What do Barack Obama, Keanu Reeves, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Kobe Bryant have in common? They all grew up as TCK’s (Third Culture Kids). It’s a term coined by a sociologist in the 60′s to refer to people who spent a significant amount of their childhood in one or more culture(s) other than their parents’. In general, TCK’s are known to be linguistically more adept and more easily relating to people from different backgrounds. I would be a kind of semi-TCK (I was a teenager when I moved to the U. S.), but all my three children, who are Asian Americans growing up in Morocco, would be TCK’s.
Some TCK’s, like President Obama, may be multi-racial persons whose parents have different ethnic and racial heritages, but all TCK’s are certainly multi-cultural. Nowadays Barack Obama’s Kenya/Indonesia/Hawaii background is not only well known throughout the world but also so very welcomed as his identity as a multiracial, multicultural person somehow communicates inclusiveness, openness, and tolerance toward others.
The TCK’s generally have two or more worlds co-existing inside them, and this can be resourceful as well as confusing. But if personally dealt with and understood in constructive ways, TCK’s own backgrounds and experiences would give them an edge in life and career. A recent research from Stanford Graduate School of Business reports that those who identify themselves as multiracial have special benefits:
…individuals who identify with multiple groups might be better equipped to assimilate into both racially homogeneous and racially mixed environments. In this way, multiracial individuals in diverse environments might have a broader sense of “fitting in,” which can boost both their psychological and social well-being.
… individuals who feel comfortable in several different cultures might be able to better “frame switch” between different cultural mind sets.
This study is suggesting that multicultural individuals have a better chance of adapting to any kind of cultural and racial environment, either diverse or uniform. Kevin Binning, one of the key researchers behind this study, says, “Such individuals might be able to seamlessly switch between their different cultures’ ways of perceiving the world, which could help them navigate through racially diverse environments.”
This Stanford research affirms what we intuitively know about TCK’s and multicultural people. The question is not about whether they have benefits or not. It’s pretty much decided that they do, especially in this increasingly multicultural and cross-cultural environment. The more important question is how to help them come to terms with and properly deal with the potentially difficult and confusing multicultural self-identity in order for these advantages to bear fruit. From parents to teachers, internationnal businesses to religious institutions, from diplomatic missions to military, they all need to delve deeper into the issues of cross-cultural, multi-cultural life and work, and diversity if they want to maximize the potential of their children, students, and employees.
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