What Defines A Person's Identity

You are strolling through the streets and as you are walking through messiness you see a lot of different people. Some of them may be Europeans and Asians, others may be Americans and Africans. Some may be a company director, who hasten to a business meeting. Others may be ordinary workers, who want to have a family supper after a long, busy day. All these people look very different. They all have their own story of life with some problems, different experiences and knowledge. At that moment you understand that among 7 billion people there are different sets of characteristics. Moreover, there are no two sets with the same likeness. As a consequence, they all have their own identity. It is like a fingerprint, a unique identifier of who you are. When you start to think about it more deeply, you might not understand how it is possible. However, after a while you identify that there are many factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Identity …show more content…
I heard something about discrimination, but I never thought about this. However, when I moved to New York, where the populations consist of a large number of immigrants, I started thinking about it. The first questions which people ask you is what your name is and where are you from. By questioning they want to define if you can friends with them or not. As authors said: “Classifying and labeling human beings… is a way to distinguish who is included and who is excluded from a group” (Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey). I do not understand why people have stereotypes of race and gender. A person can hurt you even if she/he is of the same race, when person opposite to you can help in critical moment. In my opinion it does not matter if you are “white” or “black”, it is important who you are inside. Since I am not very long here, right now I am learning more about discrimination, how it affected American history and trying to understand why race is so important