Filipino Culture Essay

In this paper I will be describing three cultures that I identify with. The term culture is very broad and it can be applied in ways that one would have never thought. Many people can describe themselves using more than three cultures because of the many different social and ethnic groups that we belong to. These social and ethnic groups come in many shapes and forms but most importantly they are what helps make us feel like we belong. Culture provides us with a basic skeleton of how we are supposed to act and think (subjective elements) and also how we should dress and what we should like (objective elements). However, our own individual personality helps shape that skeleton into the people we truly are. Culture influences our psychological

I have learned and interpreted characteristics of the Filipino culture but I believe that I am also still in the process of developing into the culture completely. The first step in my ethnic identity development was conforming to a culture outside of my own. In addition to being half Filipino, I am half Portuguese and European. I have never exactly associated with Filipino people outside of my immediate family because my Portuguese and European mother has a significantly larger family. I grew up in dominantly Caucasian neighborhood, where I attended a dominantly Caucasian elementary and middle schools, so I automatically connected towards the dominant group. Once I entered high school, I fell into the dissonance stage and began to veer away from the dominant group because I was unsure if their values truly aligned with mine. It was not until college actually where I began to associate with other Filipinos and even with the other Asian cultures that we have. I do not believe that I ever felt resentment or hatred towards the dominant group but I began to turn away from them. Furthermore, believe that I never quite got to the introspection stage and that I skipped straight to the synergetic articulation and awareness