Exploring the Construct of Identity: From Birth and Beyond

Identity, the idea of being who or what a person or thing is. From the time we are born, we are given identities that we can’t change. As soon as we exit the womb and enter the world we are cleaned up and given either a blue or pink hat and matching blanket. The colors blue and pink are identified by gender, so if one births a baby girl she will be identified with the pink hat and vice versa. Then we get a gender based name and when the baby goes home, everything they receive is based on what gender the baby is and it seems like there is no in between. As a baby one can’t help nor does one care about the way people identify them. As one gets older, we test the lines of identity. When one thinks about his or her identity, they automatically

People looked at me and only saw grief and sadness. They started watching what they said around me because they just saw me as a grieving teen who had just lost her mother and didn’t want to say anything to make it worse. When I came back to school a few weeks after she died, I knew in the back of my head things would be different for a while. My cousin Bryce went back to school before I did so I knew of him being looked at as the boy who recently lost his aunt that I too would be looked at differently. I had people that I had never talked to in my entire life coming up to me, all because my label had changed to Abby, the girl who’s mom died in high school. I hate the fact that people change the way they are around me because my identity to them has changed. I should not be treated differently because of how other people look at me, I should be able to be identified how I wish. Every human being is labeled in some way, some are labeled how they want, but most are given a label that they can’t get rid of. After being one of the unlucky people to be labeled something that they don’t want to be labeled as I have a different way of looking at people. In our English 110 class we read a story that I felt like I could sympathize with. In the story Black Men In Public Space there was a young black man who was labeled as dangerous because of his color and appearance. “It was also made clear that I was indistinguishable from the muggers that occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto” (Staples page 135). He doesn’t want people to be scared of him, he did anything in his power to come off as harmless. Not because he wasn’t harmless, but because he was being perceived and identified as something that he wasn 't, and didn’t want to be. As a society we should be ashamed of ourselves for how quick we are to judge people. We should let people show us what they