Culture And Ethnic Identities Shaped Your Life

Our day to day lives can typically involve umpteen interactions with individuals from across the life span whose identity comprises multiple layers. Culture can often be a significant element of identity; thus practicing cultural safety, which can be viewed as an environment where individuals’ cultural identities, rights, and experiences are not challenged or denied, rather they are respected and understood (Williams, 1999), within interactions is essential. Cultural awareness, sensitivity, and competence are intertwined in cultural safety, and a principle step in developing and understanding these concepts is examining our own cultural identities and how they shape our worldviews and attitudes. In this paper, I will reflect on my own cultural

My cultural identity, as I know is Mexican American because both my parents are born in Mexico and I was born here. I can also be defined as a Chicana because that is another way used to call a Mexican American. My culture can be seen in so many different ways like for example it can be seen in food, music, religion, dance, art, festivals, and even more. Most of these traditions have changed a little bit over time as they were brought to the U.S. What I mean by that is that some of those traditions were brought from Mexico, and had a little change into them because they were combined with some traditions that have already been here in the U.S.

In my eighteen years of existence, I've experienced many things, ethnically, and socially. I was born overseas, to an Air Force man, and his wife. I spent several years amongst a different culture. As soon as my father was retired from the Air Force, we moved from Japan, the land of the rising sun, to a small town in the west. I was faced with something unlike anything I had been exposed to. I was exposed to an extremely diverse set of cultures. There were so many different things that I had to experience, and they scared me. I was introduced to a new classroom, and the students in it. With that, I was introduced to a new language, spanish. I was surrounded by so many ethnically diverse cultures, and places. I grew up knowing so many different

What is my cultural identity? Personally, I don’t think I am completely assured on what my cultural identity is, but I can do my best on explaining it. However, I won’t get started on that yet, first I’ll explain the occasion of me learning about my identity. At almost the beginning of the year, it was announced in our English class that we would be doing an essay on our cultural identities. When my teacher announced this I thought to myself, “What in the world is a cultural identity, or even my cultural identity?” In these months, we have gotten to learn the definition of culture, and what it means to us, individually., I believe that culture means a group of people that share the same customs, way of life, and beliefs. Also, over these last couple of months we have been reading texts all about people knowing and understanding their cultural identities, meanwhile I still didn’t understand my own. All I know is that I was born on February 11, 2002, I like movies and music, and my mom is from Chile and my Dad is from Virginia. Now that didn’t feel like enough for me to write on, but then I started thinking about all of the cultural differences that my parents have had raising me as a person, and how those have all combined to make me. In my short 15 years of life, the culture clashes have sometimes affected me on my thoughts and opinions, which I’ll talk about later on. As well as how movies and music have affected my perspectives and opinions.

While filling out a questionnaire like the Census it is solely up to the individual to decide the race they considered themselves to be in. Race can have many different meanings while trying to categorize a person. As we have learned in the past weeks, there are many aspects that can be considered while defining someone’s race. A few examples would be color, culture, family history and place of origin. Because of the flexibility in defining race, different ethnicities focus more on certain aspects. This causes a discontinuity while defining race. This leads to the question brought up by Julie Dowling in her writing.

This commonality is based on shared group histories and culture. For example, within the Black race there are different ethnicities such as West Indians and African-Americans. The distinctions are made because West Indian and African-Americans have different cultures and histories. Haslanger states that ethnicity concerns an individual’s connection to “a certain geographical region.” According to Haslanger, what separates race and ethnicity is the hierarchical factor. Ethnicity does not have the hierarchical factor. Haslanger goes further, expressing that ethnicity can take on the characteristic of race when hierarchy is used. For example, individuals can identify themselves as ethnic West Indians. However, West Indian can cease to be an ethnic term when it is used to place an individual hierarchically in society. Harlanger reiterates this point when she states, “the occurrence of hierarchical positioning means that the group has gone beyond simply being an ethnic group and functions in the content of

The biggest problem with the Latino community is that this classification is not enough because diversity is significant even between this ethnic group. Personally, I agree with Gezon and Kottak that race is not the most suitable term to classify human beings. In fact, the notion of "race" is essentially inexistent. In other words, it is not solely related to ancestry but to natural selection, as a mean of survival as stated in the book. Hence, I think Gezon and Kottak were right when they stated that we should classify our phenotypic characteristics (the observed traits we possess) based on cultural aspects rather than on biological ones. In other words, according to the book Culture, genetically speaking, people tend to resemble those people from different groups, rather than the ones from the same ethnic community. Therefore, biological traits are not a conclusive factor to accurately determine ethnicity. According to Chapter 11, in North America, ancestry dictates an ascribed status (an assigned condition) based on skin color, so ethnic groups never change

For example, when a white person gets pregnant in American and goes to Asian to give birth, and the child grew up while following the culture norms of Asians. He or she will be considered as an Asian by the Asians, and not white. Why? because he/she follows the culture rule like having a name or piercing on the body that indicate one belongs to that particular culture. In the lecture note, many North Americans do not distinguish race from language, national origin or cultural background when describing native Americans and Hispanic populations. Furthermore, some equate native Americans and Hispanic with discrete racial categories. This is a problematic for a variety of reasons, but especially for individual who identify as Hispanic and or Native Americans are both culturally and biological diverse populations. If the racial distinction truly were natural biological categories, we would expect populations to be physically homogenous. They are not

In the United States, people use to classify Native Americans, African-Americans and European-Americans, as belonging to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person's appearance, his fraction of known non-White ancestry, and his social circle. But the criteria for membership

Sometimes people don’t realized where people come from and just judge them by their appearances. Most of the times we just judge by a whole not by individuals. What really matters its being yourself and not going against how you were brought up. I feel a bit embarrassed when it comes to my culture. I can honestly say that I do not feel that I have any cultural traditions/norms that shaped my identity, at least nothing that sticks out.

Food is something that is not inherited, it is learned, much like culture. When I was about three years old, my parents moved from Argentina to America. Since all we knew was Spanish, we found ourselves associating with many other Hispanics. One thing that I find all these cultures have in common is food. Food is something that ties us all to our roots, to our families, to our heritage, to our culture. Argentina, Mexico, and America, my take on food shows my family’s migrations and changes, it is who I am and will become, it is my cultural identity.

Or for instance, one might classify as people with brown skin as Mexicans or having a Hispanic background while

There have been several cultural influences throughout my life making me the person I am today. Many are from my childhood such as stories, movies, music, my studies, religion, and clubs. However, other experiences from maturing have also helped improve my character and attitude. These began to influence my beliefs starting with my childhood and remain with me today.

As a Vietnamese, I am very proud of the values and the ethics that still remains from thousands of years ago, by the way of life of the ancient; the upbringing, and the respect that we may not have now. “Cultural identity” is what I am talking about. Every single person has a different perspective on cultural identity. Culture plays a huge role in shaping individual personality or identity. It also refers to the traditions, people around you, and religion, etc. Our background is what sets us apart from everyone else because we came from a different culture. That is why culture created; it makes you feel belonging to something. Culture determines the person we are today and in future.

The environment, family, and community I have grown up in has shaped me as a person. So far, I grew up in the same house all seventeen years of my life. My personality has grown and molded over the years of middle school and high school based off the lessons I have learned and the things I’ve been through.