As I write this now, I am only 19 years of age and in the middle of my second year of college. However, I’ve been through enough throughout my 19 years of living that I’ve formulated a strong idea as to what my cultural identity is and how it affects me as a person, friend, and future educator. To start off, the biggest factor that influenced my cultural identity is race. My ethnic background is what I was born with and have been associated with my entire life from the moment I was born. Although, living life as a minority (half black/half mexican) meant that I missed out on the racial privilege that was automatically presented to white people. Assumptions are rarely made on a white person simply based off the fact that they’re white or
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Just entering my teen years, what I wore to school became a bigger priority for me and wearing old, used clothing made me feel inadequate since I would always see other kids with the newest name brand clothes all the time. Kids who were obviously a lot better off than I was. Naturally, I was envious of them and even felt ashamed about my own situation including where I lived. A townhouse home in a small neighborhood in comparison to these luxury homes, bordering on the definition of mansions, in beautiful neighborhoods just 5 minutes away from my house. This singular situation illustrates strongly the importance of being involved in the community as an educator because a better understanding of one’s community will inherently lead to a better understanding of one’s students and what shapes them as people. It’s important to note that because of this situation, I would surround myself with friends who were above my socio-economic status because I wanted to escape my financial status. I still struggle with this today, but the significance of this is it has affected my cultural identity as a man who sees status as a priority due to society’s generalization of those who are below the average of prestige and wealth. Understandably, this may seem like a negative characteristic to adopt, but I would disagree because …show more content…
We may be taught the basic rules of what’s the difference between males and females, but the largest influence over those differences is society and the media with constant streams of gender roles being constructed for either sex that must be fulfilled or result in inadequacy or even shame. Being a part of the male gender definitely has contributed to the kind of person I am today. Gender roles dictate that men cannot and should not experience, act, or express themselves in any way makes them seem or look feminine. Simply learning about these gender roles and how they’ve played a much larger part in my life than I realized was a huge turning point for me because I can now become aware of when I’m subconsciously conforming to what gender roles dictate in certain situations and behave in whatever way I want to behave, disregarding gender roles within its entirety. As educators and as human beings, it needs to be taught and adopted that being a member of a certain sex is, should, and will never be an excuse for any type of inappropriate behavior. I strongly believe that these realizations have played a large role in my development as a person and will play relatively large roles in my development as a
Just entering my teen years, what I wore to school became a bigger priority for me and wearing old, used clothing made me feel inadequate since I would always see other kids with the newest name brand clothes all the time. Kids who were obviously a lot better off than I was. Naturally, I was envious of them and even felt ashamed about my own situation including where I lived. A townhouse home in a small neighborhood in comparison to these luxury homes, bordering on the definition of mansions, in beautiful neighborhoods just 5 minutes away from my house. This singular situation illustrates strongly the importance of being involved in the community as an educator because a better understanding of one’s community will inherently lead to a better understanding of one’s students and what shapes them as people. It’s important to note that because of this situation, I would surround myself with friends who were above my socio-economic status because I wanted to escape my financial status. I still struggle with this today, but the significance of this is it has affected my cultural identity as a man who sees status as a priority due to society’s generalization of those who are below the average of prestige and wealth. Understandably, this may seem like a negative characteristic to adopt, but I would disagree because …show more content…
We may be taught the basic rules of what’s the difference between males and females, but the largest influence over those differences is society and the media with constant streams of gender roles being constructed for either sex that must be fulfilled or result in inadequacy or even shame. Being a part of the male gender definitely has contributed to the kind of person I am today. Gender roles dictate that men cannot and should not experience, act, or express themselves in any way makes them seem or look feminine. Simply learning about these gender roles and how they’ve played a much larger part in my life than I realized was a huge turning point for me because I can now become aware of when I’m subconsciously conforming to what gender roles dictate in certain situations and behave in whatever way I want to behave, disregarding gender roles within its entirety. As educators and as human beings, it needs to be taught and adopted that being a member of a certain sex is, should, and will never be an excuse for any type of inappropriate behavior. I strongly believe that these realizations have played a large role in my development as a person and will play relatively large roles in my development as a