Cultural Influences On Personal Identity

A. My personal identity has been heavily influenced by the culture in which I was raised. My family has had the largest, most significant influence on my identity, thus far in life. They raised me in a home heavily relied on faith and through the years my faith remains a large part of who I am. My parents and grandparents created a culture of acceptance and understanding were love is the most important thing. They taught me to care for others and to show respect to everyone regardless of the situation. There values do not involve any form of hate or dividing I today still stand by these values today. Their culture and their values have helped me become the strong caring woman I am today. They have allowed me to accept myself and extend my

I of course did not see this privilege or even consider this privilege until I understood that there was racism. In my opinion everyone is racist to a point, but it is a personal decision to recognize that and work diligently to overcome those thoughts. My family taught us that people of color have certain struggles that we will never face because we are white. We will have more opportunities afforded to us these opportunities will not be taken away simply because of our skin color. In my neighborhood, we did not have one single family of minorities. At church there was not one single family of minorities. At school was a different story there was diversity everywhere. I began to have friends who I would say looked like my uncle Jarred (my African American Uncle) who was adopted by my grandparents in the 1980s. My town at the time only had one middle school the middle school happened to be in what people would call the “ghetto”. I had never heard that word before I knew it was in the least wealthy part of town and mostly black families lived there. I noticed how the white children and children of color began to segregate themselves during recess and lunch. I can remember how biased teachers could be towards minorities. In sixth grade I had a teacher Mrs. Ross James who would allow white students to go to the bathroom in groups of two or more but she would only let

It took me a while to figure out who I am and even more time to be proud to say it. I have questioned my sexuality since puberty, but I just thought it was something everyone did. I grew up in a southern Baptist church so it was not information I felt comfortable disclosing to anyone. I struggled for years with thoughts that I found the woman attractive eventually I marked it up to just admiring them because I wanted to be them. I found men attractive, and that’s what I was supposed to like. I decided to suppress any feelings that I had towards the same sex. My family was always curious about my sexuality since I was such a tom boy they would occasionally ask me who I was interested the older I got. I tried to fit in with my friends and outwardly obsess over boys with them, however, on the inside I could care less if mark from English liked me or not I only talked to him to feel a sense of normalcy. I would pray to God to take any feelings for girls away that I would do anything not feel the way I did. When I was in high school I finally found this guy I semi liked and eventually grew to love. In the beginning he was everything I could have asked for caring, intelligent, and humorous. Even though I loved him I knew something was missing in the relationship eventually he caught on and my wonderful changed. He became verbally abusive to me our relationship had become a worldwide of fights. I soon realized that I was losing