The Struggles Of Finding My Identity

Currently, I am in the process of not only becoming comfortable in my identity, a black queer woman, but, also attempting to find solace in my identity as well. Something that all women, especially black queer women, should achieve in their lifetime. It is that dream that inspires me to travel to experience other cultures and to unite with women from various cultures across the black diaspora. Throughout many cultures, women’s identities are defined by their male counterparts and the labor they provide to them. Therefore, a major goal of mine is to create a space where women are able to exist outside the scope of their relationships with men and live uninhibitedly to become their best selves. That is why I find it pertinent to travel not only

When I was young I didn’t really realize the impact of being African-American until high school. I went to a predominately white school for elementary and middle school. I was just like any other youth. I had my group of friends who were white; I was active in school activities and clubs. I was a student athlete and I got along well with my teachers. Everyone saw me as an upbeat person with a bubbly personality. Surprisingly, race was never brought up it wasn’t an issue for me during that period of my life. However, as I got older I realize there was a difference. As an adult I could really see the prejudice in others. I recall working a on a special project for the

From Kindergarten up to my sophomore year of High School I attended a private school. My elementary school and high school were slightly diverse. The majority of the student body was Caucasian and the rest were made up of several other races. My school environment was very structured and controlled. I had some great teachers and one or two bad teachers. Around fifth grade I started to notice the way teachers perceived me and the challenges I would deal with due to the color of my skin. There were

For a short period of time or what would I say my high school years I was interested in law. I wanted to become a lawyer to fight both cases that impacted my life. When I moved to Pennsylvania and went to school where I was one of the few minorities, I realized that it was different. People’s views were very different. I was able to choose the classes I had wished to take. When learned about this I was more interested in school since this was a chance to experience and get taught subjects I found to be most interesting. Law was in fact my favorite subject. Lucky for me there were multiple classes offered for it. Since my freshman year to my senior year I had ended up taking a total of three Law classes. During this time of my life I had started to feel out of place in the school I had attended. Things that I had said or the way I had dressed was just not what they accepted, for example if I was not on the basketball team there should be no reason for me to be wearing certain brands of sneakers. Diversity never seemed to be accepted. I had the need to balance the culture in my life if that could ever make sense to the person that reads this. When trying to integrate my friends together, it never seemed to end well. My friends in white bodies would constantly talk down to my friends in colored bodies. They would always say negative comments about them. What they considered as

Moving from Los Angeles to Chicago for my dad’s work left me marred with a longing for year-round sunshine, palm trees, and mountainous horizons – things that most Midwesterners can’t even imagine. As a Korean and Caucasian, I leave people confused with which racial slurs to throw at me (“white rice” is the most clever one yet). In first grade, my parents pulled me from school to teach me how to think for myself through homeschooling. Ironically, it was with this same sentiment that I applied eight years later to Chicago Hope Academy, another place where I’d be different. As a sophomore transfer, I was unfamiliar with rappers like Drake, Eminem, or Tupac everyone around me praised. I wasn’t used to words like “finna,” let alone the Spanish spoken by my soccer teammates as I was the only Asian-Caucasian in the student body. But at this time in my life, I realized that you learn the most about yourself when you're surrounded by those who are different from you. Several years later, my closest friends include an avid atheist (and former Buddhist), the sixth best soccer player in Illinois, and a survivor of fatal heart surgery who shouldn’t be alive – I couldn’t find a more diverse community of

I was met with a lot of change my freshman year. I had gone from small parochial schools with graduating classes of 30, made up of minorities, to a high school population of nearly four thousand where Blacks made up less than ten percent. It was hard. Although New York City is portrayed as a vast melting pot, it was more like many segregated ghettos that would occasionally intersect and/or riot. As a young black youth, I’d dare not step into places such as Howard Beach in the eighties and nineties for fear of my life regardless of how much I believed in my God’s protection. I’d sooner take my chances with the occasional color bline ricocheting shrapnel. So when stepping into my high school for the first time surrounded by a sea of diversity that I’d not known, I didn’t really know how to swim. I faked it the best I could by feigning bravado until I learned how to tread water. I understood clique mentality and could fall into a group where membership was determined by hue, but I chose this school because it was different. I didn’t want to fall into line that

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

After various writings by Richard Rodriguez and Octavio Paz, I have come across several realizations. Who am I? Should I be a part of a nation and a “system” that does not value me, or should I be a part of a nation that does not acknowledge my existence? The United States as a nation does not value me, and México does not even know that I exist. These are difficult matters to discuss. We are all in search of our own identity. However, some of us are placed in a situation that makes it very difficult and confusing to know or understand. I have always asked myself, “Who am I?” I should put it in more crude words, “Where do I belong?” After this specific question is asked, I begin to realize that

I hate when people say “I don’t care if you’re Black, White, Asian, etc.” You should care. Do not erase who I am to make yourself feel comfortable. Do not erase my identity by saying race doesn’t matter. Colorblind ideology will not fix racism. Do not ignore my identity or anyone else’s identity because you’re uncomfortable. Recognize my race and ethnicity and respect that.

Growing up in a multiethnic and multicultural environment, I had never understood what being in a minority felt like. My mixed heritage fit well while in Hawaii and everyone was easy to relate to; our backgrounds were all similar. It was hypocritical to single out people for their race when it was a common ground between us. Going into Junior year, my family moved to South Carolina, where I began to attend a predominantly White school. The new lifestyle 4,600 miles from the middle of the pacific to the east coast definitely took no time for adaptation and definitely was not an abrupt change. Although my fellow students and I share several interests, I suddenly lost the luxury of being able to relate to situations because of a mixed heritage.

can’t exactly tell you who I am, I don’t know much about myself. I can tell you I’m 19 years young I’m I suppose you could say Emo and Hipster.I don’t think my dad even remembers where he got my name from, but I’m sure he’s make some story up about it.

Middle school and high school were very different for me. Both schools lack diversity and consisted of people just like me, but in middle school everyone’s identity were practically the same. I attended Catholic school until high school and had all white classes until then too. Throughout middle school I was a rather mischievous student who did not place academics too highly on my list of priorities, so I was often making the teacher’s job much harder than it needed to be. If not for how involved my family and I were with the church and the school my in class experience would not have been as pleasant. The only way that we ever learned about our own identity was through religion classes and through church so the fact that the entire school probably had less than five students of ethnicity in a school with grade 3-8 in it was never addressed. In middle school almost everyone was middle class or at least were not struggling like some of the families in more urban areas. If a family did begin to struggle enough financially they simply went to another school because the cost of Catholic school was no longer a luxury that they could afford. So the school not only consisted of people with the same race but also eliminated people that were not from the same economic background.

provide all students with necessary help, KSU also offers online and telephone consultations and services. Student Success services also provide a CARE program that addresses the needs of students who have experienced homeless, foster care systems, and food instability.

This paper is slightly hard for me to write because I feel as if I am still finding my true identity. What have the summation of my memories and actions actually shaped me into? It is not as if I struggle to find someone that I connect with, but rather I feel more like some sort of Renaissance man. One who has many talents in many fields, as well as many interests. In some ways I do see myself as an intellectual type but also as an artful type, these two identities within myself are often in some sort of conflict. These conflicts can reside on a larger or smaller scale. For instance when I have some down time it is often a struggle to elect how to spend my time. Do I want draw or read? Play guitar or research interesting topics? However, on

My identity crisis started when I was about 9 years old. The realization that I was different from friends, family, and my classmates were scary and hard to bare. As a young child, we are taught and framed to be a certain way, think a certain way, and live a certain way according to the family structure. Like most young girls I often fantasized about my wedding. What type of dress I was going to wear, what colors I would pick and what type of dress my wife would choose. My fantasies were often disrupted by the sound of my mother’s voice instructing me to complete a task, or letting me know she was home. At that very moment internal shame, and denial would set in. This is not normal, a wife, why was I thinking about a wife? I don’t like girls! I like Josh. That’s who I will marry, Josh.