Burning in the Melting Pot: The Development and Consequence of a Hybrid Identity
In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,”Gloria Anzaldùa discussed the ways in which language can create barriers in defining one’s identity. Describing the precarious social and cultural position of someone straddling the hybrid, bilingual border of Mexico and the United States, she addresses how language becomes a kind of battleground where racist social demands of an anglophilic United States and a corresponding Latino discrimination against her indigenous-infused dialects clash and divide the tongue. Anzaldùa, however, embraces the border status as a site of critique for all those social norms developed to divide and conquer. She refuses to reject her Mexican heritage solely for the interest of fitting into the “dominant” American culture, just as she refuses to let go of her Mexican accent to meet expectations of “proper” Spanish-speaking communities. Taking her position as a site of departure, or perhaps inspiration, in what follows I investigate my own battles with the complications of language, culture, and identity.
Shortly before departing to Paris for college, a brief incident caused me to reflect upon this quandary. While shopping in the produce section of Brooklyn’s Stop n’ Shop one day, an elderly woman approached me and asked, “Простите, молодой человек, вы знаете сколько стоят эти помидоры?” On first breath, I didn’t know how to respond to her asking if I knew the price of the tomatoes. Despite my instantaneous, indeed subconscious, mental translation, I considered myself an American and I was shopping at a typical American store. I felt insulted because she was labeling me and presuming my ethnic identity. Besides, how did she know that I was Russian? Did she simply guess or were there certain cultural signifiers of which I was unaware? I am a native Russian speaker, though; thus she was not completely wrong in her assumption. Standing there, facing her inquisitive gaze, I am suddenly reminded of my arrival to the United States and how I struggled to figure out my exact identity.
In the spring of 1999, I moved from Uzbekistan to Michigan just in time to begin kindergarten. I was seven years old. On the first day of class, the teacher asked each child to say his or her name and birthplace. Although I was new to English, by the time it was my turn I had somewhat figured out what was being asked of me and I said my name – Edward Radzivilovskiy – and my country – Uzbekistan. The teacher rolled her eyes and said, “from where? —Kazakhstan?” I was surprised that the teacher did not know my country and even appeared to think it might not exist. For a second, I, too, began to doubt where I was from. At seven, one is easily impressionable, and at that moment, my inability to communicate did not allow me to express myself adequately. However, even if I was still too young to grasp an “exact” concept of self, I discovered early on, from this moment,that language is inextricable from cultural identity.
Uzbekistan is in Asia and borders Kazakhstan, but is a separate country. Both were formerly part of the Soviet Union, and many Russians and other groups of people moved to Uzbekistan immediately prior to World War II, making it something of a “melting pot of Asia.” Things might have dramatically changed, but when I lived there, people came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, but all were united by one language—Russian. On “Navruz,” the national Uzbekistan holiday, my Russian family and our Uzbek and Armenian neighbors would gather in each other’s yards with our own cultural foods, and we would learn about each other’s cultures. Our common language fostered an embrace of cultural diversity. In other places, however, this is not always the case. Perhaps for historical, political, or social reasons, language itself is not enough to foster cultural diversity. We see, for example, in Anzaldùa’s essay, how she was discriminated against despite being able to speak both English and Spanish. Because of the complicated racial politics between the United States and Mexico, language instead seems to be the site of prejudice, not acceptance. My difficult experience learning the English language, on a certain level, gave me the advantage of being an outsider observing the inside. I was always stunned at the ways different cultural groups, such as English-speaking Muslims, would not be celebrated for their contribution to the so-called “melting pot.”
By acquiring the English language, I hoped that I would be able to express my identity and translate my experiences from Uzbekistan to my new life in America. I wished to assimilate into American culture as my family had assimilated into Uzbek culture. After struggling for a year in ESL classes, I was able to start communicating to the teacher in English and read some short American books. I began to explain to other kids where I came from and describe certain traditions of my native country. It turns out that although I had lived in an unfamiliar country, there were some things that my culture shared with American culture such as celebrating Basmach, which is similar to the American Halloween.
Reflecting back on this memory, however, makes me question the drive to assimilate. On one hand, it is necessary to feel a sense of belonging, to learn, and to adapt to a new place. On the other hand, the compulsion to assimilate is often due to an unspoken but active normative demand to “fit in” or to “homogenize.” If one doesn’t give in to these demands, one is socially punished. So the effect is that sometimes it is almost impossible to integrate into a culture; rather, a person is coerced to assimilate. Meaning, instead of absorbing the ideas of a new culture while still keeping the ideas of the original, one must completely abandon his or her past influences. This is the situation that Anzaldùa found herself in. She identifies herself as Chicana, a word that describes Mexican Americans who formed a hybrid tongue of different variants of Spanish and English. English-speaking people expected Anzaldùa to speak the English language “purely.” But other Latinos even accused her of being a “cultural traitor” because she was “ruining” the Spanish language by also speaking English. Anzaldùa writes, “Chicano Spanish is considered to be by the purist and by most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish” (2948). So, she was caught in a sort of Catch 22, where both sides of her cultural domains wanted her to stay “pure.” But either way she chose, she would still be displaced and robbed from her sense of identity, which, as she insists, is not a pure category but a hybrid, a border-crossing. For many, hybridity is socially rejected and becomes a source of discrimination. The social demand – or desire – for homogeneity, for pure categories, makes it difficult for people who are hybrids to have a socially intelligible identity within existing social norms.
This issue became clearer to me when I reflect on a second move, this time to New York, where I attended a Russian language school. After I had lived for two years in Michigan with my mother, my father returned from New York, where he had been looking for work. He held me and said in Russian, “I have something very important to tell you. We’re moving to New York.” My heart sank—after creating an identity I was comfortable with in Michigan, I would have to start over.
When I moved to Brooklyn, I first went to a private Russian middle school and lived in a Russian neighborhood. Paradoxically, perhaps, I felt once again like an outcast because after living in Michigan I had become “Americanized.” On my first day of class, the teacher called attendance in Russian and I answered in English, “My name is Edward Radzivilovskiy.” Like my kindergarten teacher, this teacher also rolled her eyes in bewilderment and said, “Aren’t you Russian? Answer me in Russian!” After working so hard to learn English, to fit in with my English-speaking classmates, now I was only allowed to speak English for one period during my English class. The problem: I had already formed a perception of myself and I wasn’t only Russian,even though that was my first language.
America is often described as a melting pot, and this metaphor applied to me in Michigan because diverse students all spoke one language. However, this metaphor was insufficient to describe the ethnic segregation that I experienced in New York. I felt I was being asked to push away the complexity of my own immigrant experience because I was in a homogenous school, which, in part, exists to counter-act the powerful drive to assimilate and “lose” one’s heritage to become Americanized. When I had assimilated into a Michigan lifestyle, learning English also allowed me to “stay Russian” in a certain way, whereas in New York, the segregation of the city caused an entirely other version of assimilation that became almost separatist. In this sense, Anzaldùa’s idea of a “border-land” identity applied to me as well. Anzaldùa comments:
“So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin-skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself” (2951).
Anzaldùa is rebelling against the demand to fit purely into one category, suggesting that this demand would deny the (co) existence of the “other part” of one’s identity. Her one real definition of self is a hybrid of multiple identities, where her language and her speech can reflect that hybridity.
In New York, people expected me to be only Russian simply because I spoke Russian; however, what defined being an “American” for me was the ability to retain my ethnic experience and still feel part of a community bound by speaking English.
When it was time to choose high schools, I made the decision to go to an integrated public school. On the first day of class the teacher asked where I was from, and I said, “I’m from Uzbekistan, but I’m Russian American.” I answered with confidence not because I was entirely comfortable with the complications of my identity, but because I realized that others’ perception of me did not need to define my cultural reality. My reality of being American will always be shaped by language as I navigate my Uzbek and Russian heritages.
Back at the Stop n’ Shop market the elderly woman was still waiting for my response. Although for a second I felt like my identity had been assumed, I also felt gratitude that I was an American, influenced by other unique cultures. In Russian, I kindly told the lady that the tomatoes cost three dollars: “Мадам, эти помидоры стоят три долларов.”
***
Now that I am in Paris, I am faced with an even more precarious predicament: I am a Russian American from Uzbekistan living in France. Although my previous assimilations had been rather aggressive, I feel that they have led me to a more dynamic identity. Like Gloria Anzaldùa, I refuse to be classified by pure categories and be confined to just one cultural segment.
A person’s denial of borders, however, can only go so far. Globalization has served as a thread that loosely links together nations, but the nations themselves often remain culturally homogenous, isolated patches. Nations, as well as borders, are usually socially constructed. Globalization, for all that is good and bad in it, reveals the “constructedness” of borders in a certain way because it causes social panic for some, whose response is to try to tighten up, to secure and shore up the borders themselves. An example of this is the United States’ response to 9/11. The attacks were responded to with not only aggression (2 wars, Afghanistan and Iraq), but also a tightened immigration procedure. Another example is the wall being constructed between Mexico and the United States, presumably to “stop drug trafficking.” The truth, though, is that it is about stopping Mexican laborers from crossing over for work, even though US agriculture depends on that cheap labor.
One time as I was walking back home from the university in France, I overheard an elder couple talking quietly in Russian. This was the first time I heard the Russian language being spoken in France since the two months I have been here. I was thrilled to hear it, and I had to turn around and talk to them. I greeted them in Russian and asked them if they knew any good Russian or even Uzbek restaurants where I could take my friends and show them parts of my personal cultural history. Their reaction to me, however, was not at all what I expected. They were visibly frustrated that I had been talking to them in Russian and explained to me that they had been living in France for years and considered themselves French. They replied with disgust over my inquiry about Russian restaurants, and told me to just visit French restaurants. This was my first attempt at reconnecting with my cultural roots while being in France, but I was stunningly rejected. What made all this more confusing to me was that before I approached them, they were talking in Russian. But it’s almost as if they made this a secret, and did not want anyone else to know. And on the off chance that someone might detect their heritage, they would deny it.
This encounter just reminded me that there are still lots of people all over the world who, through the process of assimilation into another culture, are embarrassed to display publicly their mixed heritage. Their public identity is different from their personal identity. In secret, these people still try to protect their past. All they are doing, however, is acting in accordance to the borders, and subsequent social expectations, that have been set up by society. These borders are not natural, though. Certain people who are afraid of change set up codes and laws to keep things status quo. This can have disastrous effects on sections of people affected by these laws, as I will further explain.
My family came to the United States from Uzbekistan at a time when immigration was a little bit easier, at a time when Uzbekistan was a little more interested in playing a role on the global stage. However, in recent years, Uzbekistan has been rethinking this strategy, and it has once again reverted to a policy of isolationism. President Karimov, who is nothing less than a dictator, has been in power ever since my birth in 1993. There have been numerous reports of him either tweaking election results, or eliminating competition. The Karimov government also passed a new law that says that anyone who has ever been born in Uzbekistan is a permanent citizen. The law also provides that a citizen could hold only one passport and not have dual nationality. This means that if I ever go back to Uzbekistan to visit my ailing grandmother Natasha, I might not be allowed to return to the United States. Such tougher restrictions on citizenship and immigration are a way to control the population, separating foreign influence as much as possible. Although Uzbekistan is a crucial chunk of my identity, I might never be able return and visit my homeland.
In other places, the problem is even worse. Someone who is from Palestine, for example, does not even have a passport. A passport is more or less just a little piece of paper. But this paper, essentially, is the proof of your homeland. Without this paper, you have no homeland. Although I had been struggling for years as I moved from one place to another to understand my identity, I always had the official documents or papers to tell me that I can belong there. In that sense, I could always have a “home.” But it’s impossible to relate the kinds of things Palestinians might be going through. Just recently, the United Nations rejected their request to gain full status as a nation member, but UNESCO granted them entrance. This move by UNESCO, however, guarantees them a cut-off from US funding by billions of dollars. Even if we applaud the decision, we can still see the difficulty with which this decision must have been made, and the penalties that follow. The world is interconnected in one sense, but often it seems to be just benefiting the powerful, dominant interests. Anzaldùa reflects on this issue as it applies to the United States:
“Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity – we don’t identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don’t totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one” (2954).
Thus, even if one accepts the concept of a hybrid identity, this will not eliminate the economic and psychological affects that they may still experience. There are some glimmers of hope, because people like Anzaldùa have rebelled through writing. Nevertheless, there has only been limited success. The very nature of power is to keep it, and the way a hegemonic society keeps its power and protects its interests is by deliberately excluding the people that they may perceive as a threat – people who, if given a voice, a passport, a path to citizenship, can affect change and reorganize the power structures. These people feel like they are “zero, nothing, no one,” and therefore, as demonstrated by my encounter with the elderly Russian couple in France, they keep their identity secret. Currently, the only rebellion that seems to have some promise to change the power system is the Occupy Wall Street Movement. But the movement is very far away from any tangible success; the group’s goals are too broad to every really deal with the kinds of specific hegemonic discrimination and oppression that are embedded in the way global capitalism and neo-conservatism are operating.
