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What Is My Cultural Identity

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What Is My Cultural Identity
Cultural Identity Group Essay
M.F. Moonzajer once said “ My culture is my identity and personality. It gives me spiritual, intellectual and Emotional distinction from others, and I am proud of it.” (askideas.com). Culture determines a person's everyday life and in some cases how they view the world. A person’s culture influences their beliefs, customs, and their overall view on the world, therefore people’s backgrounds shape their daily struggles, environment and experiences.
The number of the daily struggles that a multicultural individual has to deal with, keeps increasing every day. A boy, Wind-Wolf, had a sufficient amount of struggles when starting school because he was “culturally different”. “He is”, said Lake,”caught between two worlds, torn by two distinct cultural systems”(Lake, para 10). Because of Wind-Wolf’s Indian heritage, his culture influenced his beliefs and his view on the world. For example, in Wind-Wolf’s culture, having “long hair is a sign of masculinity and balance”(Lake, para 14), but his friends make fun of him at school.
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Two young girls get their names changed, due to the fact that they were indian. “Too hard for me” (Rau, para 3) and “Pretty English names”(Rau, para 3) are two prime examples of how cultural names can be rough and how this shapes and affects our daily lives. This also signifies how culture can be negative, and pushes culture to the next level. Culture can shape the way we experience many things because of how we interpret them. Furthermore, a child in a story I once read, was thought to be “disadvantaged”(Lake, para 11) because he is Indian and is know to be a “slow learner.”(Lake, para 1) This is an example of people’s experiences, and how they can shape everyone’s environment and life. It shapes everyone’s environment and life in the view of the fact that their strengths are shown as being weak, just because their culture is

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