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My Identity Research Paper

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Every individual has his or her own identity. People’s beliefs are shaped by the environment they grew up in, the way they were raised, and the way they were treated. In this paper I am going to discuss about my belief in regards to gender, gender roles, race, sexuality, and social class. I will also discuss about the different experiences I had encountered in life that has determined my beliefs and my values. I grew up in Guatemala in a small town name Monjas. As I was growing up, I did not know much about other people’s cultures; I only knew people with the same race and the same culture as mine. Then, I decided to immigrate to the United States when I was 16 years old; this happened 20 years ago. Immigrating to the United States was a …show more content…

Even though I am a male, I disagree that parents have preferences on boys over girls when it comes to education. Moreover, in my culture, when the boys were going through puberty, it meant that they were ready to sleep with a woman. Many fathers would take their 13 year old boys to sleep with a prostitute to help them transition from childhood to manhood. On the contrary, girls needed to stay pure until they found the man they were going to marry. These beliefs are not something I feel proud of my culture. Additionally, girls were not allowed to play soccer because it was considered a male’s sport. However, girls could play basketball instead.
Furthermore, I grew believing that black people were dangerous. In Guatemala, black people do not have a good reputation. It was considered non-cultural for someone in our family to marry with a black person. In fact, none of my family members have ever married to a black individual. In addition, native Mayans are discriminated in my town. For instance, if someone was dark skinned, people would call them “indios,” meaning they were from the lower class. This is the environment and the culture where I grew up; some of my values were formed from these experiences. However, when I came to the United States everything changed. The things that I learned when I was little are no longer what determine what I believe now. Not everything that I learned growing up was negative. One

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