When the Criticism Comes From Inside: Understanding Internalized Racism in Immigrant and Bicultural Communities

For many immigrants and children of immigrants, the hardest voice to quiet isn’t the one coming from society. It’s the one that lives inside. The voice that questions whether you belong, whether you’re doing enough, or whether parts of who you are need to be softened, hidden, or changed to be accepted.

This is often the quiet work of internalized racism.

Internalized racism happens when messages from a dominant culture are absorbed over time and turned inward. Instead of only experiencing bias from the outside, people begin to question their own worth, culture, appearance, or ways of being. This is not a conscious choice. It is a learned response shaped by history, media, school systems, workplaces, and repeated experiences of being told, directly or indirectly, that whiteness is the standard.

For many bicultural and second-generation individuals, internalized racism shows up alongside perfectionism and burnout. You might feel pressure to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. You might monitor your behavior, speech, or appearance in predominantly white spaces. You might feel embarrassment or discomfort around parts of your culture that once felt natural. Over time, these patterns can create distance from yourself and from the communities you come from.

This often starts early. Children notice which accents are praised and which are mocked. They notice whose names are mispronounced or shortened. They notice whose stories are centered and whose are invisible. When these experiences repeat, they quietly shape beliefs about what is acceptable, professional, or “good enough.”

Internalized racism is not about hating yourself. It is about survival. For many immigrants and children of immigrants, adapting to dominant norms felt necessary to succeed, stay safe, or avoid standing out. Over time, that adaptation can turn into self-criticism. You may find yourself comparing your success, appearance, or identity to white peers and coming up short, even when you are objectively accomplished.

This internal conflict can be exhausting. You may feel torn between pride in your cultural identity and the urge to distance yourself from it. You may struggle with guilt for wanting to assimilate and guilt for feeling disconnected from your roots. You may feel like you are never fully at home in any space.

Internalized racism also feeds into the pressure to be exceptional. Many high-achieving immigrants and bicultural professionals feel that mistakes are not allowed. That they have to represent their entire community. That failure will confirm stereotypes or justify exclusion. This belief can lead to chronic anxiety, overworking, people-pleasing, and burnout.

Healing internalized racism does not mean rejecting your culture or blaming yourself for these patterns. It means gently noticing where certain beliefs came from and questioning whether they still serve you. It means separating your worth from external standards that were never designed with you in mind. It means allowing yourself to exist fully without constant self-monitoring or comparison.

In therapy, this work often involves reconnecting with parts of your identity that were minimized or silenced. It involves building compassion for the ways you learned to adapt. It involves learning how to take up space without apology and how to define success on your own terms.

If this resonates, know that you are not broken or behind. You are responding to systems and histories much larger than yourself. And you deserve support as you unlearn what never belonged to you in the first place.

At Little Nook Therapy, this work is about creating space for you to explore your identity with honesty and care. It is about helping you move through anxiety, perfectionism, and burnout while honoring the full story of who you are. You do not have to choose between belonging and authenticity. Healing allows room for both.