Being Mixed Essay

The concept of Identity is complex through the exploration of relationships and a sense of belonging. This is explored within Tim Winton’s short stories, ‘ Neighbours’ and ‘Big World’, and in Robert Walker’s poem ‘Okay, Let’s be Honest’. Identity can change and evolve depending on belief, change, language and shifting influences.

I also soon realized that the activities that I participated in were deemed gender specific by not only the students around me but the adults as well. I was a teenage boy interested in singing and dancing and thought no harm of it. So after years of pushing back my emotions and trying to maintain an irrelevance to my peers, I felt that I had solved my problems as I hid myself in that bathroom stall. Suddenly, it was the end of my eighth grade year and I was moving… again. I thought to myself that this move would be my chance at a fresh start in a new school where I could change my personality completely. I would finally be rid of the teenage antics that coincided with middle school. I also felt empowered that I had grown a couple of inches leveling out my round image. However, when I travelled to the new school far away in HI, I endured the arduous tasks of not only being a freshman in high school but a caucasian freshman in a high school full of diversity. I soon realized that hiding my true personality was not going to help me in achieving normalcy, so I had to be confident; and one of my favorite ways of expressing who I am, is in my

My entire life, I’ve known that there was something a little different about me. The way that my classmates interacted with each other was always strange to me. Valentine’s Day didn’t make sense and watching Disney movies where the princess always gets her prince just didn’t feel right. I tried to think like my male classmates and feign feelings for girls. It was not until middle school when I finally began to understand exactly why I was so different. I’m gay. And this scared me.

Most people, unless they choose to be an outsider, want to be considered “cool.” Whether it’s to fit in with a peer group, or clique, or to impress someone in particular, like a member of the opposite sex, or a potential mate. Or possibly to gain something from an individual for financial or social gain (see “Scamming”).

Identity is what defines us as a person. Everyone one on earth has their own unique identity. To showcase my identity, I created a collage of images and descriptive words, called an identi-kit. This identi-kit shows what I feel like is my identity to myself and the others. My identi-kit identifies me as a mixed martial artist. The identi-kit has images of a deadly shark with mixed martial arts gloves on that say mixed martial arts on the front and fight shorts with the words competitor and warrior on them. It also has descriptive words like “killer instinct” and “fight” which describe my spirit. There are three assumptions that come to question when asking about one’s identity. The first is if you were born with this

Now, almost a decade later I have learnt what is really important to me. It is important to step back and listen to yourself instead of looking at others. Today, with a bigger distance to my highschool years I can see what was happening to me and why I acted the way I did. I was fantasising about who I could become to be loved and acknowledged by the people around me. I thought defining myself would make me feel more secure about myself. Looking around me I can see the phenomenon of the search for identity almost everywhere.

Change has been an inconvenience for me the past few years, and even harder this school year. To start, although I talk about this far too much, change first started when I came out. Telling my friends and family was something that was so personal, and extremely out of the ordinary that I couldn’t even think about what it would be like to openly like boys. Now thinking about this, I question: Did I even know myself? Did I even pay attention to people? Because I don’t think I could have gotten any gayer when I was a child. So I assume that means, I wasn’t hiding from people, I was hiding from myself really, because everyone knew I was gay and was just waiting for me to say something.

I was one of the tallest people in my grade, and was super skinny. With my mild Cerebral Palsy, I had speech problems for a long time. Due to all of this, I didn’t exactly fit in. Every day as I walked in the doors, I would completely shut down. My grades fell, and I blocked most of the world out. I could here the “popular” groups whispering and giggling every time I walked in the hall and notes would be passed around in class. I sat at a table in the corner by myself, I didn’t have any friends in

Although I was able to witness many different examples of inequalities in most of my daily encounters, a situation occurred that has had the ability to overshadow all of my other observations. While at work, I was able to have a conversation with a co-worker about her father’s recent loss of a job promotion. What makes this situation, such a powerful example of the force of stratification is more that just the conversation that took place but also in the context in which I had it and regrettably in my response to the conversation.

It wasn’t until June 26, 2015 when same-sex marriage became legal in all fifty states, but

The schools were small and there wasn’t much diversity. Kids used to make fun of me for my name or color and it got so bad that we had to go to the principal. He had our whole class switch lunches so were with kids our age instead of the older ones bullying us. The other kids would spread rumors about me, because I was a vegetarian or because we lived in our hotel which had an attached “house” to it. They wouldn’t include any of the younger kids and if I stood up to them they would tell on me. I don’t let other students push me around now. I am who I am. I can’t change that and I won’t. When I moved here in 4 grade, I was still bullied occasionally, but I had good friends who stuck by my side and still do. I want to be the person others were to me through those rocky

Over all the United States has become a more accepting society today then it was years ago. Our country used to practice slavery based on race; many black people were enslaved. When slavery ended black citizens still did not have equal rights to a white citizen, there was segregation. This meant that the white and black community would not mix. Hate groups also started to form for example the K.K.K. Not only did black people face discrimination but women and latino workers also faced discrimination. For example latino and women workers where not payed the same amount as their white male counterpart. However, in the 60’s many of these race and gender boundaries were broken and our country became more accepting. Despite our country becoming

In school I remember being taught about the Civil War, and about the Civil Rights movement. I remember my teachers speaking to me about slavery and racism as if it were a thing of the past. I spent all of elementary school believing I lived in a time where Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream had finally came true. I never “saw” color, partly because I was young and partly because I was surrounded by caucasian faces. I didn’t realize I was a minority because I just thought that was the norm. But then middle school hit. And I left my safe haven in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and I took a bus every morning and every afternoon to Ft. Lauderdale, where I attended a magnet school. It was here that I encountered people of color. I had never seen so many

I was very different and not everyone liked that about me. Feeling like an outsider made life at school difficult for me. Feeling like an outsider made me feel alone, but it also united me with other people who felt the same way that I did. It really bothered me that I wasn’t like any of the kids at my school and having people who felt the same way as me made things a lot better for me. My friends helped me realize that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me because I had people who loved me for who I am and that’s all that really matters.

Like any other school there were the “cool” kids and the “not-so-cool” kids and like most people I longed for the feeling of fitting in. I tried so hard to buy the right clothes and to talk the right way. I became so caught up in my own life that I did not take a second to stop and think of someone other than myself. Last year, in eight grade, I had the chance to be apart of the “it” group, but during that time I lost myself. Peer pressure had pushed me into a corner where I was unable to think for myself and as a result I lost my ability to establish my character.