Cultural Identity Reflection Paper

Cultural Identity Reflection Paper Who I am; my beliefs, values, morals, and views on diversity are shaped based upon my upbringing, the values within society, and the norms adopted by our culture. However, I can’t only thank these sources for whom I am; my own personal experiences and feelings have had a huge impact on my cultural views. My biases; I am aware of them (good), but they exist, and to some may seem bad. I want to take you on a journey inside my path to cultural identity. I think I was a pretty easy going teen growing up; as long as I had my eye liner and my eclectic group of friends by my side, it was going to be a good day. I went to school (preschool-12th grade) in a small community, predominantly white. There were maybe a handful of African Americans in my school, but one of my closest friends, Shilo, was bi-racial. Hartford is a small town, and is segregated to an obvious degree. Over by Stop n Rob (actually Stop n Go, but because of the area, it got a nickname), is the “ghetto” of town; the low income housing, and where most (and not much at that) of the crimes happened. These facts aside, I never grew up thinking the White race was above any other; I don’t remember any acts of racism occurring within my community growing up. America’s had an impact on my cultural views; both good and bad. Good: I never had much exposure to the gay/lesbian culture growing up, yet I always admired and supported their fight for equal rights. I think America has shed light upon the idea of equality among gay marriage, and has only strengthened my already supportive view. The bad: September 11, 2001. I don’t need to go into details about the tragic events that took place that day, but that did drastically change my views of different cultures. As America started to fear them, I started to look at Afghans and Palestinians differently. It opened my eyes to the bigger picture: unknown cultural differences. To the bombers of 9/11, they were getting a one way