Racial And Racial Identity

As a teacher, it is important to know and understand the racial and cultural identities of both yourself, and your students. Knowing about your students’ backgrounds is a great way to make the classroom a safe and welcoming environment. Not all educational settings emit a feeling of safety to its students, and that needs to be changed. In this paper, I will discuss how my racial and cultural identity may be the same and may differ from my students, as well as some ways in which the institution of education can be changed to be more racially and culturally inclusive.

Even though I believe to have a strong cultural diverse upbringing that differs from many of the lifestyles of my white friend, I never experienced any self-depreciation and oppression regarding my culture. I do believe I have undergone cultural development in terms of acculturation, but considering I have never experienced the need to abandon my cultural values, I feel it is appropriate to refer to the white racial identity development model rather than the racial/cultural identity developmental model. As a white female, I have certainly benefitted from white privilege, and it is my responsibility to acknowledge that aspect of my racial identity.

While reading Recitatif, by Toni Morrison, there was racial identity between the main characters Roberta and Twyla. They are both different races. Throughout the story, both characters are increasingly changing. This does not help the readers figure out the race of each girl. They could be either white or black but they have many different traits. In the beginning of the story, it seems like Roberta was a black girl and Twyla was a white girl. There was tension between the two girls. Roberta and Twyla had to share a room together. Twyla felt sick that she must share a room with a girl that’s a different race. In the story, there was some tension towards black people. Twyla’s mom had told her that Roberta’s race never washed their hair and they

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood, questions racial labeling of all sorts. What is the difference between race, ethnicity and culture? Appiah reevaluates people’s ways of thinking, which encourages his readers to think outside of the norms to analyze what their definition of race is. He argues that if one rejects the existence of racism, which is the idea that there are distinctions of our species, then that person cannot adhere to the fact that there are hereditary differentiations such as superior or inferior ethnicities. That individual insinuates that we are equal in all racial related aspects, but that is not the case in our current environment.

I would like to discuss the issue of race and ethnicity in sports. We will also explore the bigger questions. How much does race and ethnicity matter in the sports world? Are certain races dominant in certain sports? Is there a difference in how we treat players based on race and ethnicity? Does it matter? I would like to answer some of these questions and gain a better understanding of how much of a part they play.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s arguments from “Racial Formations” are about how race is socially constructed and is shown in Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Michael Omi and Howard Winant believe that race is socially constructed in society; therefore, the meaning of race varies within different cultures and societies. According to Omi and Winant, influences such as, media, school, politics, history, family and economy create society’s structure of race. In Caucasia, media, family and school are forces that create race by stating how one should conform to social norms for different racial groups.

The main purpose of the paper was to reflect the changes in the racial identity development during the course of history. The assignment was aimed to achieve several tasks: to analyze the impressions and responses to the interview; to trace back the causes of the negative reactions on some questions; to reflect the story of the Racial Identity Development, as well as elaborate the ways of racism confrontation within and outside oneself.

Racial identity (passing) alludes to an individual considered a part of one racial assembly additionally acknowledged as a part of an alternate racial gathering. The term was utilized particularly as a part of the U.S. to portray an individual of blended race legacy acclimatizing into the white larger part throughout times when lawful and social meetings of hypo descent arranged the individual as a minority, subject to racial isolation and segregation (Smedley).

The basis of identity is formed through the concept and ideas of race and racial consciousness. The implied stereotypes that are labeled on to each race has the ability to cause an individuals to become racially conscious about themselves. Race builds a wall that creates a consciousness mind that connects to the identity of person forming the way they live, speak, act, believe, and feel. In the memoir Between the Word and Me written by Ta Nehisi Coates, Ta Nehisi’s letter to his son reveals how race and racial consciousness can shape identity and elaborates of how the meaning of identity is developed.

The second chapter of the book focuses more on racial identity. The author states that identity is shaped by individual characteristics. The answer to the “Who Am I?” question depends on several factors like how,when, or where you were raised. During a psychology exercise, Tatum asked her students to finish the statement, “I am..” What she noticed was that while some people finished the statement with personality traits, the students that were part of the dominant social group, didn’t mention this about themselves. Tatum states, “That element of their identity is taken for granted by them that it goes without comment.” The parts of a person’s identity that are mentioned are those that other people notice. Black people usually call themselves black because that is what is most likely noticed about them. However, a white person wouldn’t include “white” in their answer to the statement simply because to them, whiteness is the norm. Tatum noticed that white people would often try to make up for this by mentioning a characteristic about themselves that isn’t in the dominant group. For example, a woman might mention that she’s a female, whereas a male wouldn’t mention his gender. The same goes if a man was homosexual; he would most likely mention it while heterosexual men probably wouldn’t mention they’re straight.

Defined as the study of the mind and behaviour, psychology has gained considerable momentum throughout recent years (Gross, 2010). Although referred to as a modern science, psychology has dated back to ancient Greece whereby emphasis was placed within philosophy. Two Greek words “psyche” (the soul) and “logos” (the study of a subject) were used to coin the term psychology (Weiten, 2007). With the soul as the primary focus of ancient philosophy, Plato proposed the soul as a spiritual substance that is pre-existent and immortal, and that immoral behaviour was evidence of disharmony among components of a person’s soul (Bennett, 2007). Aristotle, Plato’s student, contended that three souls exist (nutritive, sensitive and rational)

Identity politics is not a completely an American experience but it effects constitutional results in different countries worldwide such as Russia, Iraq, Sudan etc. While race and ethnicity are traditional basics of identity politics in America, the term covers much more, as people are viewed and well treated according to their skin color and other natural characteristics.

As a result of the white heteropatriarchy prevailing over the United States, each minority American undergoes a unique struggle to establish an individual racial identity. Minorities define themselves in relation to their races based on differentiating qualities such as ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. Two documentary films that star minority figures and describe how race shaped these figures’ stories are American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee and O.J.: Made In America, directed by Ezra Edelman. These films differ in their content and structure because the former shares a positive story about a Chinese-American woman’s rise to success as an activist, whereas the latter explains the harrowing background and circumstances that corrupted a successful African-American male athlete. Grace Lee Boggs presents a confounding example of racial identity in that she aligns herself closely with black issues rather than Chinese-American or female causes. The articles “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924” by Erika Lee and “When Whiteness Feminizes...: Some Consequences of a Supplementary Logic” by Rey Chow offer historical context surrounding Boggs’s identity by clarifying that Boggs emerged after the height of anti-Asian immigration policies and of white feminist theory. Unlike Grace Lee Boggs’ subconscious distancing from identifying as a Chinese-American woman, O.J. Simpson intentionally

The community I grew up in was very small. Everybody knew everybody! We were all taught to love everyone no matter what color they are. Where I grew up my grandmother was everybody grandmother. When she cooked everyone on our street was more than welcome to come and get a plate, if she had enough. As a young black African American girl I always heard about racism and what my race and other races had to go through. I went to three different elementary schools and we had kids of all race there. At Park Ridge Elementary is where I met my first friend of a different race. At Career Academy High School, in February we had a Black History Program. Our teachers tried to demonstrate what they had to go through by posting whites only on certain water

“If we don’t fully understand our individual and collective roles in maintaining a system of white superiority, our relationships with people of color remains superficial, our ability to work in diverse workplaces is greatly diminished, and we fail to create a just world in which everyone has an equitable opportunity to contribute and thrive” (Kendall, 2013, p. 1). This paper discusses who I am as a cultural person and how I have come to be this way. The first section of this paper discusses my cultural background and my cultural identity. I address the factors that make up my cultural identity and the challenges that I have faced because of my cultural identity. The next section discusses my White racial identity development and the events in my life that have led me to become the person I am today in relation to my racial identity. The final section of this paper outlines the implications my own racial and cultural identity will have on my career as a clinical mental health counselor.