"Who or what a person or thing is": The definition of identity in and of itself can have multiple interpretations. A person 's identity can have many different categories and sometimes several answers within the same category. They may go by a multitude of names or present different personality traits depending on the company they 're keeping. When identity becomes not only a personal definition of selfhood, but also a collection of assumptions imposed by others, developing an understanding of oneself can be difficult. A confusion of identity often occurs when a person is removed from familiar surroundings and transplanted some place else, where notions about what makes a person who they are may be different. As Stuart Hall explains, identities
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There are numerous factors which can affect the formation of identity in immigrants, including country of origin, extent of interaction with the host country after immigration, age, and level of education, among others. In this paper I will be looking more specifically at factors in the host country, rather than factors specific to immigrants. This paper will discuss the racial demographic makeup, history (as it concerns to race and immigrants), immigration policies, and professed cultural ideologies of America, Canada, and Italy in an attempt to explain identity formation in members of the African diaspora living in these countries. Where applicable, I will explain variations that may have particularly strong effects on identity formation (e.g. the especially strong transnational communities common to Eritreans refugees and Senegalese Murids). However, on a whole, this will be a more general study. Since identity is so difficult to define and is often fluid or situational, I will use claims to national, ethnic, or racial identities as my method of quantifying identity formation (e.g. African-American, Italian-Ghanian, African, Black, Canadian). My aim is to show how the histories of America, Canada, and Italy have shaped the treatment …show more content…
When immigrants, mostly white-ethnic Europeans, began immigrating to America, the term was used to describe a peaceful blending of ethnic communities, marking a transition from a heterogenous society to a homogenous one. However, Blacks living in America were never allowed to fully "melt" into American society. The melting pot mentality tends to apply to the mixing of white Americans with other white Americans of different ethnicities, not the mixing of races. The notion that one drop of black blood made a person Black prevailed until the 1960s, suggesting that Blacks in America could not mix with other races (Clark, 2009). This created two separate 'melting pots, ' one where white ethnicities mixed and another for black ethnicities. The "melting" of black ethnicities into a homogenous African-American identity is a result of America 's slave history, rather than a peaceful and slow progression of intermarriage and acceptance. When Africans were first brought to America on slave ships they were mixed together indiscriminately, making it difficult to retain specific ethnic traditions. Rejected by white culture, Africans instead developed a cultural identity around their shared slave history and vague collective memories of life in Africa (Levine, 1993). This culture has since developed into what we refer to today as an African-American identity. Much of what defines African-American identity comes from a
There are numerous factors which can affect the formation of identity in immigrants, including country of origin, extent of interaction with the host country after immigration, age, and level of education, among others. In this paper I will be looking more specifically at factors in the host country, rather than factors specific to immigrants. This paper will discuss the racial demographic makeup, history (as it concerns to race and immigrants), immigration policies, and professed cultural ideologies of America, Canada, and Italy in an attempt to explain identity formation in members of the African diaspora living in these countries. Where applicable, I will explain variations that may have particularly strong effects on identity formation (e.g. the especially strong transnational communities common to Eritreans refugees and Senegalese Murids). However, on a whole, this will be a more general study. Since identity is so difficult to define and is often fluid or situational, I will use claims to national, ethnic, or racial identities as my method of quantifying identity formation (e.g. African-American, Italian-Ghanian, African, Black, Canadian). My aim is to show how the histories of America, Canada, and Italy have shaped the treatment …show more content…
When immigrants, mostly white-ethnic Europeans, began immigrating to America, the term was used to describe a peaceful blending of ethnic communities, marking a transition from a heterogenous society to a homogenous one. However, Blacks living in America were never allowed to fully "melt" into American society. The melting pot mentality tends to apply to the mixing of white Americans with other white Americans of different ethnicities, not the mixing of races. The notion that one drop of black blood made a person Black prevailed until the 1960s, suggesting that Blacks in America could not mix with other races (Clark, 2009). This created two separate 'melting pots, ' one where white ethnicities mixed and another for black ethnicities. The "melting" of black ethnicities into a homogenous African-American identity is a result of America 's slave history, rather than a peaceful and slow progression of intermarriage and acceptance. When Africans were first brought to America on slave ships they were mixed together indiscriminately, making it difficult to retain specific ethnic traditions. Rejected by white culture, Africans instead developed a cultural identity around their shared slave history and vague collective memories of life in Africa (Levine, 1993). This culture has since developed into what we refer to today as an African-American identity. Much of what defines African-American identity comes from a