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Cultural identity of African Americans
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My personal African American Cultural Identity Essay
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Without fail, Ethiopian women age fifty and over will all gravitate towards the same perfume: Chanel N°5. For the thirteenth time that afternoon, I found my face and cheeks squeezed between old black hands, each finger glittering with my tribe’s traditional rings. My lips had bunched like a fish’s, forcing me to inhale so deeply that I could taste the perfume coming off my Great-aunt’s neck on the back of my tongue. My family and I had gone to a picnic held by the Ethiopian community in our area. For the first time in my life, I was around hundreds of people just like me. I quickly turned my community into an extension of mysef. Strangers were my friends; other kids were my siblings; adults were my parents. My blissful mood shifted instantaneously. …show more content…
From turning down the tinny traditional music playing in my mother’s car to responding to my parents in English more frequently. my gradual alienation from my roots made me feel closer to the people around me. Growing up as the only African-American girl in a majority Asian city, I was a minority among minorities. I believed that to fit in, I had to pay a tax that cost me my connection to my Ethiopian heritage. It is impossible to pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but I eventually realized ignoring my ethnic identity to be “accepted” was counterproductive. Perhaps it was when I first truly noticed the tint of the henna paste on my grandmother’s hand. The dark red lumps were drying in half mounds on her fingertips. From this special shade, a pigment blacker than the melanin in her skin would soon remain on each of her wrinkled, storied fingers. Or maybe it was the crackling sound of the green coffee beans getting roasted in preparation for the coffee ceremony. The smell of the thick gray smoke collected onto my clothes and in my hair, having been passed over my head in custom. It may have even been the lingering soapiness of the Chanel perfume on my
He mournfully tells his audience he has “moved away from the periphery and toward the center of American life, [he] has become white inside” (Liu 1). As a young chinese boy growing up in America, he was taught the way to assimilation was to abandon the language, culture, and traditions of his ancestors, and his essay is a remorseful reflection on the consequences of his sacrifice. Despite giving away so much, despite doing it all to ‘become white’, he will always be an outsider – race and skin color can never be the uniting factor of a community. Eric Liu goes on to talk about how “the assimilist is a traitor to his kind, to his class, to his own family” (Liu 2). Why does it need to be this way? The ‘a-word’ (assimilist) need not be a negative one, if only assimilation meant adapting to an ideology rather than one race’s culture. If that were the true meaning of assimilation, the idea that to assimilate is to betray would be eradicated. The current method of naturalization to American culture is unacceptable: The only thing that will unite Americans will be a common goal to promote good values and hard work within
In this article, Eric Liu presents his life as a native immigrant to an Asian American individual. He shares his experience through his reflection of ideas and emotions. Along with his story, it relates to the ideas of people’s journey from adolescence to adulthood. Eric’s inspirational experience is directed towards minority groups who try to adapt to the American culture and lifestyle. His parents emigrated from China to America, before he was born which he later became exposed to the freedom and diverse society. This results in beneficial effects for his individuality, career opportunities, and lifestyle. Although his parents have lived in a different culture than him, his life in America has made him assimilated into the American society
Growing up in Jamaica, I enjoyed worship. I remembered looking forward to church. We clapped our hands and stomped our feet and made a joyful noise unto the Lord. We didn't have keyboards and drums. We clapped and sounded like timbrels. I remembered when I learned to testify and it helped me and several others to build our confidence. I would sing in the local churches when they have special events. I watched young people being filled with the Holy Ghost and I wanted it so badly that I would pray and ask God to give it to me. I remembered watching my mother and my sister speak in tongues and I so wanted to do it.
Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics of their own inherited culture. Therefore, in an African American society, a search for self identity is a pervasive theme.
Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative provides insight into cultural assimilation and the difficulties such assimilation. The writer embraces several Western traits and ideals yet guards his African virtues jealously. In doing so however, he finds himself somewhere in between a full European and a displaced African. This problem of cultural identity Equiano struggled with is still present in modern American society. The modern day African-American appears to also be in the process of deciding the between two competing cultures and often being left somewhere in middle becoming a victim of cultural identity just like Olaudah Equiano some 250 years ago.
I wanted to wear brand clothes/shoes they did, I wanted to do my hair like them, and make good grades like them. I wanted to fit in. My cultural identify took a back seat. But it was not long before I felt black and white did not mix. I must have heard too many comments asking to speak Haitian or I do not look Haitian, but more than that, I am black, so I always had to answer question about my hair or why my nose is big, and that I talked white. This feeling carried on to high school because the questions never went away and the distance between me and them grew larger. There was not much action my family could take for those moments in my life, but shared their encounters or conversations to show me I was not alone in dealing with people of other background. I surrounded myself with less white people and more people of color and today, not much has
While I never knew my father, I did grow to know the challenges faced by African Americans. I first began to feel different when I transferred from public to private middle school. People began asking about my ethnicity for the first time in my life. Until this time, it had never seemed important. Although I had never been overly fond of my curly hair, it, along with other traits deemed too 'ethnic' looking, now became a source of shame. I had a few not so affectionate nicknames because of those curls. I was shocked to realize that people considered me different or less desirable because of these physical traits. Being turned away from an open house in my twenties was just as shocking as being ...
De Walt conducted. “"In Search of an Authentic African American And/or Black Identity: Perspectives of First Generation U.S.-Born Africans Attending a Predominantly White Institution” is a study that looks into the lives of six first generation US born African students and their lives on a predominately White college. Walt writes about how the students struggle to relate to African American students and what the author calls “continental Africans.” continental Africans are people who were born in an African country and have very strong ties to that country. As someone that would be considered a continental African, I still find it difficult to navigate between these two groups of people. Another interesting point that De Walt writes about is how thee definition of an African American has changed over time. Previously an African American would only include someone would is a “generational African American” which are people who have linage that dates back to slavery in the Unites States. Now it includes people that celebrate their US nationality and some other African country such as Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya (De Walt 484). Understanding this change in what it means to be an African American now is important because it highlights the intersectional nature of African students identities. African Students can be both America and African the research will focus on what that look like on a college
...nd then found myself to be distinctively not like the reaction I found myself / the way I found myself reacting to certain situations) and pretend they wouldn't have an issue with this or that but when faced with a reality of embracing the scenario it can be a very different story. And that's through no fault of their own. I included will believe and think I am capable or ready for something I've never experienced before and when I am confronted with the reality I have been very surprised by my own reactions. Reactions that I was not prepared for and however much I may have disliked what I was seeing about my personality through the reaction I couldn't deny that it wasn't happening. My parents could have said they had no problem with other ethnic children but when confronted with the reality they may have learnt that in fact they were not prepared for the situation.
“Everyday use” by Alice Walker, was set in the early 1970s when many African American were struggling to define their social and cultural identity. It was a time when many blacks were looking back to their African roots in an effort to reconnect with their ancestors and struggling to reject their American heritage which was dominated by injustice and painful histories. Alice Walker try to clarify this double consciousness problem in “ Everyday Use” by pointing out that one can be black and still embrace his African heritages without losing his American identity.
As I reflect on who I am and which culture I identify with, I am met with reservation. My parents are both Black Americans, they were both born and raised in the United States, their parent were also born and raised in the US. It is obvious that we derive from African descent; our skin color and physical features yet I find it difficult to relate or identify with my African heritage as slavery has played a pivotal role in separating us from our African origin. African enslavement left us devoid of a way to define ourselves. It severed familial ties and deprived us of any viable opportunity to reclaim them.(www.huffpost.com) We are descendants of African slaves but when I speak to someone who was born in Africa or research African culture, I
I interviewed an African American male (D. Simington) age thirty. This section of the paper will illustrate how certain factors played a significant part in developing his cultural identity. I began by asking him to define his ethnic/cultural/racial identity, he explained the following:
Times are changing and I feel like I am forced to conform to the everyday social norms of America, which makes me feel impuissance. Racial identity, which refers to identifying with a social group with similar phenotypes and racial category, is the only experience that I have with life (Organista, 2010). Racial ethnicity was used to build my self-esteem and to keep me in the dark when it came to how society treats individuals of darker complexion. However, once I left the confines of my family and neighborhood, I was forced to befriend and interact with individuals that had different cultural values and beliefs than me. This experience caused me to learn how to appreciate other racial and ethnic groups and their cultural values and belief. This is an accurate definition, of acculturation because I was able to understand and fit in with individuals different from me, while maintaining my own culture and ethnic identity. Therefore, knowing the importance of my ancestry, while acculturating and developing my own identity was all used
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright is a photo and text book which poetically tells the tale of African Americans from the time they were taken from Africa to the time things started to improve for them in a 149 page reflection. Using interchanging series of texts and photographs, Richard Wright encompasses the voices of 12 Million African-Americans, and tells of their sufferings, their fears, the phases through which they have gone and their hopes. In this book, most of the photos used were from the FSA: Farm Security Administration and a few others not from them. They were selected to complement and show the points of the text. The African-Americans in the photos were depicted with dignity. In their eyes, even though clearly victims, exists strengths and hopes for the future. The photos indicated that they could and did create their own culture both in the past and present. From the same photos plus the texts, it could be gathered that they have done things to improve their lives of their own despite the many odds against them. The photographs showed their lives, their suffering, and their journey for better lives, their happy moments, and the places that were of importance to them. Despite the importance of the photographs they were not as effective as the text in showing the African-American lives and how the things happening in them had affected them, more specifically their complex feelings. 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright represents the voice of African-Americans from their point of view of their long journey from Africa to America, and from there through their search for equality, the scars and prints of where they come from, their children born during these struggles, their journeys, their loss, and plight...
As a biracial kid, an outsider may think I’ve grown up aware of racial issues. Surprisingly though I haven’t, and until recently I had been mostly ignorant of the racism that is still present in our modern day society. Looking back I can understand why. I was born in New York City but my earliest memories are from living in New Hampshire, a state where the population is about 90 percent white. Although at this age I felt strange living in a place where there were so few minorities, at the time I was young and everyone was so friendly that our differences didn’t seem to be significant. The fact that I had a darker skin tone than all of my friends didn’t faze me, and in all honesty I didn’t feel like I was black.