Blog 1 – This I believe…by Julia Poggi de Mendonça

I believe in the importance of cultural duality.

Throughout my life I have constantly seen and experienced the world through two different lenses. Like a camera’s prism, I function as an intermediary between the viewfinder and the lenses; the lenses are used to focus on light (information) that I see through the viewfinder (my perspective).

As an American by birthright and second-generation daughter of first generation Brazilian immigrants, my lenses function as a set of attitudes, values, and norms of the two distinct cultures which influenced my upbringing. Therefore, each lens is constantly adapting and zooming-in on aspects of the other.

This cultural duality, however, is not something that I have always viewed with such alacrity. In fact, most of my upbringing was filled with confusion and frustration with my identity. Later, I would learn that there was a formal name for this—cultural dissonance. To put it plainly, cultural dissonance is the eerie feeling of disharmony and conflict within someone who is constantly exposed to multiple cultures. Questions would run through my mind: Am I American before I am Brazilian? Or Brazilian before I am American? In what context should I embrace each culture? In what context should I embrace both? Why am I both? Why not one?

For many years these questions had jeered me in a negative way, until I began looking at the bigger picture. In a 2016 study from the Migration Policy Institute and the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of children with at least one immigrant parent nearly doubled since 1990. So, I pictured this—17,997,000 individuals just like me—and that’s just the ones who are under the age of 18.

These individuals not only speak for a large and diverse sector of the population, but are also essential to the future of the country which they—and I—have been blessed to grow up in. Their cultural duality and my own, can allow for greater empathy to be shared between people of diverse backgrounds and cultures. During a time where the issue of immigration has never been more prevalent, I am proud of my cultural duality and feel confident in embracing this part of my life in everything I do. I believe that others should too.

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