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Cultural Identity In Ethnic Hash By Patricia J. Williams

405 Words2 Pages

Few people actually consider what their “real” ethnicity is. Often people think of race, and religion, when considering their ethnicity. To avoid stereotyping, one should learn the real definition of cultural identity. According to “What is Cultural Identity?” cultural identity is “ … a shared language, history, geography, and (frequently) physical characteristics” (Trumbull Pacheco pg. 9). In “Ethnic Hash,” Patricia J. Williams writes about her personal discovery of her cultural identity. She teaches the audience that cultural identity is the history of you and your family.
At the beginning of her story, Patricia J. Williams viewed cultural identity as purely her race. Her initial response to the dish was to list her cultural background, which includes “Welsh…Cherokee…Scottish…French-Canadian…and West African” (Williams pg. 13). She also discusses her experiences in light of her race; she had not experienced racism based on the color of her skin. Additionally, Williams explains her parents’ backgrounds‒her father is from Georgia and her mother is from New England (Williams pgs 13-14). Although Williams had a vague understanding of cultural identity in the beginning, her understanding grows as she considers her …show more content…

Her dish was a metaphor for her cultural identity. Williams decides she will cook “Chicken with Spanish Rice and Not-Just-Black Beans” (Williams 14). She uses chicken because her family ate chicken often growing up. She includes Spanish rice because ancestors were Spanish. Finally, she adds not-just-black beans to represent how diverse her culture truly is. This references her thoughts on the interracial box on the census form: “the concept seems so historically vague, so cheerfully open-ended, as to be virtually meaningless” (Williams 13). From this, the reader can infer that Williams has changed her way of thinking; she now embraces her ethnicity within her

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In brief, both texts elaborate to some extent, the topic of cultural identity, although, in very distinct ways. "What is Cultural Identity" is an informative text, with factual evidence and strongly supported arguments. While on the other hand, "Ethnic Hash" is more of a personal essay, for the reason that there is hardly any supported evidence, or in the least, an actual existent argument. This is just a personal narrative, which dabbles the very peak of the iceberg in the topic of cultural identity.

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She mentions how us people always judge others based on their gender. In her personal story, her child's teacher describes her son as little security guard and she describes the son's friend as mini-hostess . Williams found this as a supporting argument because she said, When my son and his friend Jessie went through exactly the same motions, it was gender assignment that led their teacher to describe them in such unconsciously distinct ways. Another example William added was when a child is born, people always buy blue presents for the boy, and pink presents for the girl. This has a lot to say about how gender is looked at.

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She begins with her son’s teachers teaching him to be color-blind, and she comments that “the very notion of” color-blindness isn’t a reasonable practice because it promotes “ideological confusion at best and denial” of real and present day issues “at its very worst” (Williams 4). Williams argues that the principle of color-blindness is faulty, because these teachers are trying to promote unity in their classes by leading an example of ignorance between student rather than acceptances of people’s differences. In addition, Williams rhetoric use of pathos encourages the readers emotional attachment to Williams viewpoint, and therefore increases the support of her argument. Another example Williams provides is when she was blatantly confronted with racism on a train and she laments about “how precisely does the issue of color remain so powerfully determinative,...in a world that is, by and large, officially color-blind’?” (Williams 15).

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The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

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