Not being able to relate to my co-workers
Hi I'm half Chinese-Indonesian half white and I made a similar post in the hapa subreddit but was hoping to get more opinions, I was born in Indonesia and when my family moved to the states my mother did her best to continue to give me as much of an Asian/Asian American upbringing as possible which I very much appreciate and this has fostered within me an interest of always wanting to learn more about my Chinese and Indonesian heritage.
I realized though the other week there were a lot of aspects of American (predominantly white American) culture that I had kinda substantial gaps in knowledge when I had a fancy team dinner with my coworkers recently (my job is remote so we don't see each other too often so these are often welcome events). But it felt somewhat sad to feel so out of place and couldn't really contribute much to them conversations. It's not like I grew up without or wasn't exposed to any American culture either but my teammates were on a completely different wavelength when it came to American culture we consumed (but just to be clear most of the content I consume is from Asia or produced by Asian Americans or Asians/Asian Americans are heavily involved in some way). My team are all white people with the exception of me and one black guy that already gets along very well with our team.
Anyone have tips on how to better relate to my co-workers? I don't want to force myself to consume music, tv shows and movies I'm not interested in to understand their pop culture references but I also don't want to be the odd man out.