When Family Erases Your Identity

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I've hosted this podcast for over a decade now. And starting in year two, I noticed something that no longer surprises me, but in a way it still does. When I mean it no longer surprises me, I now have data and I understand that this is a thing. But my emotional response is always surprising because I know that this is a thing that some people experience. And emotional because I don't think that way. And the reason why I don't think that way is because I get emotional thinking about somebody I love. And the idea of telling them that they aren't who they've identified themselves to be feels sad. Especially when I play back to my childhood and many years, and it it just feels sad. Even in this recording right now, I feel sad. I feel like it would be erasing part of who they are. And it's not that one side is more important than the other, they're equally important. Over the years, I've had guests come on the show and tell stories that all eventually boil down to this, somewhere or the other. When they were growing up, they were told they weren't insert whichever Caribbean country here. So they weren't Jamaican or they weren't Trini or they weren't Guyanese. They were told, you're a Yankee Pitney, you're an American. And the thing is, they knew they were born in America. It's not like they didn't know that. Although one time a few years ago, my son, I had to ask him this question because somewhere in his mind he swore he was born in Jamaica, but we'll get to that. But these guests, they know they're born in America, but they didn't feel fully American. Because when they went to school, their classmates didn't see them as fully American because while they were born in America, they were raised Caribbean. The experience for them is that this message is usually coming from someone in close proximity, their family. Yes, outsiders may say it, but their first instance of hearing it is in the home. And then, of course, as they're growing, they may have heard it in school. You know, we had guests on the show who they were teased about how they were dressed or the type of lunch they brought to school. And then there's an instance where I remember specifically on the platform known as Twitter, and this conversation was happening there as well. Someone would say, they've been told so many times in their family that they're American when they introduce themselves or when a colleague from work or wherever would ask where they're from, they would say, Oh, I was born here in the States, but my parents are from Jamaica or insert whichever Caribbean country. And then the non-Caribbean person would say, Oh, so you are Jamaican then. They were always in this volley where they'd be in spaces where someone was taking away part of their identity, and in other spaces they would be given their identity. And they were just trying to figure out how to label themselves. Because over time you get hesitant. And I know someone else listening might say that doesn't make any sense, but it does. Let me back up a little

Lens Six Of The CDEM Model

SPEAKER_00 3:46

bit. Hi everyone, my name is Carrie Ann, and you're listening to Carry On Friends, the Caribbean-American Experience. If this is your first time here, I am now discussing lens six of CDEM. You're not either or, you're both and. So CDM is short for the Caribbean diaspora experience model. And it is a tool that I created that looks at Caribbean cultural identity and how that form evolves and expresses itself in diaspora community. Cedem was formed out of my own personal experience, my family. I discuss it in prior episodes, my family, my friends, and observations through this podcast and recognizing the patterns in how we navigate being Caribbean outside of Caribbean, particularly for those who are born in the diaspora. Over the past couple months, I've been doing a deep dive into each lens of the model. The model has six lenses. Lens one is where you start shapes the journey. And we take a look at starting points, how and when you connect it to Caribbean culture shapes your journey. Lens two is where you live plus what you seek equals how you connect. And this explores how geography and your motivation to interact with culture creates how you truly connect to culture. Lens three, we talk about cultural anchors, the tangible things and some intangible things, food, music, language, traditions, etc. Lens four is your cultural identity will shift, and that's the point. And this looks at how your identity shifts across life stages, which by the way is one of the first things that I was able to talk about for many years, and everyone was like, What are you talking about? until they started experiencing it. Lens five, which is how the podcast got started, as I mentioned before, I'm very deeply into this model. Your cultural identity, our Caribbean cultural identity, influences how we show up at work. And now we're at lens six. You're not either or you're both, and I welcome you. I encourage you to go back and listen to the other lenses. They're all in the show notes. This one though, this one is different. I may not have experienced this directly, but I've watched it happen to people and I've heard people tell their stories. The reason this one feels different for me and why it's personal, even though it's not my own experience, is because, as I mentioned, in lens one, we have different starting points. I

A Cousin Raised Jamaican In America

SPEAKER_00 6:46

arrived here as a teenager, very strongly planted in my identity as I was born in Jamaica and now I'm moving to America. And when I moved here, along with my mom and brothers all at the same time, I am who I am. No one could take that away from me, right? But I came here and I met up with cousins. Cousins that I knew existed, but never really met them the same way until I came to live here. By moving here, we formed a relationship that, you know, as we would say in Jamaica, we are bench and bati. You know, we were just always together. We lived in the same house, lived on different floors. We, you know, we got reprimanded the same way, we got, you know, we had the same food. This is your cousin. This is your cousin. Fidem fada bana Jamaica. Like a cousin, for surety, as we say. She wasn't a native speaker. You can hear the American twang a little bit, but she was a good speaker. This I'm a party, as we say. We have a party, we done bust the latest dance, this is 90s, yo, we'd have done the place where we go to the basement parties. Yo, we were, and I'm I'm so excited because I'm throwing in a lot of yo's in here. But she's my cousin. We go back to Jamaica together because I'm like, yo, you need to come to Jamaica when me I go to Jamaica, so you can't enjoy Jamaica, you know, like cousins, friends. They the saying that they say, you know, your first friends and best friends are cousins. This is really it. So to hear audience members over the years tell a story where someone in the family is like, oh, you're not Jamaican, you're American. I don't remember that being a conversation. At least in our house, right? I mean, the fact is the fact, right? She was born here, but no one was taking away that identity. And she wasn't saying that, oh, I was born in Jamaica. She was essentially saying that my parents are Jamaican and I'm a Jamaican American because of that birthright and that heritage. Because she's living it, right? And so the idea of someone looking at my cousin Samoana and saying, yo, you're not Jamaican, it makes me sad. The stories come in different versions, but it usually boils down to be the same. There are some instances where their parents never taught them to speak patois, or maybe, you know, they were worried about the accents would hold them back. And, you know, now they're they're adults and they're trying to reconnect to culture. And some of that may bring on feelings of they're faking it and not really Caribbean. And then there are instances where people would say, Well, if your parents are Jamaican, I don't hear an accent. If you're Jamaican, I don't hear an accent. And I even get that as a native speaker, and I explain to people, well, I don't speak like that at work for a variety of reasons, depending on who I'm talking to. I may go into it or not.

Tammy Reconnects With Lost Culture

SPEAKER_00 9:59

I recently had a guest on the show a few months ago named Tammy. And for me, Tammy's story was incredible because she happened to find the podcast after I launched CDEM. And to see her walk through most of the lenses of the model was astonishing because up until that point, I'm placing family members and friends. A complete stranger, maybe a lens here or there, but to have her tell her story and just see the different lenses of the model come alive felt both rewarding, insightful, but also, again, always surprising. So for Tammy, she was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family is from Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, but she wasn't raised around any of it. There was no Patua, there was no Spanish, none of the traditions were explained. And according to Tammy, her family was focused on just being American and focusing on the American dream. And she said in that episode, like she knew who she was, but she didn't really know who she was. Like she knew that she had this Caribbean heritage, but she didn't have enough to have like a strong feeling about it. And it wasn't shame, she just didn't have enough to have a connection to it emotionally. And in that episode, she was like, How do I have a last name Garcia and can't speak Spanish? And then the same thing would happen on the Jamaican side. So, you know, being told that you're being fake or you're lying about your heritage because you don't have the traditional markers of what would classify you as such. There's no accent, there's no insert whatever cues people are using, or, you know, visual or audio markers. And it wasn't until she went to Howard University and she was around other black people from different aspects or different parts of the Black diaspora that she really learned to connect and be excited about her culture because now she was learning about it in a way that she never really had before. As a result of her experience, Tammy helps people reconnect to culture, leading them through a similar pathway that she did to reconnect to both cultures. You know, she went very immersive in different aspects of connecting to both cultures. And so she helps people reconnect to culture. In that episode, I asked her what people who are firmly rooted in their culture, that's like people like me and some of you listening, can do to support people who are trying to reconnect to culture. And she said, just be accepting and not to discount or discredit people's journey because it's different from your journey. And not to shut people down and make them feel bad about their experience.

Why Some Parents Chose Assimilation

SPEAKER_00 12:59

But here's where it gets complicated. Because sometimes I understand why parents did what they did. And again, that's by doing this work of interviewing many people on the podcast. I understood why someone would tell their child that they're American and not Jamaican. And even though it breaks my heart, I understand because I can see both sides of it. So in lens one of the model, we have a sublens and it's about what was happening, whether it's for the child born in America or for the parent. And a lot of times the decade where the parent migrated and the decade in which the child was born really dictates the experiences that the parents were having and their fears. And so a lot of times there was fear under why culture wasn't passed on in a certain way to children born here. It's easy to look through today's lens and criticize the parents, but at the same time, I understood that, I mean, as a parent, I'm making real-time decisions based on information I have now. And in this moment, the decision I make, I feel is the right decision. I don't have the fear the same way those parents had back whenever they migrated. I may have a different level or sense of fear now. But the point I'm trying to make here is criticizing the parents doesn't help because they were just trying to keep their kids safe. And how they felt was keeping their kids safe was masking or shielding them from appearing to be immigrants. Again, I don't know the specific experiences they were having. And going back to lens two, sometimes where they live meant that that's what they had to do. You know, living in New York City or certain places is not the same as living in other states in the US. And so I believe, I would like to believe, that the parents were really just trying to give their children a better chance at the American dream. And they didn't want anything to make life harder for their children. And again, I just want to remind people that there are different reasons. You just kind of put yourself in what was happening for parents to make that decision. If not happening to them, maybe happening to other people in their communities. So now when I hear stories of people much older trying to reconnect to culture and reclaim their Caribbean identity, I look at that as possibility. I look at that as there's freedom in their ability to do that. So after many years of doing this podcast, I realized that the language and the conversation is being Caribbean and being American or Canadian or British or anywhere else in the world you

Stop Treating Identity Like A Test

SPEAKER_00 16:10

are. It's not a contradiction. It's not like you're half this and half that. You're all of it. Like Tammy said in that episode, which was so beautiful, she used to think that in order for her to claim her Caribbean heritage meant that she had to know enough and grown up close to it. She had to prove her Caribbeann-ness. And now she doesn't have to do that anymore. And she says that connection is real, even if it's not complete or easy to explain. It doesn't remove that there's a connection. I think holistically, just feels like you have to prove that you know enough and that you are Jamaican enough, or all these things, right? And I know on social media we'll laugh and we'll run this game of like, if you're, you know, if you're Caribbean enough, but for some people, those things they reopen wounds that they have. My children, they they claim their birthright. They're not even in any doubt. They will shut anyone down who tells them otherwise. And as I said in the opening, when my first son was really small, he was so embedded. I mean, he still is. He's oh, he's matured so much more now in the culture. But when he was younger, he was all about dancing and he knew all the dances. And one day something said to me, ask him, because you know, when they're at a really young age, you start asking them, like, when is your birthday? Where were you born? And one day the spirit just said, ask Ethan where he was born. And he said his birthday, and he's like, I was born in Jamaica. He was like, No, you weren't born in Jamaica. Because in his mind, he he felt so Jamaican that in his mind, I'm like, I must be born in Jamaica because everything in my house is Jamaican. And I chuckle at that. But their Jamaican heritage is their birthright. They grew up knowing so much about the culture. How could you tell them that they're not? So whether you were born in Brooklyn, Cleveland, or somewhere else, or whether you speak Patua fluently or not, it's your cultural identity. You're not either or, you're both and you're both American and Caribbean. And I mean, this idea of identity, even I have this conversation on the podcast. I said, depending on who I'm talking to, I might introduce myself differently, not because I'm ashamed, but it's the context. We all have multiple identities. I, outside of being black and women, which is obvious, right? So it's obvious that I'm black and I'm a woman, I can say I'm Caribbean, I'm Jamaican, I'm a New Yorker, Brooklyn, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, you know what I mean? And you can just drill down a little bit. They're all aspects of my identity. And depending on who I'm having a conversation with, I might lead with that or open with that. But it's not that I am choosing one over the other. It's what the conversation calls for, or who I choose to open with, right? But I know these are all my identities, and it's very different for someone who at a young age where it's been there they are impressionable and it's been molded, it's much harder to undo some of that.

Make Space For Mixed Diaspora Journeys

SPEAKER_00 19:39

For those of us who are rooted firmly in our culture because we came over from whichever Caribbean country and grew up immersed in the culture, we have to be careful not to police who gets to claim that identity, especially when they know that they're tracing their parents and grandparents' roots back to ex-Caribbean country. Our role is to make space for our different journeys. The goal isn't purity, you know, it's not a pure authentic version of who is purely Jamaican, right? The goal from the diaspora experience is to pass culture down, to keep it growing, to move it forward and to keep it alive. And that means making room for people like Tammy, my cousins, my kids, my nieces and nephew, right? Who are all born here, right? That's the both and. You know, it's not choosing. You don't have to defend it, you don't have to prove it. You're all of them, all at the same time. For instance, one of my nieces and my nephew, their mom is Guyanese and their father, my brother, is Jamaican. That's a whole other layer of identity. And they're fortunate to have me as their aunt. They get to lean in and celebrate it all together, especially when people have conversations with them about, oh, you're not Caribbean or Guyana is not a Caribbean, it's South American. And I'm like, you're my niece and nephew. So you go school them, you go let them know what this means, right? So it's empowering them with information about who they are. And yes, while geographically Guyana is on the continent of South America, culturally, politically, geopolitically part of the Caribbean, right? And so it's giving them the tools to be able to confidently say, yes, I know I'm born here, but this is where my parents are from. And I don't have to choose sides. I am all of that. You know, they grew up in both households. And so it's an embodiment of actually my niece and my nephew, they're an embodiment of, you know, they're 100%. You know, we laugh at my niece sometimes. Because she will say, I don't know how to say this right. And we're just like, just say it. You know, if you are worried about people laughing, that's minor. Just say it. The more you do it, the more practice you get, and the more comfortable you get with saying. So these are like some of the things that I help them to feel comfortable. But always reminding them that it doesn't make you less if you want to stay in your American accent and not try to speak Guyanese or not try to speak Jamaican, it's saying that you still are, even if you don't sound Guyanese or Jamaican.

Belonging, Acceptance, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 22:32

So here's what I want to leave you with. If you are someone who was raised either disconnected from culture and trying to reconnect, as identified in lens one, or if you are someone who wasn't necessarily disconnected from culture, but you've been told that you're not in cert whichever Caribbean country your parents are from, you're just a Yankee, don't let anyone, including yourself, tell you that you don't belong. And if you're someone firmly rooted in your Caribbean identity, the ask, as Tammy has said, is to be more self-aware how we might be making someone feel like they have to prove their Caribbean-ness. In addition, for those of us who are firmly planted but recognize that we are both and and we hold a unique position, we can create space. Because at the end of the day, we're all trying to figure out how to carry culture forward while living in a space that is not the mother country, but is home. And we're all navigating multiple identities. We're all both and in our own ways. The question isn't whether you're Caribbean enough, Brooklyn enough, New York enough, Jamaican enough, or American enough. The question is always will be: are you going to accept this as part of your full self? That this is part of who you are. And that's it. That's the essence of lens six of the Caribbean diaspora experience model. You're not either or, you're both and. Again, to listen to lens one through five and an overview of the model, you can find the links in the show notes. Thank you for taking this journey with me, but the journey isn't done. We're going to continue on diving deeper into CDEM and different lens in different ways, as we're already doing and as the show has been doing over the years, just very informally. So now we are with this model, we're going to make sure that we have more topics on different aspects of the journey that people are taking within the model. If you have any questions about CDEM or Lens 6 or any of the lens, please feel free to reach out on social media or send an email. Thank you for listening. And as I always love to say at the end of the show, walk good.