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Essay of your identity cultural background
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The evidence consisting of the cultural identity autobiography and the reflection assignment demonstrates a high degree of self-awareness. My cultural autobiography is the result of my researching the many layers of my cultural identity. This information is relevant to my understanding of how I process information, my decision-making processing, and how I behave in multicultural settings. The evidence reflects s high degree of self-awareness acuminated over a lifetime of experiences and education gained from my family, friends, community, and formal education. These experiences influence my worldview and my understanding of myself to include views on race/ethnicity, gender, age, education, economic status, bias, and prejudices. Awareness
Every person has their own identity that forms who they are. Many people think that identity is a form of an ID, but identity is more than a collection of traits, skin or body parts. Identity is always a historical idea, but it is also a pattern for a way of thinking. After reading chapter 5 on “Identities and Perceptions,” I learned that everyone has multiple identities that are transacted through communication, but at the same time it also defines who you are as a person. Chapter 5 also demonstrates perception, which is someone’s perspective or point of view. For example, I describe myself as a “bi-racial young lady”; therefore, my perception is more likely to be influenced by my race or gender.
One’s cultural identity consists of their race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, religion, and so on. Being aware of your own cultural identity is just as important as being aware of other’s. People’s cultural identity defines who they are, the privilege (or lack of privilege) they receive, and how society views them. It is important to understand that White individuals have more privileges than individuals of color. White individuals do not experience detriment and difficulties due specifically to their skin color and instead receive advantages. White privilege is defined as benefits that white individuals have that people of color do not (Kendall, 2012). The following walks through my personal cultural background, how it was shaped, defined, and developed, and limitations to my personal competencies.
Imagine living in a world where your culture is not primarily dominant, and other individuals do not identify as the equal to you. Existing with a diverse set of populations, America has become a melting pot of various cultures; each one existing uniquely in its own respect; no two cultures are similar. Culture distinguishes one societal group from another through beliefs, behaviors, language, traditions, art, food, and religion, and politics. Patterns of behavior and thinking have been shaped through culture by the continually, altering process of learning, creativity, and thinking, which differs among females and males. The purpose of culture is so profound that it creates every aspect of who and what individuals are, producing an identity for oneself. Thus, the cultural environment an individual matures in is very crucial to their identity.
I was born and raised in Vietnam, so I naturally observed my culture from my family and my previous schools. I learned most of my culture by watching and coping the ways my family do things. My family and my friends all spoke Vietnamese, so I eventually knew how to speak and understand deeply about my language as I grew up. At home, my mom cooked many Vietnamese foods, and she also taught me to cook Vietnamese food. So I became accustom Vietnamese food. I also learned that grandparents and parents in my culture are taken care of until they die. At school, I learned to address people formally and greet higher-ranking people first. In Vietnamese culture, ranking and status are not related to wealth, so they are concerned with age and education.
I would like to consider my cultural heritage as diverse, but this is far from reality. Over the years as I matured through my teenage years, I was exposed to different cultures by life experiences and travel. I struggled to create both a personal and cultural identity while trying to adjust to my sight loss and with the support of my family I traveled overseas to experience other cultures for the first time. My family opened up their home to a foreign exchange program in turn allowing me the opportunity to travel over to Europe at the age of 16 years old. This opportunity started the slow progression of experiences that would open my mind to others who are unlike myself, especially traveling to a strange place and feeling different in a mainstream culture. It was not until the past 5 or 6 years until I fully accepted my disability that changed my view on being different, whether it’s race, class, gender or disability. Before this time period, my own fear of being different was so intense that I thought my weakness (disability) made me inferior of not only other cultures, but also my own family members.
Self-esteem is an individual’s attitude toward themselves based on the set of beliefs one has of themselves (Tashakkori, Abbas; 1993). It is a considerably important measure of attitude and arguably affects and is affected by many areas within an individual’s life, ultimately shaping the individual in many ways. One factor that may play a major role in effecting one’s self-esteem is a component of identity known as ethnic identity. Unfortunately, the current literature has only begun to explore this relationship and has focused primarily inclusive groups (e.g. White, Black, Hispanic, etc) and has ignored the complex subgroups within these “main” categories of ethnicity.
Identity-“Ones personal qualities.”Identiy is something only he or she can fully define. My uncle says I am affectionate,cheerful, and calm. My grandmother sees me as slim, pretty and sweet. My dad described me as perky, cheerful and happy, my mom says beautiful, gentle, and self-conscious. These adjectives describe me accurately, yet they are only abstract versions of me. Adjectives cannot begin to describe me and I aknowlege these descriptions for what they are, a condensed translation from my outward self to the world. It is impossible for anyone to understand me completely because nobody has experienced the things I have. My mother has never cherished a raggedy doll named Katie and my father never spent hours upon hours making collages and scrap books for his future children. My uncle never hid in the back of a pick-up-truck and traveled four hours to New York and my grandmother has never walked hours in the rain looking for the Queen of England. My identity is something only I can define.
Growing up, I was extremely timid. I kept to myself never was into a girl’s night out. I greatly disliked makeup, and my clothes had to be loose fitted and my hair always a mess. My friends consisted of mainly boys, so I was just like one of them. Girls always seemed so into their makeup, and fixing their hair so there wasn’t a strand out of place, or talking about their boyfriends or guys they thought were so cute. Nope, that wasn’t me. I could no longer pretend to be someone I’m not. I’m someone who has an interest for women and this has greatly shaped my identity.
Don Lun talked about how she has a strong committed family. She was taught “family over anything.” Don realizes that family comes first before others. Family will always be there for you no matter what happens.
I was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. My mother was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States to continue her education when she was in her mid- twenties. My father is from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. My parents have different cultures, and as a result they have completely different backgrounds. When I was growing up, I had a hard time reconciling these different cultures. It was difficult for me and my sister to know what to do in many social situations because our primary schema (our parents) would act completely different in similar social situations. When I would ask my parents for advice, they would give me contrasting suggestions. As I grew older, I started to realize that both my parents were right, even if they acted like opposites.
It is therefore important to be a multicultural person by first forming a positive cultural identity. Manning and Baruth (2009, p.24) defines culture as “people’s values, languages, religions, ideals, artistic expressions, patterns of social and interpersonal relationships and ways of perceiving, behaving and thinking.” However, in this paper, cultural identity also relate to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class and all that defines the self. Hence to have a positive cultural identity (PCI), one must be able to identify with and integrate those identities that bring about a well-built, healthy self-perception and a sense of well-being. PCI would also be ingrained into a person’s self-concept seeing as culture affect how a person thinks, understands and perceives the self. “I am a psychology student, my mother’s daughter and I am gay.” The sentence used to describe myself illustrates how culture shapes the structure of self-concept with the use of more social self-descriptions indicating an interdependent self, typical in collectivistic cultures (Franzoi, 2009).
My culture identity, as I know it as is African American. My culture can be seen in food, literature, religion, language, the community, family structure, the individual, music, dance, art, and could be summed up as the symbolic level. Symbolic, because faith plays a major role in our daily lives through song, prayer, praise and worship. When I’m happy I rely on my faith, same as when I’m sad, for I know things will get better as they have before.
Who am I; my beliefs, values, morals, and views on society have assisted in molding me into the person that I am considered to be today. I was raced with specifics values, traditions, and norms. Being raised in a small town made being socially aware very easy. I was raised under the southern Baptist Christian religion. Church was always the same and it had a majority of women in attendance although the men and elderly people ran the church overall. It was always the same, repetitive habits and events that occurred in my town but after a while I became accustomed to always being near or known by others.
Ethnic identity is defined on the “magnitude to which an individual appreciates and actively engages in his or her own cultural values, traditions, b...
"Personal Identity" can be expressed as an exploration and interpretation of my cultural identity trapped between two varying societies. These societies that reside in both the past and present express the ideas and systems that have laid a major impact on the world to shape it as it is today.