Gender, Religion, Race, Ethnicity And Nationality People 's Self Concept

The identity of an individual is shaped by the experiences and interactions they face in their world. Peter Skrzynecki’s “Immigrant chronicle” highlights this with poems like 10 Mary Street and In the Folk Museum through how Peter interacted and connected to Australia's society while Tim Winton's “The Neighbours” establishes his sense of belonging when connections between him and his community form during their lifetime experience. From this, we learn that experiences and interactions shape our identity and from that, we form connections between communities and places.

In her article “A Note to Young Immigrants” from Fall 2005, Mitali Perkins reflects on her own negative experience as an immigrant in the US; and in the final part of her article, she provides a note to other immigrants as on how to deal with the feeling of being different and how to turn this negative perception into a positive experience. First, she lists some examples based on empirical evidence what exactly an immigrant loses by immigrating into another country: she says that as an immigrant, one will first lose the feeling of having a “home” and that one will start perceiving everything by means of “race”. Furthermore, she explains that the new country does not give the feeling of belonging because one feels different in means of traditions, language, understanding societal codes of behavior and also in means of sticking out of the mass everywhere one goes. At the end, Perkins states that one should not get discouraged and rather should try to see one’s own distinctiveness in a positive light; namely, as owning the best qualities of two different worlds. In conclusion, Perkin’s main argument is that although immigrants might experience a loss on various personal and cultural levels, they should not get discouraged or give up as they can turn this loss into

Stuart Hall defines identity as an ‘already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent’. We should think instead of ‘identity as a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation’ (Hall 1994 p.392). An individual’s sense of belonging to a particular group, thinking, feelings and behaviour can also be referred to as identity. One’s cultural image can construct identity; such features as hair, skin tone and height. History shapes our identity.

Good Afternoon teachers and students, The following texts express how an individuals understanding of belonging can quickly be changed by the people and place around them. “Jasper Jones a novel written by Craig Silvey”, it is a short story of a boy named Charles Butkins and the events that occurred because he helped Jasper Jones mask the death of Laura Wishart. “Australia by Ania Walwicz”, is attacking the people of Australia in the form of a poem, because of their point of views and attitudes in life. She also hates Australia itself because the people are not welcoming, this is the main point of this poem.

Identity can mean different things to different people, but for most people, it’s about one’s personality and experiences. The 21st century has seen young people in various parts of the globe have a preference for some desired identity, which they deem superior, rather than accept their own identities. For example, in Goin Gangsta, Choosin Cholista: Claiming Identity, Neil Bernstein makes a case on how a number of people have claimed ethnic individualities other than their own and this is not an evil obsession (Bernstein, 1995). In this essay, a girl named April and her friends (and by extension most young people) believe that “identity is not a matter of where you come from, what you were born into, or what colour your skin is, but it’s everything

The essay “Being an Other” was written by Melissa Algranati. She is a graduate of the State University of New York at Birmingham and has a master’s degree from Colombia University. The reason as to why she wrote this particular essay was to discuss and describe her experiences of not fitting easily into any particular identity group. Her intended audience are those individuals who seem to have difficulties feeling part of a group. The text was originally published in Thomas Dublin’s “Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots.” Algranati’s identity crisis led her to publish this essay and more importantly show what it was like to be mistaken for another ethnic background. She goes on to make the noteworthy argument,

Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.

A man walks into a bar and begins to converse with a local—the man is not from the area. Intrigued by the unfamiliar face, the first thing the local asks is: “where are you from?” Instead of asking for the travelers name, he seeks to identify a larger organization. These simple conversations display the tendency for humans to associate with groups. Democrat or Republican, lower, middle, or upper-class, family, education, ancestry, these communal affiliations are what define an individual. Governments are run by a community of people, and those that are not often collapse, as displayed by many failed dictatorships and monarchies. Even the most intimate component of a human, the mind, is divided into a community of different selves, as explored in the article “First Person Plural” by Paul Bloom. As demonstrated by Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, the rule of one body or persona is neither permanent nor healthy, regardless of the setting; true success comes from a conglomerate of distinct perspectives with a mutual goal in both a governmental and personal setting.

As a middle-class Somali-American, I have an identity that very few individuals in the United States have. As a result, I have never fit into a particular group of people. I had not realized this until college because I had always gone to small schools throughout my academic career. From elementary school to high school, I never belonged to a particular group; instead, I associated marginally with all of them due to the small class size. I had created a superficial sense of belonging with a large amount of acquaintances; however, college’s different environment exposed this superficiality immediately.

Throughout my life, certain identities have remained consist. And these identities have come to shape my perspectives and my needs and wants within American culture. Typically, my social

extent to which race is an important part of an individual’s self-concept in a particular situation or moment in time. Similar to racial salience, racial centrality is how individuals normatively define themselves in terms of race across all contexts. Racial regard is one’s positive or negative perception of Blacks and their understanding of others’ judgment of Blacks. This dimension has two components--private and public. Private regard is the extent to which an individual feel positively or negatively about his or her race and other Blacks. Public regard is the extent to which an individual believes other people think positively or negatively about Blacks. The final dimension, racial ideology, captures an individual’s thoughts and attitudes regarding how they think other Blacks should act. There are four types of ideology: nationalist (emphasizes the uniqueness of Black individuals), oppressed minority (focuses on the shared oppression among minority groups), assimilationist (highlights similarities between Blacks and American society), and humanist (acknowledges the commonalities among all humans).

Belonging as defined by the Oxford dictionary is a multifaceted concept, yet being every individual’s inherent desire to belong. Belonging is a universal concept. Those who don’t find a sense of belonging are certain to find themselves under the destructive cycle of isolation and self-alienation. Peter Skrzynecki’s “Immigrant Chronicles” serves to highlight the basic fundamental desire to belong and the importance it holds on each individual. This notion is further explored with Skrzynecki’s poems “St Patrick’s College”, “Feliks Skrzynecki” and Gabrielle Muccino’s 21st century film “Pursuit of Happyness”. The notion of belonging being an inherent part of human nature is extensively

The question of identity is always a difficult one for those living in a culture or group, yet belonging to another. This difficulty frequently remains in the mind of most immigrants, especially the second generations who were born in a country other than their parents. Younger generations feel as if they are forced to change to fit the social standards despite previous culture or group. Furthermore those who wish to adopt a new identity of a group or culture haven't yet been fully accepted by original members due to their former identity.

Who am I? Where am I from? Where do I belong? Where is my place in this world? These are all questions we might ask ourselves sometime in our lives and to try and find answers we must look back to perhaps where we were born. The same goes for identity, we must look back in history in order to understand why it plays an important part today. Women, as a social group, had barely any visible history until 1970s (Weedon, 2004). Working-class history is another example, it was in the 1960s that they were starting to get recognized (ibid). This proves that social divisions occurred back in history as well; certain people, groups and communities were excluded and privileged groups were embraced. Today, the women and the working-class are two of the most dominant subjects in the world and this presents that identity is something evolving and social divisions have an impact on this since it changes throughout history. This paper attempts to overlook the traditional views of social divisions and instead examines to what extent social divisions impact upon our identities and sense of belonging bringing out aspects of national identity, place and ****..

National identity is the transmission of each generation’s legacy to the next and the enabling of the nation citizen to take pride and identification of the country (Stephan, 2009). A nation positive unique identity breeds patriotism which consequently