...The question of identity is complex, to be certain. Philosophical thinkers have been wrestling with the question for centuries. Such intellectual exercises have frequently been rooted in the idea that no matter the individual differences between us, we are the “same” because each of us is, at base, a human being. Using this as the basis for understanding our individual identities within the context of a civilized, democratic society, we should be able to co-exist harmoniously in a country founded on the following familiar words from the United States Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The reality of the situation, however, is arguably that white culture has interpreted these words to mean that anyone who identifies themselves as not white, either by some physical trait, or a set of ideologies that do not mirror the protestant values on which this country was founded, is essentially and innately substandard. As a result, they are marginalized and assigned a sub-par position within society. Certain groups are notable for the social and political resistance they begin to demonstrate against the white establishment. Two notable groups which have shown (and continue to show) such resistance are African-Americans and the LGBT community, significantly notable because both groups...
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...How Stereotypes Affect Us In this video Claude Steele tells about his research on stereotype threat and the way it affects us. Each of us has social identities such as gender, age, race, sexuality etc. Stereotype threat is an experience of being in situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one of your identities is relevant. African American can be seen as a violent person in a neighborhood with predominantly white people or white student can be perceived as a racist in class that is predominantly nonwhite, that are some of examples of stereotype threat. Dealing with things, because of particular identity in particular place that what makes the identity real. We often have fear to be judged in terms of negative stereotype. That can make us sad and confused, but also it can affect our behavior and performance! One of experiments was related to stereotype that women are not as good in math as men. Both women and men were taking math exam sitting in one room. Women showed worse results than men. That happened, because women were worried about this stereotype (often unconsciously), so they have to put double efforts to perform under this pressure. But when before test participants were told that in this particular test everyone (men and women) do equally all the time, women get same good results as men! Same situation was with IQ test for white and black participants. Black got lower results when were told that this is a test to measure intelligence...
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...Abstract The point of this paper is to help the reader grasp the different aspects of human identity construction with regards to ones race and/or ethnicity. This is a topic that is incredibly important to all races of people regardless of economic class or whatever else is seemingly more important. It is quite impossible to go throughout life without forming an idea of who you are or where you have come whether you care to make it a part of your daily life, have no choice or acknowledge it when it is convenient; without that knowledge I find it difficult to fully make the most of life. Through the readings from the semester and class discussions I have come to the conclusion that White ethnics choose to either assert their ethnicities thickly or thinly, or they chose to incorporate it into their lives symbolically. Blacks on the other side of the spectrum lack choice in their racial identity because their race is visible and so it is assigned to them. Asians have both the ability to choose to assert their specific ethnicities but they are racially assigned. The issue with racial and ethnic construction is that it is born of social construction-what others believe of your race to be true. This can make the identity construction process much more difficult depending upon your racial or ethnic background. Regardless, I find this to be an important part of the identity construction journey. How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. ...
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...assignment in for example Germany. One of the consequences of this was that several children were born having soldiers as fathers and a local woman from the given place as mother. The child were in most cases born long after the soldier had left the given town or village. The short story D.P. by Kurt Vonnegut, JR is showing us this problem through a telling about a young black boy named Joe, searching for his identity. The title D.P. stands for “Displaced Person” and this is exactly how Joe feels. At the time the story takes place black people were being discriminated, and especially in Europe. This meant that there were not many black people in Germany. The story shows us an image of a youg black boy, Joe, who was raised by nuns in a small German village. He lives on an orphanage with several other children. He was named Karl Heinz by the nuns but the townspeople dubbed him Joe Louis. He has never seen another black person in his life. He do not know who he is, who his mother is or who his father is. Therefore, when he finds out that there are black people among the American Soldiers passing through town he is determined to find his real father – his identity. He finds out about the soldiers during a walk with the other children. Every day they walk to town getting fresh air, and every day the town people teas them, yelling different things at the children. One day the village carpenter yells that Joe´s father is in town, and that he has to keep his eyes open for him. “Joe!...
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...establish an autonomously emancipated and intelligible African American identity in his autobiographical writing Table of Contents 1. Douglass' Conflict - "Double Consciousness" 2. Factual Inconsistencies in the Crafting Process of African American Identity 2.1. Douglass' Silences on the World beyond the US 2.2. Contradictions in Douglass' Autobiographies 3. The Challenge of Establishing Douglass' Intended African American Identity 3.1. The Contented Slave 3.2. Slave Laws and Types of Mankind 3.3. Heteronomous Submission vs. Autonomous Emancipation 4. An Intelligible Paragon of African American Identity Written Outline Frederick Douglass, though encountering various obstacles, "went from being not even considered fully human according to US law to representing the US government" (Nwankwo 146) in Haiti as consul. His autobiographical writing is considered to be a paramount example of the southern slave's "quest for being" (Baker 34), however, in regard to W.E.B. Du Bois' conception of "double consciousness", Douglass, in his autobiographies, is virtually silent on the Black world beyond the United States to be able to emancipate African Americans, which he characterized as "a nation, in the midst of a nation which disowns them" (Dixon 251), on US soil. To gain a better understanding of Douglass arguments about Black identity in the United States, these silences on the world beyond the US deserve to be investigated thoroughly. Furthermore, in regard of the...
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...argument is Patricia Hill Collins. Hill Collins believes that gender cannot be marked as separate to race. Hill Collins theory of race, gender, and class asks us to think about race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression. Multiple levels of domination are experienced through people being oppressed and discriminated. Hill Collins introduces this dominant theory of multiple levels of domination that involves gender as a site of identity and politics that sometimes involves African people. Collins believes that Afrocentric feminism is ultimately anchored in the unique experiences and struggles of ordinary African American women. Gender is always gender when spoken about in any race or nationality....
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...community, depending on whom you agree with. Though, these two were considered leaders they had a large disagreement for which we like to call the “great debate” for the lack of better words. This debate between the two men were over strategies for blacks as it related to social and economic progress. Many have heard that there are two ways to skin a cat. This will describe Washington’s approach to achieving the better life for blacks and W.E.B. Du Bois as well. I think they wanted similar things for African Americans, they just went about it in two different ways. In order to truly understand them we must examine the differences of the two men, as I believe the ways for which we live, what we have experienced, and how we grow up does affect our decisions, thought process, and over all beliefs and goals....
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...examination of the black experience in America. Everything Coates says in the novel relates back to the present day struggles that African Americans often encounter in the world. While the purpose of the novel was to educate Coates’ son on the struggles of equality and liberty in America, the most important message in Between the World and Me is that racism is systematic, and race is a resulting concept. It is easy for one to associate racism with hate, to chalk it up to a consequence of evil, but according to Coates, “there is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers.” One cannot be evil simply because of the color of their skin. However, the evil that spews from racism...
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...misrepresented and also dehumanized by the exemplification of beauty and identity. This pattern of internalizing the perception of beauty to coincide with European standards have caused many African American women in the process to alter their physical appearances and personify a culture that has disregarded the uniqueness of being “ black and beautiful”. The cultural aesthetics of being “black and beautiful” has been distorted in literature, movies and television shows to appease an acceptable standard of beauty that in reality is unrealistic....
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...Communication is social, it constructs our life in the public sphere. Multi-faceted social identity refers to an identity that is not limited to one particular aspect and is comprised of many different levels of characteristics. Characteristics can be both personal, what makes us who we are, and social, the part of ourselves that is connected to our group memberships. I socially identify as as Asian, specifically as Korean-American. Communication continuously shapes my identity. I was born in the United States and grew up speaking both Korean and English. It wasn’t until recently I realized how important language is to an identity. While, I use Korean and English frequently seperately, I also use it interchangeably, a speaking type known as Konglish....
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...“One the Road both suffer through a state of powerlessness imposed on them by a racial prejudice society. This state of powerlessness provides both a physical and mental effect upon the protagonists. Victor, the protagonist in “The Long Ranger,” is a Native-American man that lives in Seattle, Washington. He lives with his girlfriend (who is a white woman) and drinks frequently. He is unemployed and eventually moves back to his reservation. Sargeant, the protagonist in “On the Road,” is a Black-American man. He is unemployed and looks for salvation at a church. The church refuses his pleas. He acts in rage, and subsequently, he is arrested and jailed. Racism in America has a long-standing tradition from the “March of Tears” to “Bloody Sunday.” Racism is “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races” (Webster). People of color, such as Black-Americans and Native-Americans, are thought to be inferior to White-Americans. Many people hold this thought and form stereotypes such as certain races being lazy, unintelligent, violent, and etc. In each short story, the...
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...The last few years feel like America has been pulled through a time warp into the history books, or some black and white newsreels of the 19th century. Conversations in Black, Brown, and ethnic communities express fears not of what might happen, but of hateful actions that are occurring make us doubt our lives matter. Meanwhile, Anti-Semitism, once thought to be anemic in America, is a daily headline causing Jews to question if their “white identity cards” are still valid or ever truly existed. As a Jew of Color, I am involved in these conversations, but rarely at the same table. Jews of Color stand at the crossroads of two (and sometimes several) communities. Often this complexity is ignored; we are expected to renounce one identity and...
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...October 3, 2011/Fall 2011 African Diaspora & The World (SADW 111-05) Shaping my Diaspora Consciousness vs. Society An old saying about the African American slave trade still circulates amongst us today: "they set us 'free' while keeping us enslaved." After the abolishment of physical slavery, the self-esteem and sense of identity of many African Americans remained in the hands of the dominant race. Their tools of malice and control transitioned from whips and legislation to social stigmas and stereotypes. The social stigmas and stereotypes formed are the concepts of identity, race and gender. As notions of equality grew more popular, the malice diminished but the social stigmas and stereotypes remained. To deny their influence on the shaping of my identity would be equivalent to denying the slave trade's existence. Despite the relevance of both in today's society, both are starting to fade away into the thick cloud of historical amnesia that tends to grasp the minds of every American generation. In order to ensure that the lesson’s learned, and to be learned from both remain, it is imperative that such topics be discussed and evaluated. Identity is a complex shaped by individual characteristics. Gender is however a group defined by masculinity and femininity, the attributes attached to being born male or female. Race is framed by social relations and historical context. All social conceptions formed by social construction. People don’t have an understanding of how society...
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...Alex Monaghan Mrs. Wooten English 5th Hour 10 March 2011 In Mary Pipher’s quote, she says that “history is inextricably linked to identity.” History is very important to a person’s life and background. History can’t decide what kind of a person someone is, but how they live their life and their actions toward others will ultimately determine their identity. When I went to a concert, they had a guest speaker at the concert that talked about his past and how he created his identity. He came from a broken family. His mom was a prostitute and his dad left him and his mom when he was at a very little age. Instead of letting his past bother him and making that his identity, he set out to create his own identity by using his past as how not to treat his family. He talked to us about how he found Jesus Christ and made him his savior and accepted him at the center of his life, and now he goes from city to city talking about God and how he has created his own identity for himself with the help of God. The speaker told us about how through all of those things that have happened in his past have caused him to become a strong person, but how anyone can make their own identity regardless of their background or the actions that they have done in the past. In the essay “On Being a Cripple”, Nancy Mairs talks about being crippled and what it is like. She says “I made the choice” of whether to be called handicapped, disabled, crippled, or another term used for physically disabled...
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...‘It is our relationships with others that help to define us.’ In life, we will try to be successful by doing special things. However, if we have no idea of who we are then how can we succeed? We will always ask ourselves, who we exactly are and where do we belong. Our identity is normally affected by the place of our homeland, family’s behaviour and the culture. It will influence us to be the person we really are. Homeland is a strongly influence giving us the sense of who we are. Home is the security of place we know, and it provides us with safety. “The way we belong isn’t for people to decide, it is decided by us.” The film “Skin” by Anthony Fabian describes Petrus the man who changes a lot with the destruction of his homeland. In the beginning, Petrus is a hard-working black man proud of his job. He loves his job and when he first sees Sandra he falls in love with her. Consequently, Sandra leaves her family to live with him and gets pregnant. Petrus believes life is getting better because Sandra brings luck. Unfortunately, the government destroys everything in their homeland suddenly, also breaking their confidence. Because Sandra’s white identity makes Petrus annoyed, he becomes lazy and violent. The calamity of homeland can make people have such big changes, as homeland is the basic security for people and helps people to be safe. The Italian movie “I am not sacred” is about the Italian young boy Michele discovering a cruel plan by his family. Michele is a nine year old...
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