Identity And Social Identity

Society has a way of making assumptions based on one’s physical characteristics. Often at times we categorize individuals to a particular social group. In regard to society’ perception of an individual this however, contributes to the development of social construction of racism. Most people want to be identified as individuals rather than a member of specific social group. As a result, our social identity contains different categories or components that were influenced or imposed. For example, I identify as a, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and a person of color. I identify racially as a person of color and ethically as Jamaican and Puerto Rican. According to Miller and Garren it’s a natural human response for people to make assumptions solely

The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply

Race and gender are two facets that inherently dominate individuals everyday lives. A person’s social environment, work environment, and educational environment is congruent to their race and gender. From birth, it has been set up that everyone is assigned to a label. A pink or blue blanket is swaddled around a newborn child and a box is checked signifying that child’s place in society. These two actions ultimately define how a child is to be viewed and treated. As children grow into young adults they either decide to stick with their original assignment, while others decide to deviate from it. These individuals deviation results in many of them being viewed harshly and looked down upon because they strayed from their social norms. This constant cycle of being classified and labeled from birth is the social institution of gender and race. These social institutions aid in the inequality that is present in society, and race and gender are shaped by this. However, if these social institutions were removed, race and gender could dissipate. This is due to the fact that race and gender are not real, but are socially constructed concepts used to organize the power, or dominance, within our society to one social group over the other groups.

No matter how much a person desires to live according to their personal autonomy, he or she will never escape the influence of societal forces. Explicitly or subtlety, these forces shape our individuality. One intriguing manner that these societal forces manifests itself in is our name. As Ruth Graham writes, “It’s becoming increasingly clear today that names carry a wealth of information about the world around us, the family we arrived in, the moment we were born—and that they mark us as part of cultural currents bigger than we realize.” Names alone provide evidence that individuals are made by interactions with social institutions and groups. Ultimately, the inescapable nature of society’s influence demands individuals to ponder how much personal autonomy is actually autonomous and to what extent does the pursuit of personal autonomy lead to a life of emptiness and vanity.

Everyone in the world has their own identity; have you ever thought about what your identity is? Identity plays a big role in the world especially in America where not all identities are good. People might identify a wealthy person as “snotty rich” or a poor person as “defective” or maybe someone calls a man a woman when they're really a man. Or maybe you call someone a terrorist just because they are middle eastern. The list goes on and on and thats why social forces influence identities and can become dangerous. Gender, race, and social class are all forms of social forces.

Do you have complete freedom in the society? The answer is yes and no; honestly, it depends on your personal identity, inheritance, and your ancestry 's membership in the U.S. society. Neither for the school enrollment, job application nor any service we request in public, they require us to declare our race, ethnicity, household income, and residential address. In other words, they use this information to define our abilities, to qualify our competency among others and give condition upon the plans ' approval. Primarily, the dominant population and independent authority will have the strong bias against the minority; they tend to classify them into groups based on similar attributes, whether it be skin color, financial position, or some other living standard and aspects. In Poetry “Citizen” (2014) and the essay “Hip Hop Planets” (2007), Claudia Rankine and James McBride shares about how racial identity, ethnic identity, and social class have negative impacts on psychological well-being and personal development of African Americans. Overall, they agree that social categorization by race, ethnicity and social class has more harms than benefits, in which it depreciates African Americans’ social value, give them severe anxiety, and prevent them from moving upward to the social mobility in the United States.

In Anderson and Collins’, chapter on “Why race, class, and gender still maters” encourage readers to think about the world in their framework of race, class, and gender. They argued that even though society has change and there is a wide range of diversity; race, class and gender still matters. Anderson and Collins stated, “Race, class, and gender matter because they remain the foundation for system of power and inequality that, despite our nation’s diversity, continue to be among the most significant social facts of peoples lives.” (Anderson and Collins, 2010) When I was a little girl, I never knew that people were classified in to groups such as race, class, gender. I knew there were people that had a different color of skin than

Race, class, gender, and sexual orientation shape the experience of all people. It is an issue that will always be brought up in people’s lives. Throughout history race has been know to disapprove certain groups, and not just only race has impacted certain groups. But class, gender, and sexual orientation as well, and different people of color get different experiences from this. People from a low class income may get false and damaging statements about them, or just get make fun of for not having the most common goods. As for gender, females are still seen as inferior and males have more power and intelligence over females. Sexual orientation may impact someone’s health due to discrimination. No matter what, throughout a person's life, these

American society is a complicated web of networks that interconnect to produce a functioning system that people look to for guidance. History repeats itself all the time and society is always mirroring the past. Today, our societies’ boundaries are still debated about heatedly. Race, class, and gender help create these boundaries and as Foner wrote, “our imagined community will continue to be a source of political conflict and social struggle” (Foner).

“When barriers arise, we are supposed to march through the storm, picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps. …[By] imposing on us certain conditions of life, our social identities can strongly affect things as important as our performances in the classroom and on standardized tests, our memory capacity, our athletic performance, the pressure we feel to prove ourselves, even the comfort level we have with people of different groups -- all things we typically think of as being determined by individual talents, motivations, and preferences.” By sharing this surprising revelation, Steele imparts to his readers a sense of confidence in his well-researched topic. The argument is seasoned with his ethos and credibility on the topic, all the while engaging us further into the

In the world we live in today there are many social statuses that define us. A social status is a social position that a person can occupy within society, this role that we can occupy comes with certain expectations that begin to shape who we associate with, the things we do, and how we live. Essentially social statuses mold our lives and our personalities starting from an early age. The most impactful social statuses in a young person’s life are educational status, socioeconomic level, race and ethnicity, as well as the generational cohort one belongs to. These statuses have the biggest influence on the decisions we make and the social realm we exist in. However, today, race and ethnicity is the most prominent social status because our population is becoming more diverse and understanding what our racial status is and the advantages or disadvantages that come with it is incredibly important for youths today. In the future generational status will be the most valued social status because it will hold a great influence on the United States government and imply that a person has the skills necessary for certain occupations. People tend to be defined by many statuses in their lives, and not just four, yet these four statuses, when combined, have the largest influence on the way people live.

The racial and ethnic identity individuals identify with can be a crucial aspect of the basis of their individual and collective identity (Chávez & Guido-DiBrito, 1999). Racial and ethnic identities are also both comprised of a sense of belongingness to a group, the learning process of being informed about one’s group, in addition to being associated with cultural behaviors and values, with attitudes towards one’s own group, and reactions to discriminate (Phinney & Ong, 2007). In the United States, the way in which some individuals are visibly and legally defined, places them into minority populations that can alter the way they identify with their racial and ethnic status, conflicting social influences, and cultural influences (Phinney & Ong,

Who are you? Who am I? These are questions that we all ponder at some point or another in our lives. As human beings we are seemingly inundated with the desire to classify and categorise. We are constantly defining and analysing the differences that we observe in the world, it seems only natural that we would apply this method of classification to our position within our society. More specifically, we want to understand our social identities and this can be achieved by acknowledging which groups we identify most with.

Social class identity is the expression used when referring to what the variations social classes hold, such as different cultures, norms, and values. There is much debate on the subject of social class in the United States. There are disputes about whether social classes are clearly separate or fluid, conditioned upon one’s community or society as a whole, and if people are subjective or objective (Hughes and Jenkins). The government uses the objective view, based on the economic status of the person, to be able to distinguish them into a specific social class. Though, despite the debate circling social classes, it is still essential to try to define them and interpret their

Originally proposed by Tajfel and Turner, the Social Identity Theory (SIT) can be described as the comparison between the individual self and the social self. More specifically, it is the individual’s perception that is derived from their membership of a social group (ingroups and outgroups) or personal identities. The theory is divided into three different psychological mechanisms: social categorization, social comparison, and the tendency for people to use the group membership as a source to gain self-esteem. A theory is defined as a theory as long as it meets the two requirements: describing behaviors and the ability to describe/see the future behaviors of individuals. Since the behaviors of individuals can be based on the social