Advanced Essay #3

Black men in our society are known for one of three things, a sports player, rapper, or a drug dealer. A black man in our society, will never live the life of a middle class or higher class white man. No matter how much money he makes, no matter what level of education he has, nor where he works, a black man in our society will never live the life of a civilized white man.

The sports player is the man who was a young black who had someone to look up to. This person that they looked up led them on a path that was positive. That person helped keep them out of the streets and made sure their focus was in books and/or on the field, court, arena etc. As the black male grew older he takes the lessons learned from his inspiration(s) and puts them to use. Due to the life lessons the young black male experienced, he has success in life. Now just because he has money and may be the franchise of a team, he is still a black male from the southern region of Philadelphia. He is still titled and labeled to where he comes from. Therefore, whites (mainly superior whites) still may seek him as dangerous and violent.

The drug dealer is the black male who grew up without a father or male figure and lived in a poor financed household. Due to the lack of income and education has, he turns to the streets to make money. Livin in the society he lives,  the access of drugs is very easy for the black male. After making his first bits of money, the black male continues to sell drugs and keeps his focus on the streets. Doing this will only lead the black male into 3 paths, dead, in jail, or stereotyped.

The rapper is very familiar to the drug dealer. The rapper is always viewed as the drug dealer who knows how to create a rhythmic tone with rhyming lyrics. Once the rapper gains money and popularity, he makes possibly the smartest decision he could have ever made which is leaving the streets and focusing on making money through music. Let’s look at Meek Mill for example. Meek Mill is a rapper (a rapper who was a drug dealer that could rhythmic tones with rhyming lyrics). Meek Mill is my cousin and he was also born and raised in the society as us. Meek grew up without a father in his life. His mom (my aunt) was always out boosting (stealing items and reselling them) to provide food and a place to sleep for Meek and my cousin Nasheema (his sister). When Meek became around my age (16-17) he turned to the streets to make money. Eventually, that caused him to be arrested and place in prison. Today, Meek is internationally famous rapper but, he still is a black man from Southern Philadelphia. Meek has been on probation for his arrest for 5 years now. In February, he will be sentenced to prison for violating that parole because of traveling without permission from the Philadelphia’s district attorney. Meek traveled to perform at an awards show. The district attorney said that she feels like Meek and “dangerous” and “irresponsible” at times and she feared letting him go to the awards show. Meek is a millionaire and he gives the DA (district attorney) no reason to fear him traveling to make money and provide for his family. What she fears is a black man being from our society being the setting and presence of “precious” white people.

No matter how hard he tries, a black man in my society will never be the same as a white man. He will forever be identified negatively because he comes from a negative place. It doesn’t even matter if he never did anything bad, he will forever identified negatively.

In this essay, I discuss what I think it means to belong and what I think it means to explore ones identity. I focus on what makes us different and the same when forming our identities. I use my past experience in a new environment with not much diversity to discuss the common themes that build bonds and friendships, as well as what is used to build a sense of belonging.

If we look through the evolution of movies that take place in the high school setting we always see a common thing, cliques. The students mentally divide ourselves into these groups from how we identify ourselves. However in the movie, there is always those few students who still feel they are alone even though they are surrounded by people “like” them. Many would argue that the problem with cliques is we separate based off of one or two common interest that can be instantly be seen and shown. What then becomes an issue later is that they feel like they aren’t like them, and most likely they are right. Instead of finding similarities such as viewpoints and personality. That is not the proper way to make friends and create groups of people to interact with.

“Embracing otherness… Well, embracing otherness is embracing myself. And the journey to that place of understanding and acceptance has been an interesting one for me, and it's given me an insight into the whole notion of self.” These are words of Thandie Newton’s when she did a TED Talk called “Embracing Other, Embracing Myself”. I believe this quote relates a lot to during my summer of 2015. I went to Virginia for a writing program and lived on Sweet Briar campus for 2 weeks. I was eager to be in a new place to help me form my identity, I hoped to do so by exploring different environments with different people in diverse groups.

The first 5 days out of the 15, I just observed everyone in silence. I noticed patterns, personalities, just different and new people in general. From my observations, I noticed a connection. They were all divided in non diverse groups. No one was really trying to separate. At first everyone stayed with their Houses when we had free time or during lunch. In those Houses, there were at least 1 person in each class but the diversity of that was by chance. By the 8th day I started seeing groups of white people sitting next to each other, Asians sitting next to each other, and the other 4 African Americans in the program scattered against that. These cliques were a cliché to me. Somehow by day 7, I made friends with a girl named McKenna. I like the diversity of the friendship because she was in Poetry and I was in Screen & Playwriting, her being white and me being African American, and just how different our personalities are. She would hang out with the people in her House. In her house, there were all Songwriters and Poetry students. They were mainly white and there was one Asian. I instantly judged them, thinking that they were only friends because of their common class the Songwriters, their House, and their race but after a few more days I began to see that they were connected by similarities that were not instantly seen. The main people I talked to in that group besides McKenna was Savanah, Songwriter and white, and Miranda, Poetry student and Asian. They all played sports and all of their personalities were similar but had outlier differences keeping them different people. I remember during the last day of the program when I was saying my last goodbyes to my new friends, I began to think about all the different things about them and how we were really good friends making the 2 weeks feel like years.

There are times where I could be surrounded by many people but feel as if I’m alone. Isolation is the main feeling I am have when I step out my house. Everyone has this sense where they do not belong because we identify ourselves as someone different from others.

  My goals from writing this passage was to include as many primary sources because I feel like this topic that I am writing about has the potential to be very descriptive if primary sources are used to support it. I felt like I did a good job on gathering sources and analyzing it to put in my passage. Something I can do better at is, improving my transitions from paragraph to paragraph. Although, I did made an attempt on doing it, but I think it would be better if I let a teacher read over it beforehand.

I was four years old when I first stepped foot in the United States. I remembered that my mother told me that I was crying for the whole plane ride, and I did not stop until a couple of days later. My parents and I settled down in Kensington, in North Philadelphia. Other than going to school, I was not able to go outside because it was a really dangerous neighborhood. I struggled through Kindergarten because of my lack of English. There was no such thing as an ESOL program in that school. I did not learn to read until 4th grade in a different school. My teacher developed my interest in reading and writing and that is when I started improving. I remembered that I was one of those kids that was pulled out of class to take a separate class that was much more basic. I was lucky to be part of a school with an ESOL program because I know that not all immigrant kids are able to get this opportunity.

As of 2013, it is recorded that around 41.3 million immigrants lived in the United States. Immigrants made up a lot of what is America today. For example, back in the 1800s, Chinese immigrants were exploited to the west of the United States to build the transcontinental railroad. Without that innovation, it would be hard to say that we would have functioning transportation. Immigrants were involved in many more creations to America, but as of today, they are not getting the credit they should be getting.

A lot of the immigrants here today are not able to receive full benefits from the states because they are undocumented. In the video (on the second link of the bibliography), Jong Min, a undocumented immigrant said that it was hard for him to fit in with his friends because some of the things they were doing was not applicable to him because of his status in America. In some states, undocumented immigrants are not able to get a driver’s license, get a certain job, go to college, etc. Jong Min said that it is like living in an invisible prison along with your family.

In the same video, Pedro is also an undocumented immigrant in America. He was told that he is undocumented by his brother in second grade; at first, he did not know what that meant, but overtime he understood and slowly became a little more wary about his future everyday. His fear for his future is a feeling that most undocumented immigrants get. No matter how hard you work to get a good education or a job, it is unlikely to happen because you are simply not documented. Luckily, he was able to get an education at Cornell University. He was on the bus to the university, one day, and was stopped by a police officer. Everyone in the bus was asked to come out, and they were all checked to see if they have citizenship. Pedro told the truth saying that he was an undocumented immigrant; he was then handcuffed and sent to prison. He was asked to perform a finger scan and strip his current clothing, so he can put on the jail suit. He said that he was really lonely in the jail cage, he was not able to contact his family or have access to almost anything; he was also not able to receive basic health checkups.

My goal for this essay was to understand the idea of loss and how it influencias people does this shape their identity, and for those who are influenced by this how does it shape them and what gives them the drive to come out of all this bad that happens to make something good. I think by the end of this I can understand that people who have gone through great loss and have come out okay in the end better then they were before have truly experienced a lot.

How do we think of the things that make us who we are when we are older what shapes us to becoming the men , and women that we will one day become. Is it our family the people we associate ourselves with our is it possible that we are the ones that decided who we become like when we reach adulthood. This is the question have you ever thought about it ? If not then why not consider the idea that we are shaped by what we lose in our lives not by what we gain, If we were given everything we were ever asked for would it be taken for granted or could we understand the significant value that it has or  would it just cause us to ask for more. I think people that have a better understanding of what they want to be when they get older if they have significant loss in their life that tends to help them see of form the person who they want to become later on the reason that this is possible is because the people have have lost what's precious that tends to make people spiral.   

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

This quote makes me feel like the idea that once you have lost an important person to you then you tend to feel as if that is the worst feeling you will feel like a gaping hole has been made into your world which feels like nothing well ever get better again. It also means that you have to find the strength to pull yourself out of that hole through doing this will you be stronger for it but you will also help you have a better idea of what kind of person that you want to be later in life. When I was around 10 years old my best friend had lost his younger brother it was what you would call the normal drunk driver situation my friend was so shocked that there was this dark time in his life were he felt that there was nothing that he could do to handle it he then chose to let himself go into his emotions and let that dark time consume him he ended up getting into a lot of fights with people, and started missing school to the point where he did not show up anymore.

I lost touch with that person as time went on , and one day out of the blue I had found out that he had committed suicide. It felt like it was something that you hear about not something that you would expect to happen to someone you knew it hit you out of the blue and it make it seems like it was a sick joke but there was not punchline, you weight and weight and you think that he was going to come out with a punch line but he never does. I just had to expect that he was gone he was in a dark place he had experienced loss but he was not one of the few that could handle it.

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything.  Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job.  Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk.” (113)

My goal for this essay was to explore the relationship between identity, nationality, and immigration. I wanted to understand how immigration influences identity and how it impacts our feelings of belonging and acceptance. I learned a lot about this topic through writing this essay and I feel as though I’ve learned more about my identity.

My Ecuadorian mother was born in Eugene, Oregon one December night over forty years ago. Both of her parents were from Ecuador but she was never able to get Ecuadorian citizenship because the application to the closest Ecuadorian consulate, which was in California, was lost in the mail. By the time my grandparents found out it was too late, and my mother would have to remain a citizen of the United States of America. When my mother was two my grandfather finished graduate school and decided that it was time to move back to Guayaquil. My mother has no memories of her time in the United States as a young girl. She has always considered herself to be an Ecuadorian even though she was born in Oregon, probably one of the furthest states from Ecuador, and never became an Ecuadorian citizen. Twenty two years after moving to Ecuador my mother returned to the United States and came to Philly to go to graduate school. While in school she met my father and married. Originally they were going to live in Ecuador but the financial situation of the country was very unstable at the time and it was difficult to find jobs so they decided it was best if they stayed in Philadelphia. It’s strange to think that if the whole financial instability situation in Ecuador had not occurred I would have been born there and I would probably still live there. Every once in awhile I like to think about how different my life would be if I was born in and lived in Ecuador. Would I be the same person? How does nationality affect identity?

I have lived in the same city all my life and in the same house for as long as I can remember. I have never felt that I do not belong in Philly or in the United States and I am aware that the city I have grown up in has had a large role in the development of my identity. My mother has had a completely different experience. She was born in the U.S. to two foreigners, moved to a Ecuador where she never legally a citizen, and then moved back to the United States. So how has the development of my identity differed from the development of my mother’s identity? The development of my identity has been relatively easy. I’ve been influenced by the culture of in Philadelphia but mostly influenced by my family and the people I have met. For my mother it was mostly just as easy. Growing up she considered herself Ecuadorian. She didn’t even remember anything about the United States. Once she came back to the United States it was harder. She was a citizen of the U.S. but she didn’t know the culture and she spoke with an accent. My mother now considers herself to be both American and Ecuadorian but there was a time when she felt that she didn’t belong in the United States or in Ecuador. She’d changed enough in her time in the U.S. to feel that she didn’t belong in Ecuador but enough to feel that she did belong in the United States. The only difference between the development of our identities was that small amount of time when my mother felt that she didn’t belong and that came from a change of location.

Nationality and immigration both have a role in shaping identity and fostering feelings of belonging. In an article, Vivian Gerrand explained how belonging and identity related to nationality and immigration:

“This sense of belonging is more than just about growing up here; it comes from a sense of individuality as much as from cultural influences. It shows that identity is never fixed; there is always movement between cultures. This new sense of belonging separates out the idea of fixed national, collective and individual identities.”

Reaganomics was during the time period from 1980-1988 in which Ronald Reagan was president. Ronald Reagan is considered, by some, to be one of the greatest presidents America has ever had. However, this was far from the truth when it came to minority groups. Reaganomics included the “Trickle Down Theory” in which Ronald Reagan gave tax breaks to the upper class, believing that the extra money the upper class saved would trickle down to the lower/working class. However, Reagan also conveyed the idea of  the “Welfare Queen”. She was portrayed as a lower class black woman living off of the government and as a result, many upper class people refuse to give money to minorities. However, the harsh reality was that the Black unemployment rate was at a devastating 22% and by 1983 the Black poverty rate reached 25% . It was during the time of Reaganomics that Blacks went through a time of change on both the East and West Coast.

On the East Coast, there was a sense of equality at night clubs. “ More than anything the Roxy embodied a certain vision of what New York could be”(Chang,177). Night clubs, such as the Roxy, became ground where everyone came with nothing to hold back. People from all different backgrounds came to nightclubs on the east coast without any sense of danger. People were just allowed to let loose and not have to worry about their troubles. “ But the Roxy night always opened into a Reagan morning that was much more than a comedown” (Chang, 178). After the dancing was over for the night, classes returned and lower class citizens, which included a majority of Blacks and Latinos, had to return to their struggling reality. With Reagan’s Trickle down theory not being proven and Black unemployment and poverty rates soaring, minorities had to be able to work longer hours. This then made Hip hop need commercialism because more people had found a way to gain more income. In contrast to nightclubs gaining more popularity, graffiti was being more attacked transit police and “ On May 12,1989, the MTA declared that it achieved the ultimate bluff” (Chang 203). The MTA had stripped almost all trains from graffiti. In symbolism it was stating a stripping of Hip-hop branching out of where it started. Graffiti, being one of the pillars of Hip-hop, allowed people to make a name and let others see it. It was an art, but the rest of the world believe it was was just vandalism. If upper class people were riding trains with graffiti, there wasn’t a sense of safety, so the MTA made it a crime. Later on in Reagan’s America, there was an increase in police brutality. People like Michael Stewart became influences for the East Coast to say enough and fight back. This entire time, minorities fought back even harder with every step taken against them. They voiced themselves through graffiti and protest.

On the West Coast, students at U.C Berkeley were raising awareness of apartheid. “ The anti-apartheid movement represented the climax of a century” (Chang,215). All over the West Coast, students were creating protest to Reagan’s support of apartheid. The movement resembled what was happening here at home. Many students started to see the connection between themselves and the Blacks in South Africa. In addition, the West Coast was seeing a rise in drug use. As soon as cocaine or freebase was introduced to a community, there was little time available before entire families were destroyed and it became dangerous to walk around the corner. Drugs, being basically authorized by the government in secret ways, became widely available. However, the genre of Rap was on its own rise with  rappers like Ice T and Kid Frost. “ This was a new breed of renegades. The hip-hop generation had reached childhood’s end” (Chang, 211).

At some point, we've all been labelled something by society. Society tells us that we are one thing, and that is it. We are allowed no dimensionality. In this paper, I wanted to explore why that is. I wanted to create an in-depth look at how society treats people, and how they identify themselves. I also look at how we identify ourselves and how society identifies us effects where we feel we belong.

We’ve all been there. We’re talking with someone about something, and they say something controversial, something that goes against a tightly held belief. In that situation, we have to make an instant decision: do we speak up and risk starting a fight, or do we stay silent, and feel guilty but free of a confrontation? It’s a verbal fight-or-flight reaction. Either choice feels like a bad one. On the one hand, we want to stand up for our beliefs, but that could result in a loud, possibly explosive argument with the other person, whom we might really like. But, if we don’t stand up for those beliefs, we begin to question how dearly we hold them, even if we have believed in them since we were children. In some cases, mainly when we don’t like the person we are talking with, the choice is easy: we fight. We argue and defend our beliefs and allow passion to take us over. But what happens when it’s your childhood friend? Or a family member? We often choose to stay silent.

That silence is not a compromise of your beliefs. Humans, as a species, are designed for adaptation. We adapt to whatever situation we are in. This knack for adaptation applies also to our identity and how we display it. Though everyone will always display a few core values, our identity, as a whole, is a fluid thing. We allow different environments to pull different feelings and connections out of us. We pick and choose certain aspects of ourselves for certain situations. But that does not make the parts we did not choose any less a part of our identity. Human identity is built on a series of contradictions. Just because you are religious doesn’t mean you can’t believe and fight for gay rights. Just because you are a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t wear makeup and dresses. The thing is, society is often the thing that causes the different parts of our identity to clash. According to Dimitrov and Kopra:

Society prefers to operate with fixed identities - they help to divide people into groups, to 'push' the groups into separate "boxes" and computer files (hierarchical or nested into one another), to label these boxes and files with names, numbers and codes, and then to do with them all sorts of manipulations.

These fixed identities, which are often based in stereotypes, make it harder to find belonging in multiple places. Society wants everyone in boxes, because that makes us easy to categorize and deal with.

This categorization also leads to things like the hierarchies of race and the patriarchy that we deal with everyday. “Part of understanding our identity, therefore, means understanding how we fit in (or don’t) with other groups of people. It also means being aware of the fact that some groups have more social, political and economic power than others.” (The Critical Media Project) Because we have been sorted into boxes, each box must have a certain value, and that value comes in the currency of privilege. And American society has chosen to give the rich, straight, white man the most value, and, therefore, the most privilege. And with this privilege, they decided in what boxes other people belong in. Because I am a woman, I have less value than a man, but because I am white, I have more value than woman of color. And that is absolutely ridiculous. I am worth no more or no less than anyone else, and everyone else is worth no more or no less than me. But, because gender and race have come to correlate with value within our society, that is how we are perceived in our boxes.

Because society is constantly pushing us into boxes, we constantly feel conflicted about our identity and where we belong. According to Giddens:

Even those who would say that they have never given any thought to questions or anxieties about their own identity will inevitably have been compelled to make significant choices throughout their lives, from everyday questions about clothing, appearance and leisure to high-impact decisions about relationships, beliefs and occupations.

Society is constantly asking us to choose between various aspects of our identity. Are you girly or feminist? Do you believe in religion or evolution? But those choices are often impossible to make. Human identity and belong are robust, complex, and multifaceted. It can change, shift, and disguise itself, but it is alway full to the brim and bursting with societal contradictions. In the end, identity cannot be defined by anyone, and especially someone who is not you. Where you belong and how you define yourself are solely decisions that you can make. We were not meant to be put in boxes. And we really can’t let those boxes define us.

Works Cited

Dimitrov, Vladimir, and Kalevi Kopra. Dynamics of Human Identity. Dynamics of Human Identity. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://www.zulenet.com/vladimirdimitrov/pages/identity.html>.

Giddens, Anthony. "Www.theory.org.uk Resources: Anthony Giddens." Www.theory.org.uk Resources: Anthony Giddens. David Gauntlett, 2002. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens4.htm>.

My goal in this paper Is to focus on how you see yourselves vs how other people see you. they view literacy. I focused more on a personal experience to better express what I know and inform everyone real life issues people are going through. I am proud that I get to talk about an experience that I have struggled with personally. This paper is something that is very common nowadays and I wanted to get the point across that we live in a place where you get judge no matter what you look like or how you are their is always someone there to bring you down but you just have to ignore the others on what they say because you know who you are and that's all that matters.

“She is really shy,” are words the stick on me like glue. I hear it often, almost everywhere, especially inside my house or school. These words attack me like a monster who taunts the mind of a little kid watching a scary movie. How can people start rumors like this when they don’t even know the truth about me? In middle school, I was judged for being that kid who always raised their hand. They would try to discourage me by saying things like: “Stop being a teacher’s pet,” or “Stop being a nerd!” I tell people all the time to don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but they  do it anyway. No matter what I said they always continued with their abusive words they seem to mentally affect me.

“We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us,” said Virginia Satir who was an american writer who was known for her approach to family therapy . Yet I have seemed to allowed other people’s limited perceptions to define me. I stopped being the “nerd” and “teacher’s pet” and became popular because I changed my appearance. Once I did people wanted to know  who I really was as a person. It’s funny how words from another person can have such a huge impact on you and make you change the way they viewed yourself as a person. Often people do not allow you to express yourself without  judgement before you can even introduce yourself.

Today many people, maybe even most, talk to other people saying one thing about about you that is not true without you being able to tell them about yourself. “It’s taken my entire life to negotiate how to identify, and I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of studying,”  says Rachel Anne Dolezal during an interview. “I could have a long conversation, an academic conversation about that. I don’t know. I just feel like I didn’t mislead anybody; I didn’t deceive anybody. If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African American, but I would say I’m black, and there’s a difference in those terms.” She changed her appearance because that is how she defines herself. I look up to her in this way, she was judged by that but she did not let it get the best of her unlike how I let people’s judgement get the best of me.

“Research shows that we normally try to work out how we are viewed by others by thinking about how we view ourselves, then extrapolating from that. The problem with this approach is that to varying degrees we all suffer from an ‘egocentric bias: we think we’re at the center of the world and everything is about us. We shouldn’t be blamed for this — it’s a natural consequence of the fact that we’re locked inside our own head.” said Jeremy Dean from a blog on psychcentral.com. I tried to work out how I was view by changing my appearance to attract more attention, just so people could see the real me and what I was on the inside before I had glasses and I would always raise my hand so I changed that. I stopped wearing glasses even tho I could barely see, I started wearing makeup and stopped raising my hand. That’s when people began to notice me. More popular people began talking to me and suddenly I was one of them.

One day I went to my Aunt Carol’s house because she was having a block party for my cousin’s graduation party. I never met this her until that day because my immediate family didn’t know she existed until she contacted my dad. She told him that  since my grandpa had another kid after he and my grand-mom split up they never told my dad about it because they didn’t want him getting hurt because he was young and did not understand about them being apart. We got to her street and I noticed a lot of my friends from around my neighborhood were there, so I knew it was going to be a fun party. We went in her house, where she was cooking in the kitchen. When I walked in her living room, she rushed over to me before I could even say “Hello.” I didn’t really say much to her because I didn’t know what to say to her. As my dad introduced us, he said, “She is really shy.” I passively disagreed, because I’m really not a shy person. I just can’t start conversations with people I don’t really know, but this is not the only time people tell others I am shy.

A lot of people think I’m “shy” person, or a goody two shoes, because I like to get my work done in class and not talk during the process. However, that was before and this is now the way I define myself, which is totally different to how others define me. In middle school, I used to agree with the kids that didn’t have any idea who they were. I defined myself as a somewhat independent person, who just likes to get my work done on time. At school now, I’m known as a social person, but don’t often participate in class. I have this fear of getting judged of saying something stupid or wrong, so, instead, I just keep quiet. We live in a place where you get judge no matter what you look like or how you are their is always someone there to bring you down but you just have to ignore the others on what they say because you know who you are and that's all that matters.