Arguments For Self Identification

The peer reviewed article “Ethnic and Racial Identity During Adolescence into Young Adulthood: An Integrated Conceptualization” is a well written article on the struggle that people of color face when coming face to face with their identity in social situations. Umana-Taylor, Quintana, Lee, Cross, Rivas-Drake, Schwartz and Seaton (2014) analyzed ethnic and racial identity or ERI and how it relates to important developments and issues from early childhood well on into young adulthood. They worked to find the most important milestones during the development or ERI as well (Umana-Taylor et. al 2014). This paper will consist of the information given from the article and how I’ve dealt with my own ERI.

One’s identity has the ability to play a central role in one’s schooling experience and in return, affect the way they perceive the world around them. Growing up in an Asian household located in a predominately Asian American neighborhood located in the San Gabriel Valley, I always identified myself strongly to my race and took pride in being a first generation Asian American child. Race has definitely affected my schooling experience in many different ways, both positively and negatively. In addition, there were a variety of other aspects such as stereotypical gender roles and socioeconomic class status which factored into the way I learned in the U.S. education system. In this paper, I will examine how race, class, and gender played a big role throughout my schooling experience.

Labeling theory holds that individuals come to identify and act as per their labels. The major tenet of this theory is that the behavior and self-identity of individuals is affected by the way they are described by other people (Vold, Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2016). According to this theory, the act of deviance is not implicit in a particular act, but is hedged on the inclination of the majority to ascribe labels to minorities in society who deviate from standard behavior. Labeling leads to dramatization of a particular act – which propagates the behavioral clash between the individual and the community. Through ascribing labels, the individuals acquire a negative self-image. The individuals accept themselves as labeled by the

Racial identification is harder than ethnic identification for most people to avoid. To explain this, in “Racial Identities” in the

Throughout American history, the United States has been a cauldron where different diversities mix and mingle. In this hot pot of diversity, all of the ingredients (ethnicities) will not always conform to one and other; this could possibly lead to discrimination. This paper will be primarily focus on the discrimination towards Asian American youth of the 21st century and how it affects their academics. The research question guiding this investigation is “To what extent does the stereotyping of Asian American high school students as the model minority impact their performance on standardized tests such as ACT?” The focus will lead towards the stereotyping of Asian American students such as smart, math geniuses, or good at

As you go throughout life, it is not very common to stop and question your own personal identity, because you are just you, there does not seem like that much to it. But, in the philosophical world, this topic is one of the most popular things to look into and try to understand. Surprisingly, the idea of personal identity is not as simple as it seems. Many philosophers seem to question if personal identity even exists, and if they do believe it exists, how exactly? In the most popular philosophical arguments, there are three theories of personal identity that stick out; psychological approach, ego theory, and bundle theory. These three theories discuss how personal identity can be identified, or if it even exists at all. There is no way to be one hundred percent positive that one of these theories is true, so there will be always be a mystery to personal identity. Even though we can never be sure, it is always interesting to look into each theory and discuss the possibilities to our own personal identity.

Biracial Self-Identification: Impact on Trait anxiety, social anxiety and depression is a journal article that discusses the causes of social anxiety and depression amongst biracial individuals. This scientific study was designed to determine if the ethnicity that biracial individuals chose to identify themselves as impacted their psychological test scores. This study was also designed to observe if the pressure from other individuals of which race is accepted upon a biracial person causes high or low test scores on the psychological test. This article discusses the different affects that being pressured to choose an identity has on a biracial individual.

Stereotypes have been around since the beginning and continue to hurt the lives of certain people in society. Due to stereotypes and prejudice made by certain people, the author, Evan Hunter, successfully demonstrated through the story “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” the consequences of stereotyping. The story focuses on a sixteen year old boy named Andy, and his last moments being alive after being stabbed by a rival gang known as the Guardians. Andy was stereotyped because of his purple jacket that identified him as a member of the Royals. While he is reflecting on his life, four people come by but do not take the time to help. The drunk man

Why does race determine one's identity? Most people in society believe there is a stereotype behind every race? Not just a stereotype, there are times when people are judged and mistreated just because of the race they belong to. Sometimes the history of the culture seems to “shape” who the person is . Others will think that the individual is the same as the others, not knowing who they really are. Just like Richard in the book “Black Boy”, he got mistreated by white people just for the fact that he was African American. Individuals have a right to determine who they are regardless to their race.

Students from racialized backgrounds face robust barriers to their success in high schools. While high school graduation rates are raising as a whole, students from racialized background are graduating high school less that their peers of the dominant racial group. These students have many different variables that limit their educational outcomes. “While education is the institution used in America to distribute social status and economic power, and facilitate how society functions, it has not been accepted or provided equal opportunity to all members of society.”(Boyd, Gordon, Iwamoto, Potts, Ward, 2009)

The findings reveal that Asian American students’ cultural orientation is a significant contributor to their academic achievement. Asian Americans put strong emphasis on efforts whereas white students see academic abilities as an inherent characteristic that cannot be improved through efforts. Further, the immigrant self-selection and optimism for future success among Asian American students and their parents contribute to their exceptional outcomes. On the other hand, they did not find any significant differences between Asian American and white students’ cognitive abilities. Socio-demographic characteristics in Hsin and Xie’s analysis had limited explanatory power for Asian Americans’ superior academic achievement. The authors claim that such lack of significance of socio-demographic characteristics is due to socioeconomic variation within Asian Americans. While they do not completely reject the significance of socio-demographic factors, Hsin and Xie fail to consider how Asian Americans as a group exhibit exceptional academic performance despite with-in group variation in socio-demographic

For this final research paper I chose to discuss racial discrimination and focus on content from an article entitled: The Influence of Ethnic Discrimination and Ethnic Identification on African American Adolescents’ School and Socioemotional Adjustment by Carol A. Wong, Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Arnold Sameroff. This article focuses on the racial discrimination in schools and predicts how it may change academic and psychological functioning of African Americans and whether or not their ethnic identity can be related to such changes. Racial discrimination is an issue everywhere, but we see it in Chicago public schools towards the students considered minorities, which often times refer to the students of color. I will do my best to compare how African American students and other races are impacted academically and/or psychologically through what they experience at school from their teachers and peers—limiting how their home life influences their academic performance as well as psychology.

The World State was constructed based on three ideals: Identity, Stability, and Community. Brave New World was written on a different spectrum than these ideas. Instead of a utopian society, the World State followed the guidelines of a dystopian society. The creation of the caste system threw out any feeling of a community in the World State, while creating a barrier between the citizens in each caste. Self-identity is a huge flaw in the World State.

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.