Acculturation In America

Heine (2015) defines acculturation as “the process by which people migrate to and learn a culture that is different from the original culture” (p. 258). Acculturation often requires for the individual to adjust responses of engrained life scripts in order to compensate for cultural differences. Often time acculturation results in alterations of a person’s social identity and self-image. Immigrants to the United States must negotiate a new culture. This paper seeks to understand acculturation into mainstream society as it relates to an individual’s experience past and present.

Mrs. B is a 40-year-old woman from Les Cayes, Haiti. She has been living in the New York City for 15 years. Mrs. B has never mentioned what made her immigrate to the United

When interviewing Mrs. B I wanted to know what unsettling thing for her when she moved to New York and asked her what was the most shocking thing for her when she moved to New York City. She laughed and told me all the people, she never knew there could be so many people in one place. She continued to joke about all the people in New York and then noted that despite all the people it is still so lonely. She said “no one cares for each other, they don’t take care of each other. It’s not like that at home.” I asked what she meant and she gave me the example of her job telling me “I see these people every day, and they don’t know my name, they probably don’t know each other’s name, because it doesn’t matter to them.” I mentioned to her that it was a good thing she had family, referring to an elderly Haitian couple I had often seen her. I was very surprised to hear that she was not related to the couple at all she had met them randomly on the street one day and stayed in contact with them, checking up on them frequently. When I asked her why she took such efforts she simple said they were her people and they had to take care of each other.

For Mrs. B the most shocking thing of coming to America was coming to an individualistic society. For her a society were individuals place their own was very isolating as she was used to a culture where individuals where taking the collective into account. Mrs. B belief that she as a responsibility to the elderly couple is a result of her being interdependent. As Heine (2015) states “obligation to others are an important part of ingroup relations among interdependent people” (p.