Reflective Essay: Can There Be My Ethnic Identity?

Something in my life that goes unnoticed is my identity; that being my ethnic identity. Being mixed race, there has not been a single person to ever guess my ethnicity, Jamaican/Italian/Chinese; this was especially true where I grew up in Miami, Florida. There, many assumed I was Hispanic, like most of the population. Fortunately, this allowed me to live life with little personal experience with racial bias. However, this made me lose my sense of social originality since I didn’t look or act in any iconic or modern way-I blended in. Being unconsciously forced into these other social groups due to this assumption and even just my identity in general, stole my chance to experience connection with groups of people like myself, because people tend to gravitate to others that appears like themselves.

On the contrary, without

I learned that Italians were hasty to assimilate into American culture, but what remains of those origins are old traditions and sentiments such as: an old family recipe to Sicilian bone cookies that my cousin Anne from Wisconsin showed my mother and I, or that fact that both my maternal grandmother, and 3 of our cousins are all named Anne, named after a common past relative named Anna, changed to further assimilate. On this side of my family, the culture connections are not as strong after being diminished from several generations, but even this still taught me about this sub-culture of Italians who humbly guard the surviving traditions.

Overall, my ethnic identity is important to me because it has allowed me to learn so much about these three distinct cultures and how to appreciate them to where I can take their values and incorporate them into my own life; as well as, have the ability learn from and try to understand any new cultures I encounter. Although the fact that is goes unnoticed can have varying results, it does not reduce its