Do Elephants Change A Person's Identity?

Elephants have had a drastic negative change in behavior. Due to the decades of poaching, culling and habitat loss elephants are experiencing a species wide trauma of chronic stress. It is part of elephant nature to be raised and live in the wild with close familial ties. Humans are disrupting this on many levels by removing elephants from their natural environment for ecotourism purposes. Elephants are being forcibly taken away from their family merely for human entertainment. Humans are greatly hurting elephants along with many other species, “It has long been apparent that every large, land-based animal on this planet is ultimately fighting a losing battle with human kind” (Siebert 323). Human behavior has drastically negatively changed

As the old adage goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the same holds true for one’s identity. A person’s identity will differ between their self-assessment and the perceptions of others. Two people can have two entirely different experiences with same individual, forming two different identities for one person. This proves that one’s identity is directly parallel to the individual involved. Jeffery Mio’s book, Multicultural Psychology uses O.J Simpson as an example of how the past can shape how you perceive someone and their identity. When the O.J verdict was announced, African American’s shouted and cheered with excitement, however, white European Americans were outraged and upset. Statistics show that “African Americans are more likely to be arrested, imprisoned, or shot and killed by the police, and given harsher sentences, including death penalty than European Americans” (Mio 8). African American’s past experience with the legal system, helped form a positive identity for O.J Simpson. Most whites do not share the same positive identity for O.J because they have a different past experience. O.J is a hero to one race, and a murderer to another. However, whites are once again neglecting the past and the abuse African Americans have endured. Whites are upset at the fact that African Americans are happy about OJ. However, if whites merely glanced at the past of African Americans, whites would see why OJ is a victory for African Americans. Whites could grow and move forward if they simply remembered the past instead of solely looking at the present. This further proves that the past plays a huge role in identity and humanities. The different perspectives show how different one’s view would be if they did not forget the past. The past does not need to consume your future, but it needs to play a vital role in everyday life. Moderation is