Cultural Identity Reflection Paper

My parents have always tried to make sure that my siblings and I had a strong understanding of our culture, ironically I have never really thought about my cultural identity and how it has shaped me as a person. I also did not think about my definition of cultural identity until I was in this class. To me cultural identity are the sub cultures that create who you are, some cultures you can choose to be apart of such as religion, and region and others you can’t change because they are either physically or biologically apart of you but you can choose whether to accept them or not. I also feel that becoming aware and accepting is an important part in understanding your own cultural identity. Being the child of a mother who was taught to fight

While becoming more aware of my ethnic and racial identity I also started to understand my Hyphenated American title. My mom always made sure that I knew we are Black American because even though Black is a race, it is also an ethnicity. My mother also said we identify as Black-American because” we should not claim a culture that is not ours”.When saying this she was referring to the African culture, although our ancestors are more than likely from Africa we do not know specific facts and so we only identify with what we are sure of which has only been traced back to southern roots, so that we are not offending another culture in anyway. My school also made me aware of my socio economic status, when I was in the second grade a classmate came up to me during lunch and blatantly said “ I feel sorry for you” I was confused by her statement so I asked her why and she said it was because my family was poor and we were on welfare because we were black. I did not respond to the girl but that was because I had never heard the word welfare before. As my mom was cooking dinner I asked her were we poor and on welfare, she questioned why I would ask that and once I told her she was furious and explained what welfare was and that we were not on it. Now that I’m older I feel

For example my love of singing and music came from my Spiritual Identity mainly because music was introduced to me through church and it was something I enjoyed and fell in love with. I started singing in the church choir at the age of three and music because a dominant part of my life because as I got older I started joined and auditioning for community and school choirs. Another part of me that based from my spiritual identity is my name, most people see my skin color and read my name and just assume that my parents made something up trying to be different. Although my mom felt an original name was important she also wanted my name to have meaning and while she was pregnant with me she went to church one Sunday and when the pastor started shouting “ Shekinah Glory” repeatedly and she said that she looked up the meaning after church and while reading the meaning “ The glory and presence of the Lord”, I started to move and she knew that was my name. My religion may be a big part of my life but on a normal day I do not feel it is one of my salient identities, it 's a part of me that I don 't feel like I always have to explain and I think this is because I am a Christian and it falls under the Majority Identity category. Another identity that I do not view as one of my primary identities, is my regional identity. I did not notice that