American pop culture, peer pressure beckon young immigrants

By CECELIA LE
Observer-Dispatch

When Hawa Deramy came to Utica from Sierra Leone two years ago, her parents sat her down for a talk. We need to keep our culture alive, they told the children. No shorts. Frequent visits to the mosque. For the most part, Hawa, 14, her four brothers and her four sisters have honored their wishes, and in turn, their parents have eased some of the rules. But every once in a while, there’s a blowup in the Deramy house when one of Hawa’s teenage sisters tries to sneak a miniskirt by.

Hip-hop, R&B and rock boom out from the children’s bedrooms. Hawa’s tastes lean toward Pink, B2K and Mary J. Blige.

“They don’t like the music so much, but we listen to it whether they like it or not,” Hawa, grinning, said of her parents.

The delicate balance between retaining their culture and embracing American ways, between the influences of their heritage and the pull of their peers, is one common to young people in Utica. Children in the Utica school system come from 35 countries and speak 28 languages.

As refugees and immigrants continue to populate Utica, they bring with them children who often feel torn between their old homes and their new ones.

Immersed in American schools and eager to master the new lexicon of popular culture and customs, the confusion usually deepens as children grow older, said Betsy LaPorte, Utica schools administrator for English as a Second Language.

“The conflict between the two cultures intensifies, as does their desire to fit into both places,” LaPorte said. “They feel they’ve got one foot in each camp. They might act one way in school and a different way at home.”

Other young people stay fiercely loyal to their native lands.

Medin Divovic, 18, came from Bosnia three years ago. Working as a busboy at Grimaldi’s restaurant in East Utica, he plans to study criminal justice at Mohawk Valley Community College.

After that, he might want to move to California — and if he does, his parents will follow him.

“Their whole life, they stay with me,” Divovic said. “When they get older, they don’t go to the nursing home. If I go, they would go. Everybody sticks together to decide what we want to do. We want to be together.

“A lot of kids listen to rap music and want to be Americans,” he said. “They are ashamed to speak Bosnian. I don’t shame my family. I don’t shame my country. A couple kids only hang out with Americans. They think they will forget about Bosnia if they don’t speak Bosnian. I like every kind of people.”

Utica College psychology professor Pauline Ginsberg, who has studied adolescent adaptation to immigration, found young persons’ experiences depend on factors such as age, cultural makeup of peer group, attitude of the community and reasons for leaving the home country.

“The teens I interviewed ranged from very Americanized to hardly at all Americanized,” Ginsberg said. “There’s a huge difference from child to child. Many of them were not experiencing that conflict and felt they shared a lot with their parents.”

LaPorte says immigrants are showing more pride in their heritage than in the late 1970s, when the first refugees trickled into Utica thinking they were expected to assimilate. She encourages parents to keep their children’s backgrounds strong.

Tarik Pehlic, 8, is a Bosnian proud of his heritage.

“I want to be Bosnian,” said Tarik, who arrived in Utica five years ago. “I don’t want to be American.”

Tarik can’t read or write in Bosnian, but his mother, Bajrama Pehlic, wants him to learn. The family hasn’t decided whether they want to return to Bosnia someday, but for now, Tarik goes back to visit every year and finds himself appreciating more his life in Utica.

“It’s better. The houses are not wrecked down,” he said, adding of his home country, “People are poor there. They don’t have a lot.”

When asked what foods he likes, Tarik reels off a long list of Bosnian names — pitas filled with cheese, a meat stew, savory swirl breads. His other favorite food is pizza.