Originally Posted by merleniau

My parents are immigrants. They moved to the US in 1983, and both were naturalized before I turned 10. That made me the first member of my family to experience the US school system, the first member of my family to go to a US college, and, additionally, I will be the first member of my family who will attain a graduate degree (yes, it's a few years away, so what?). I suppose because they saw the US as an opportunity, and because I grew up learning the system from the system itself (not from my family's experiences), my upbringing has made the way I perceive things a little different. My experience is not and was not primed by my parents' stories, biases, or experiences. It is entirely my own.

Does that change how I'm perceived? I don't think so, superficially, because you can't know my family's details just from looking at me. But I think that it does change peoples' perception of me, at least a little bit, once they meet my parents. I suppose the accents make it "real."