Essay On Ethnic Identity

Derived from the Latin word identatis, the English word “identity” means “the individual characteristics by which a person or thing is recognized”. People find their identity, and identify themselves through, various modes such as gender, race, career, politics, income, ethnicity, and generation. One’s personal identity is never truly fully developed or defined, but rather it is ever evolving and expanding through experience, time, maturity, and knowledge. However, one of the most dominant aspect contributing towards ones perception of his identity is something s/he cannot choose or change: ethnicity.
Though an accidental quality, ethnicity is a multi-faceted “social-psychological” phenomena from which an individual derives “a sense of belonging and identity”. It is a state which encompasses a person’s “country of birth, nationality, language, skin color, geographical origin, and …show more content…
In other words, through these feelings of obligation a person would teach the native language to their children for the sake of the community at large or feel morally obliged to assists a member of the group with their children, or to succeed in life, or go to college and find employment.
The affective aspect of ethnic identity is the function that creates the bond of “love” for one’s culture. For example one feels more sympathy or a sense of urgency for their country when it gets ravaged by a tsunami than they do for another country merely because that is where they are from and where raised. Or furthermore one finds more comfort when with his own society, or when practicing his cultural traditions, while simultaneously feeling discomfort or insecurity when celebrating other cultural rituals, preferring his own culture to the