warm, still, evenings.
I love your grandpa. The food you cooked looks incredible. I am literally crying right now. Actually literally crying.
Cultures are so interesting to me. I love seeing how others live and coming to understand not only what things mean, but also some of the practical reasons it might have came about (spoilers, ancient ancestors do be survivin). Culture is cool af
My REFLECTION is the worst in the morning, barely see myself :-D Interesting thing to deal with. You do not need to have "unclear" roots to feel disconnected, unfunctional family gives that mismatch too, pretty easily unfortunately.
Malaysian Chinese/British here who grew up going back and forth between both countries. So many things are, *flails hands*, confusing but the main thing that bugs me is that wherever I am never fully feels like home. Always being "technically a tourist" very much sucks when you just want to belong in some way.
Jamaican here, I feel this so much my family is extremely mixed, and I don't even feel connected to Jamaica at times and food really does help. I'm part Lebanese and there are some Arabic places near my house and every time my family gets take out from there I feel at home in a sense even though I've never been to the Middle East, curry goat has the same effect for Jamaica. Food is a main way me and my family connect and without it, I would feel lost. When people ask me where I'm from I say Jamaican, but sometimes they ask for more details and the bit at 0:43 sums up how I feel perfectly.
This is a video I definitely need right now. My parents immigrated from Cameroon and we had friends from all over the world (most from Germany, Italy, China, Japan, Puerto Rico, and India) so it feels like I’m in between worlds even though I was born and raised in the US. I just had this sense that no matter what I tried, I’d never fit in. Media and food has been my important bridge to connecting with people and thank goodness today’s tech makes it a lot easier.
I know that you'll probably never read this, but to Melissa and Taha, thank you for making this video. You have no idea how valuable it was for me to hear from another cross-culture kid. In recent years especially, I have felt more and more insecure about my status as mixed, especially since my family history is a big jumble of people moving from place to place. I felt like two puzzle pieces were forced together to create me, and I was never meant to be. In short... I didnt feel whole. I didn't feel like both cultures and I didnt feel like neither, and I didnt know what to make of that. Because that was all there was in my mind. But you guys showed me that it is possible to be something entirely different. I am my experience, and that experience is entirely unique. In short, you helped me feel whole again. Thank you for that.
I am German, French, and Romanian married to a Cantonese Chinese man... I was born and raised in MI USA and my husband is the first generation in the USA from Macau/Hong Kong, they were based in Pennsylvania... My husband and I now live in Utah and I am now pregnant with our first son :D so he will have quite a rich culture I think. My husband still has lots of family in Hong Kong and Macau - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. So I definitely see us visiting a good amount of time and our kid will 100% know Cantonese as well as English as my husband and his family speak it almost exclusively.
I am quite proud to have a son with such a rich history already and I will try my best to share, teach, and experience every part that will make him, him
As a person who doesn't have experience thinking about these things, thank you. Really helped add to my perspective
Being born and raised in NY until I was 8, then my parents and I moved to Mexico (to different Cities and Villages) came back to the States when I was 15, left the States when I was 17 and came back when I was around 21.
I can say it’s been a good cultural mixture, Knowing what concepts (wrong or right) each other place has from the other opens up to an unexplainable seeking of answers that I enjoy (at times) 🙄
How different people react, interact and speak to you can truly impact how you think of that One place.
me@ this whole video: "it me."
This is really interesting, and while race has never been a factor in the "where are you from" question for me (I'm white and living in Australia), I feel a lot of this as a South African living in Australia. Moved when I was 4, but somehow have still retained elements of my accent. Not enough that saffas can identify me as a fellow saffa, but enough that aussies can identify that I'm not Aussie. I don't remember enough about South Africa to feel strongly about it, but I was raised with a South African mind-set and values, which are different to the Aussie mind-set and values. I'm immersed in Aussie culture but have always felt separated from it. So I definitely get this idea of "not one or the other but both but also not" that seems to be spoken about here.
Last time I was so early I was still being raised in a foreign country lol
As someone whose family has been in the same region for nearly 300 years, this is all pretty foreign to me. Super interesting to hear about your experiences; lots of stuff I hadn't heard of or been exposed to.
Also, what is this spotify playlist I spied in the first portion? I searched for it but nothing came up.
As CCK I really relate to this. I just learned in Jan about TCK and CCK identities and it felt like coming home. Finally having words to describe what I feel, why certain questions both me. And becoming more comfortable in my complex identity. This video means a lot, I'm 21 now and I hope younger CCK get to see this, in general, everyone who identifies with it because it truly helps to become comfortable with oneself.
I live in Trinidad and I'm also brown. I would never imagine my life anywhere else because I love Trinidad and it's people. I made me so happy to hear you talk about it, it made me happy to hear your grandfather talk in the Caribbean dialect and hear his journey and to see you try to make doubles. You may not see this, but thanks for making this video!
- much love from a fellow brown kid
What's wild to me is I get that question all the time. "no but where were you from originally?" And the wild thing is the answer is the US and they won't accept it! I'm mixed race white/black and both sides of my family trace back generations to the US. My dad is the decendent of slaves and my mom's side came over with the first wave of the Irish to the states.
Just how far back do I have to go to be considered a "real american"? It's insanity. Americans say garbage like "why can't people just assimilate?" When they won't even let people like me be American. It's pants on head nonsense.
Being a Hapa I’m feeling this at home. Awesome hosts and dialogue :))
Food is the only thing left of my mother's culture in my family. In some ways it's easier because there's not really two cultures I'm between, but I always wonder what things I'll never know or what my ancestors would think of me…
This video came across my recommended around the same time I started looking into my Guyanese roots!! I feel disconnected in a different way but watching this video was such an emotional experience! This was truly amazing! Thank you for such a lovely look into your life! I feel a little less lost knowing how many people are just like me.
It feels so strange to feel so strongly about a video, but having grown up as a military kid who has struggled with my identity for years, this video struck a chord. Thank you for the work y'all have done on this topic and for helping me down the path to finding *something*
It's so strange that desire of belonging to a culture or identity is so pervasive. I had always felt strange in that, but it is comforting knowing I'm not alone in that struggle.
This video was so well done - like your other videos are already impeccable, but this one... Hit really close to home.
Without getting into details, it made me nostalgic and now I'm a teary-eyed mess :')
I love both my cultures, but I feel sometimes like I don't know where to place my identity. It felt really good to have that validated and to know people share that very specific feeling. The grandpa's conversation felt like I was at home with my own grandma.
Seriously, 10/10 ~
I feel like I fit in the category where I’m not a third culture kid, but _super close_ to being one. My great grandparents on my father’s side moved to the US from Hungary. They were Jewish, and spoke both Hungarian and Hebrew. Now I live in the United States, only a native speaker of English and knowing only a few Hungarian words and some Hebrew prayers. I’m barely Jewish. My dad specifically raised me to be very atheist. The only Jewish holiday I celebrate is Hannukah, otherwise I follow the big popularized Christian holidays, because I’m in a Christian area.
In most definitions, I’m white. My mom is white and from Europe and Scotland, and my siblings and I are light-skinned. I grew up knowing myself as Jewish, but even that is hard for me to say outright. Can I be Jewish without ever having a bah mitzvah? Without knowing any of the extra Hannukah prayers beside the first? While celebrating Christmas and Easter?
There’s a long history of the Jewish people never belonging to any specific ethnicity. They come in many different skin tones, speaking many different languages, in many different countries. And in nearly every place that Jews tried to make a home, they faced adversity. Before the recent changes in the Middle East and the revival of Hebrew, most Jewish people lived in small pocket communities scattered across the globe, or, like me, so diffused into the surrounding culture that their identity is questionable. It’s saddening to think about, that I have direct familial branches that faced the Holocaust, but feel like have lost my cultural connection to them.
Aside from food. Matzo, geld, hummus, couscous paela, and latkes are home to me. My family gathers around Hannukah yearly to eat more traditionally “Jewish” food. That’s the one time I’m Jewish.
It’s weird feeling like an outsider in a place I was born and raised, celebrating the same holidays, having the same skintone. There’s no reason I should feel like an outsider, the influence of immigration runs cold after my grandparents. I should be at home, but I’m not.
Edit: I also want to add that even though I have a desperate desire to fit into my surrounding culture, it’s battling with my need to not disconnect from my history. I want to draw pride from my Jewish ancestry, learn Hungarian, and keep my (Jewish-sounding) last name. I want to have a place among the people around me, but I also don’t, because I have a need to embrace my roots. I also hate being white. White people get so much privilege that I don’t deserve any more than a dark-skinned Jew. Whiteness is often synonymous with bigotry. I don’t want to be that.
aaghsebsvshd I’ve never related more to a UA-cam comment. Your story almost exactly mirrors my own and it’s interesting to see that there are other people like me.
Alex Rusakoff It’s comforting to know that I’m not alone. ❤️
@@durdleduc8520 definitely. I always felt so strange being Jewish and not being comfortable saying that I am. I never really identified with my ethnic identity or religious one as I was raised atheist. Being Jewish for me has always felt strange, especially living in America where I look just like everybody else and no one questions whether or not I'm American. Thank you for sharing your story, its kind of nice to know that there are others like me.
I am from à Hungarian jewish family that fled Hungary to Western Europe, and my parents (holocaust survivors) HID from us 3 children that we were jewish for as long as they could. I was around 11 when we found out (huge shock). This was not a rare behaviour among holocaust survivors. So I feell very disconnected from that part of my heritage, i know nothing about Jewish things and culture... I'm a Buddhist ! Only my elder brother embraced Jewish religion as an adult but still keep very low profile. Our parents were complete atheists, or so I guess as religion was never ever discussed at home.
I don't think you should see your heritage and your US culture as conflicting, you are just hurting yourself, there is no reason for that, you just happen to have a mix of cultures which is fantastic, just like a huge portion of humanity.
The concept of nationality the way we knoe it is so young and so illogical that it doesn't make any sense for many people out there. Don't worry, you don't even have to call yourself anything other than a human being that is simply connected to several cultures.
The little discussion on food definitely hit home for me.
I'm half-chinese half-white, but my dad came to Canada at a very young age so there's a disconnect between the culture of my grandparents and me. To add to that I grew up in a very very Asian city, so I grew up with my grandparents and their culture, but also felt outside of it because my home life was much more of a typical white suburban Canadian family. I was always the only white kid, look mostly white, was always told "you're so white" but also never felt at home with being a White Canadian either.
I also most easily connect to my family and heritage through food. Going out and having dimsum like I did with my grandparents when I was young, or nostagically recreating dishes my mah mah cooked me. It makes me feel happy and at home and reminds me of them.
So my Mum is armenien and russian (with roots to eastern asia) my dad is ukrainien and georgan both grew up in ukraine. I grew up in Western Europe. And i‘ve always felt so disconnected from every culture i‘ve interacted with. I am not russian enough or austrian enough or xyz enough to take up space in any of those cultures. It is really weird because most of my friendgroup are austrian so they do not understand what’s that like. It is nice to know I am not alone.
as a japanese british person myself i relate so much! I grew up in a very white place so until very recently i'd been (subconsciously) trying to deny myself of my japanese identity and trying to be "white" to fit in (to the point poc friends would call me a white girl lmao).. i think its when I saw taha's tweets when i realised that both identities can coexist!! In /reflection/, although i hated feeling different as a child, I'm so grateful to my parents for raising me international :)
I remember once I had a project about culture. I told my teacher I didn't have a culture and she said I have united states culture, but I couldn't explain how I didn't have enough knowledge of either of my cultures to do the project properly. I didn't do that project, but now I realized I have a culture, it's multicultural.
Taha, thank you. It's how I feel, because thankfully, I only have to fight between 2 cultures. This does give me some self reflection
We are litterally made of the food we were fed by our mother as a child. I found out how deeply this impacts us when I was "stranded" for years in a totally different part of the world, eating only local food with no access to "my" food (that I called jokingly "real food"). I thought I was detached from such materialistic matters, it turned out to be a really tough experience !
This is so touching as a multiple culture kid, mother is Portuguese, father is Angolan, born in Mexico, raised in Russia, Norway and the DRC, it’s hard to identify yourself after seeing so much
This video is 3 years old as of me watching it, and even though I identify as African American and grew up in an African American culture in the United States, I understand the concept of this video way more than I care to admit. I am constantly looking for more information about my family here in the United States, about my African roots, and what it means to be an American and how all of that can collide like a 10 car accident during rush hour. Melissa, thank you for making this video. I wish you the best on your journey, and may you and I find the answers we're searching for.