How We Define Ourselves
How we Define Ourselves
Americans come from many different backgrounds and nationalities. Of these Americans are different races and religions, which represent the United States today. With the amount of diverse people in the United States, not everyone agrees with allowing people of different races and religions to mix. Living with people of different cultures can have a major impact on peoples’ lives. People today define themselves and others by the way they look and the things they may do or say. Things such as: Black, White, upper class, lower class, Northerner, Southerner, and Immigrant start to become the labels of others. Everyday people are judged by things such as these cultural characteristics. The different ethnicities in America start to break apart from a whole and become their own. America must learn to become one and stop defining each other separately. America is formed of very extreme diverse people. Instead of Americans all being treated the same they are separated into groups of different: races, religions, and cultures. Discrimination has grown in America due to the mixture of the diverse people in it. I remember the very day I become colored; (Hurston 120) is a statement that represents how people are put into these categories. When a little girl moves to a different place of mixed races, by the way that they treat her she realizes she is different. When people are around other people of the same ethnicity, they all feel equally the same. On the other hand, when you mix people of different ethnicity, they begin to realize how they are separated from others because of things such as skin color. New cultures coming to America bring new: language, music, food and beliefs. Many Americans feel threatened by, or discomfort from, these new characteristics. Every day as an American and as an individual, people face the effect of cultural stereotypes. It is a reason within itself that as I grew up in a closed community, my exposure to
Americans come from many different backgrounds and nationalities. Of these Americans are different races and religions, which represent the United States today. With the amount of diverse people in the United States, not everyone agrees with allowing people of different races and religions to mix. Living with people of different cultures can have a major impact on peoples’ lives. People today define themselves and others by the way they look and the things they may do or say. Things such as: Black, White, upper class, lower class, Northerner, Southerner, and Immigrant start to become the labels of others. Everyday people are judged by things such as these cultural characteristics. The different ethnicities in America start to break apart from a whole and become their own. America must learn to become one and stop defining each other separately. America is formed of very extreme diverse people. Instead of Americans all being treated the same they are separated into groups of different: races, religions, and cultures. Discrimination has grown in America due to the mixture of the diverse people in it. I remember the very day I become colored; (Hurston 120) is a statement that represents how people are put into these categories. When a little girl moves to a different place of mixed races, by the way that they treat her she realizes she is different. When people are around other people of the same ethnicity, they all feel equally the same. On the other hand, when you mix people of different ethnicity, they begin to realize how they are separated from others because of things such as skin color. New cultures coming to America bring new: language, music, food and beliefs. Many Americans feel threatened by, or discomfort from, these new characteristics. Every day as an American and as an individual, people face the effect of cultural stereotypes. It is a reason within itself that as I grew up in a closed community, my exposure to
Cited: Fuentes, Carlos. “The Mirror of the Other.” Portz 249-255 Hurston, Zora. “How It Feels to Be Colored.” Portz 120-123 Portz, Jessica, Ed. Writing on the River. 2nd Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print Rodriguez, Richard. “The Fear of Losing a Culture.” Portz 129-131