Personal Narrative: Finding My Cultural Identity

When I think about my cultural identity I find myself resorting to the word “normal”. I grew up in a town where everyone looked the same, everyone worshiped the same God, and everyone was in the same economic class. It’s interesting to really break down my individual cultural pieces to find that actually there are so many differences that I was simply too naïve to see. The culture that one grows up can be so different from one household the next, that there really isn’t a “normal” culture out there.

The way I see it humans are just biotic machines where people from the first SECOND we are born to expect us to be used to be in their likeness or their standard of code. Luckily, due to a creation of identity and personality, people often never reach that likeness and become different. Cultural identity impacts us for our interests can make a person grow and gain traits. My cultural identity is made up by many factors, Mx-Bones and my mom impacted my life and guided me to be an artist and an aspiring scientist of some sort that is not confirmative and very curious.

Many people writing this essay are going to talk about their religion or what race they are. But this is my personal cultural identity essay. I don't have a religion that I talk about or a race that I care about. My cultural identity is about sports, family and everything that makes me, me.

I am Scottish and English, but that means absolutely nothing to me. To me I am your classic white american boy. I am from Lake George New York, born in Glens Falls Hospital. I love to watch American football(My team is the NY Jets or the NY Giants) I am a big Gamer, and I LOVE to grill.

I come from a small rural farm where I was born and raised all my life and where I grew up with two loving parents and one sister. Ever since I was a young girl, religion has always been a big part of my life because I was born and raised Catholic. My mothers’ side of the family is German Catholic decent and my fathers’ race is German and Cherokee Indian. Even though they are mainly German combined I have always found it interesting that I have Native American blood running through my veins. It is obvious that my parents are both Caucasian and were middle class individuals when I was growing up. I would now classify my parents to be in the higher class because they are worth more now then twenty-five years ago. Even though my parents have more money now than what they did when growing up on the farm, a strong work ethic was important to my parents. I am thankful they instilled this within me because I have always worked hard for everything in my life and I know that this will payoff for me one day. My parents also told me that education will get me further in life and it has. I am the first of my family to graduate from college let alone getting my masters as well. So when looking

What is my Cultural Identity? When I try to look into that subject I come up blank. I have no clue. The things that fly in and out of my mind are ethnicity, religion, family traditions that have been practiced for as long as we can trace... Given this was before I actually learned anything about it. And after school that day I wanted to see what others thought it was. So I went to the most reliable place ever, the Internet and proceed to look around. Don't do that, you’ll only get more confused; Wait for your teacher to explain it. There’s a good chance you’ll do better in the long run. And is wasn’t until after all the lessons and assignments I realized I had learned more about know who I am than I had in my entire life. Cultural identity

As a Mexican-American person my perspective of Cultural Identity is unique from other people. The music I listen to, the food I eat, and the way I dress is different. Mexico is my country and so is United States, I love both of them. My mom was born in Mexico and my dad in California. I have two types of culture, my Mexican culture and the way of life in the U.S.

Who am I? Where do I belong? I was raised and born in Palm Springs, California. I'm German, Irish, Jewish, the rest I'm not sure. In California it was normal being white. I didn't feel like an outsider. I felt normal. But when I moved to Hawaii I didn't feel normal. I didn't know people would judge you for being white or as they say it, a "Haulie" . But I think I let that word get the best of me because it's only a word that describes a white person. That's what I am. But the only thing that gets to me is, why do they say it? Why do they have to remind me that I'm white? I been with myself for along time, I think I know I'm white.

I am from a white Anglo Celtic background. I grew up in a small country town in Victoria and went to a catholic primary school and high school. My parent’s, their friends, my friends, my classmates and my teachers were all Anglo Celtic also. My schooling was very much based on catholic learning’s and western culture. Using the seven step process outlined in Sue & Sue (2013) I will reflect on my own cultural identity development.

As a second generation Chinese-Vietnamese American, I often found it difficult to identify myself as American or Chinese. I felt as if I did not entirely belong in one culture or the other as my peers often bullied me for being “too Asian” if I brought lunch from home or wore ethnic clothing. Despite social exclusion, I maintained my cultural identities because it defined myself and my cultural origins. I realized the importance of diversity in a field like healthcare when I witness non-English Vietnamese speakers in the hospital having difficulty forming coherent questions regarding their needs and requests.

Imagine yourself being in an isolated island without anyone else around you or any type of communication to the world. How would you know how other people are or think about themselves, but most importantly how would you identify yourself as person if there is no one else to compare yourself to? There are many islands and forests that are isolated from society and those communities that live there do not really have the resources to know how others are or how they can personally identify themselves. However, that’s not my case. It’s interesting how I never took the time to get to know the person that I really am and what makes me the way I am. While researching I found that there are four things that identify me as a person: my faith, culture,

Who has a cultural identity? Only people who lead big lives or do crazy things have things that are interesting to them, right? As it turns out, this is not true at all. Everyone has a cultural identity, and it is made of many things that might fly over our heads and seem normal to us, but completely foreign to others. Only recently have I started to delve into my identity and really started to appreciate how different I am to others, my specialties and experiences and even how I view basic life and others around me. There are thousands of factors that contribute into making you into you and me into me, and as you could go on for a very long time venturing into them, I only needed to reflect on a few to find out

According to Germany Kent, he said “When you start loving yourself and respecting your time and energy, things will change. Get to know your worth, and your value will go up.” Knowing oneself is a bit difficult but I believe if we want things to change in the world it begins with each individual. To know yourself you need to love and respect yourself, time and energy said Kent. When you know your worth, you will be able to stand for who you are, choose rights and work well with others We can only love ourselves when we know who we are, our self-worth and our cultural identity. Understanding my cultural identity entails my values, my world view and the eight microculture.

Cultural identity is defined as the belonging to a group sharing alike qualities, such as beliefs and values, food, and clothing. The lessons learned from my culture have greatly influenced my morals, likes and dislikes, and perception of the world. I have been raised in an African household that has taught me to appreciate the characteristics of foreign cultures and the significance of different experiences.

My family is very diverse. Therefore, growing up I have had the ability to experience people from different races, ethnic groups, and sexuality. I have family members that are black, white, native American, Hawaiian, West Indian, and Hispanic. So my cultural background affected my views of other ethnic groups as no different than myself. Although, we are all Christians I was never taught or persuaded to view people who don’t believe as I do, different. I view black people as people who are misunderstood by most races that aren’t their own. I view them as a part of me, in neither a positive or negative way. Being that my family is so diverse I wasn’t given any negative messages towards people from other backgrounds.