My Cultural Identity Analysis

I had the grand honor of being born into a culturally diverse family. Although Dominican culture dominates our customs, we are 25% Middle Eastern from Lebanon, and 25% Spanish from Barcelona, Spain.The cultures have all laced into each other in such a way that I find it utterly ordinary to eat Arabic food while listening to Dominican music while serving Spanish desserts. My parents came to America at around the age that I am now, met each other, and my mom had my first sister at 18 while my father was 22. My mom went back to high school to finish her GED while my father enrolled in an institution that he never got around to finishing because his english was not well. My parents never got the opportunity to further their education because they had my sisters and I at such an early age. My parents have worked since the day they stepped foot in New York precisely so that I could get the prestigious education that they had always longed for. My parents separated when I was eight years old and my father was never really around after; as a

I believed that Whites and Blacks were equal however there were no African Americans in my grade school classes from K through ninth grade. There is truth to the assertion that parents’, relatives’ and friends’ negative reactions to people of minority races do send mixed messages to children (Sue & Sue, 2014). I recall that occasionally my father would make negative comments regarding an individual’s ethnicity which demonstrated to me that people could be judged by others based on their ethnic

Where did your parents grow up? What exposure did they have to racial groups other than their own? (Have you ever talked with them about this?)

Do you ever think about where you have to sit when you ride a bus? I am Rosa Parks and I helped to end segregation by not giving up my seat. I was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. When I was a young child, my father left our family to go work in the North in construction. I didn’t see him again until I was an adult. During my childhood, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents because my mother had to teach in another town. I loved going to school and was an excellent student. I continued to go to school until 10th grade when my grandmother and mother became ill so I had to take care of them.

I am an African American female but that isn’t all there is to know me for. I am an African American girl who is very interactive with my religion and also my culture. Cultural identity can be hard to explain because some people don’t know what’s really in their culture and they fail to see , and understand it. I know what my cultural identity is because of my ethiopian flag, the baked macaroni, and the movie the lion king.

The myth of the melting pot of diverse people in the US seems to sound easy and fancy, however, the truth is that people here only gather some particular areas. In the article “People Like Us” by David Brooks, the author says that although the United Stated is the diverse country, Americans do not seem to care about diversity. This is because they do not embrace diversity and would not associate with people who are unlike them. Mr. Brook mentions that the white people, Africa-Americans and other people of various races live separately in their areas based on their income levels and interests. As Mr. Brook’s statement, I believe that there are much talks about the issue of diversity in America, however, diversity has not been taken seriously because Americans

Most of my childhood can be described as white. I grew up in a small white town, went to a small white school, and have a small white family; for a while, I even lived in a small white house. I grew up in a place where race was something I saw on the news, or heard white parents talking about angrily. I was unable to develop any sense

As a Biracial woman who is also Bisexual, intersectionality and diversity are extremely important to me. As I matured, my ethnicity became increasingly important to me. Being biracial can be extremely isolating, and there can be a frequent feeling of not fitting in. I often feel stuck between two worlds, Black and White, Gay and Straight. As I grew up, I felt out of place around family, and unsure about my place in the world. I began taking steps to establish my own identity, interacting with a variety of different people, Christian teachers, Jewish friends, my Black mother, White father, and classmates that span multitudes of sexualities and ethnicities. As my life became more varied I came to see that the ties to both sides of my family

In the spring of 2012, I was informed that we were going to move. As a thirteen going on fourteen year old, the news was rather jarring. I was born and raised in that house, in that town, it was all I knew. We packed up our belongings and began the 678 mile journey to our new “home.” Moving from Hartland, Michigan to Durham, North Carolina was not only immense in distance, but in way of life. It was a culture shock. I grew up in a small town where the population was 98% white. Durham is a larger city with a population of only 40% being white. In the new school I attended, I was a minority, and it was eye opening. I walked in hallways full of a multitude of skin colors, all brightening my world. While it took me a while to become acclimated,

Walking into my kindergarten class, I had no idea that it would be the last time I shared a classroom with people with similar beliefs and backgrounds as me. I had no idea that my intelligence would separate me from my friends and from my culture. In fifth grade, I was one out of four Hispanic children in my class. By then, I got used to people asking me if I’d say something in Spanish for them, acting as if I was an alien from outer space. I remember always declining their requests due to my embarrassment because by this time, most of my friends were white and I felt the need to fit in. I remember telling them that I had light skin because my family was

My whole life, I have always been required to be proud of my ethnicity. I am 18 years old now, and I am an American citizen. However, ask me where I am from and I will tell you, “I’m Mexican.” I say that because my family is and I have been taught to do so. It has become a natural habit of mine and others as well. Not only was I taught by my parents that I am Mexican, but I was always taught that the world is not a beautiful place. That there will be people who will hate me for who I define myself to be. As a child, it was hard to understand, but as I grew, the more I understood that my parents were right. America still is racist and unfair to those of another race. I cannot comprehend how being something other than American gives anyone the

I want to start my story before I was even born. My dad came to the United States but my mom was still in the Philippines. Then when I was born in the Philippines, my mom took care of me for five years while my dad was working a minimum wage job in the U.S., trying to earn enough money to send both my mom and I to the United States so we could all have a better life, one where we could prosper more due to the opportunities that the U.S. provides. I grew up going to a public school from kindergarten to 5th grade where I met people of different races. When I was in school being in ESL (English as a Second Language) exposed me to even more people of color such as Mexicans, Middle Eastern people, Turkish people, Latinos, and other Asian people.

My earliest exposure to people who were racially or culturally different from me was through television shows. This was when I was 6 years old. I remember I was so happy because my father just bought a brand new TV. At that time we don’t have cable and all we could watch was the basic TV channel and one of the show that usually plays was Charlie Angels. I remember for the first time I’ve seen Farrah Fawcett who have blonde hair, blue eyes, and speaks English was so different from me I thought. She have this thick long blonde hair that looks like feathers and it was beautiful. I remember asking my dad why does she have blonde hair and blue eyes and my dad would say, “American people have blonde hair and blue eyes because they are born that way,

Throughout my experiences in this course so far, I have had many opportunities to reflect on my own past and have begun to better understand my own cultural identity. It has been much more difficult to wrap my head around than I would have predicted it to be because so many things play into the construction of an identity that it can be hard to look at all of those separate pieces together. My cultural identity, like all others, is more complicated than it first appears. I identify as a white person, a woman, an American, a gay person, and a feminist, just to name a few. While all of these labels carry with them stereotypes and expectations, they also interplay with the cultural influences I was subject to throughout my childhood. So, in looking at my cultural identity, I am examining both my own labels and what they mean to me and layering on top of that cultural influencers that operate within my life and how the interplay between these layers works.

If someone was to ask me what anthropology was, prior to this assignment, I would have probably taken an educated guess such as “the study of life”. In a sense that is correct but not entirely accurate. Anthropology is defined as, “The study of human kind in all times and places” (Haviland, Prins, McBride, & Walrath, 2017). After an extensive analyzation of my experiences, I concluded that I don’t practice anthropology in my life enough. In addition, I discovered that my life doesn’t have much diversity in it. With that said, I am moving forward with an open mind towards new cultures and am eager to learn more about the people that make up this planet.