Argumentative Essay: The Loss Of Identity In America

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Your identity is credential to how you see yourself, how the people around see you and how strangers see you. Is the first look enough to show who you are? Identity is America is based upon many different factors. Race is a huge identity factor that often gets overlooked or misinterpreted. This stands by the fact that not every race is easily seen on first look, or we are being fooled by someone trying to pass into a different race. Your identity in America is not always what you think it might be.
Being very controversial, “passing” is the way that some people live their lives. Passing is the act of someone from one racial group looking like they belong to a different race. This could go either way, but it mostly from “black” to “white” (Crowley). While most would say people chose to pass to receive “white privileges,” Rachel Dolezals chooses to pass the other way. She self-identifies herself as a black woman and this is a huge issue to a lot of people. Stated by Crowley, “at any moment she can decide to halt the extreme tanning, uncurl her hair and return to her previously scheduled life as a white woman.” Rachel has such hard feelings towards
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The problem occurs when we try to identify people by the color of their skin. The question “Who is black?” has been answer by the “one-drop rule.” This definition was brought up due to slavery and segregation. The “one-drop rule” simply means that if you have any black ancestors, you are black. (Davis 52). The problem in this definition is that without being raised in a black family, looking black or being associated with blacks, you were considered black from an ancestor that you probably never knew you had. Being a huge problem with slavery, it is not so much of a problem today. Today the rules are different depending on state and legislature in the United

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