On Diasporic Journeys and Diversity - by Changling Huang

Being first generation myself, I was curious about my fellow friend, Kamron’s, diasporic journeys to from his homeland of Iran.

What was it like growing up in a different country?  

What was it like rediscovering your own culture?

I had the opportunity to interview him over Skype in the SoundCloud interview below, where we explore his formation of conceptions about his culture and how they changed as he visited Iran.



As we conversed, I noticed a tendency for all of us as humans to form conceptions around what we know and experience first hand. His views formed around his immediate first hand experience, initially from his family's behavior, and it was only really when these were questioned at further gatherings did his conceptions changed.

Which makes growing up as a native culture is not the same as your such an interesting one. Our only experiences are usually the ones formed by our families and the people we meet at school, who often have conflicting views. Immersed in so much of the local culture because in every other way, you are just like like everyone else; but every once in awhile, you’ll feel isolated, alone, disconnected isolated.

At such a young age you are exposed to the conflict between life at home and life at school. The history you learn at school seems less relevant and completely different to the stories of your parents youth you hear at home. Assignments that require looking into your family history becomes more isolating because since you did not learn about any of your culture’s history in class, your family history feels more invalid. There is a disconnect between important portions of your life and when there’s such dissonance, it’s difficult to grasp your head around it at a young age.

Looking into an first generation’s experience in a new country becomes fascinating. If they, themselves find it difficult to grasp the fine details of their culture without first hand experience, it speaks about why many of us in this country have unchanging misconceptions about the middle east as well. Just as my friend formed his conceptions of Iran around what his parents showed him, it becomes clear why so many of us so easily mend to the first representation of the Middle East presented to us in the media.

Speaking from a psychological perspective, people have a tendency to group themselves and others into social categories. Categorization of people in a sense makes us feel safe, and makes social situations easier. But then at the same time it tends to exaggerate the difference between ingroups and outgroups. There’s something called the outgroup homogeneity effect which describes the tendency to assume there is more similarity among members of outgroups than there is among in groups.

This holds largely true upon reflecting upon this interview and upon reflecting upon my own experiences. Even with my friend, his initial perception of Iranian culture was largely only based on his parents. He believed there was more similarity between a group of people he felt somewhat unfamiliar to. It was then surprising that even people in Iran who were young enjoyed the same freedoms he did.

So what does this mean for everyone? 

I think as human beings, we should all strive to understand every culture with more substance. We should strive to take classes outside of our comfort zones so we are exposed to topics we are unaware of, whether it is psychology, history or sociology so that we learn to obtain well informed opinions about the issues around us and understand the biases of what is in the media. The world is complicated and full of surprises, and we should not be hoping to categorize them into discrete categories, but rather embrace diversity, the outliers and all that the world has to offer.