Understanding My Identity: It Is More Than My Race and Gender

I believe that I am in the identity developmental stage of expanded sense of identity. I recognize that my identity is not limited to one particular aspect; however, it is filled with multiple factors. My identity consists of that of an African-American female, since that is my ethnicity and gender. The African-American culture has been the most influential in my life. My husband and one of my best friends are of the Native American cultures and they also have a strong influence on which I consider myself to be.

I have been influenced by Caucasians, since the majority of my life I have lived around them. People of the Islamic religion have had a great impact on the person that I am today because I am a Muslim. All around plain good people of all different nationalities, geographic locations, backgrounds, and cultures have all had a strong influence on my current identity. I always take something positive from everyone that crosses my path and I try to incorporate it into my own life.

I have also considered myself to be in the clarified identity stage as well as the use of clarified identity to achieve social change stage. I understand who I am, so when a person confronts me on either a positive or negative aspect of myself I am able to accept their opinion. I feel that constructive criticism only helps me to grow stronger. I strongly believe that hearing the truth about ourselves is apart of life and it is a way to help us to become better people. I also believe that I have been actively able to create social change. I work with children and often times they may say something discriminating against one another because of differences in race, ethnicity, or gender. I try to make sure that the child knows that what they are saying is wrong and that everyone was not created the same. I explain how boring the world would be if everyone looked alike. This approach usually works. However, I strongly feel that it is up to the parents to instill tolerance into their child. I have also had to prove to people who have had prejudices against me because of my race, gender, or where I am from that I too am a human and a pretty cool one at that. I have been successful at turning prejudgments about myself around.

I have to say that I have gone through every single stage in order throughout my twenty-three years of life. I started out with an unexamined identity. It wasn't important to me. If my mother said I was a good child I believed it, if someone said that I was a bad child then I believed that too. If my brother said something mean about me I accepted that. When I was in elementary school I started to search for my identity and figure out whom I really was. Once I began to learn about slavery and desegregation and all that the people of my race had to go through so that I could live as a human being; I began to devalue other people's ethnicity because I felt that African-American's had been degraded in this country. I began to blame the majority of African-American problems on the "White Man".

However, I soon began to learn that people have created their own problems and even though some of the problems my race holds was influenced by the Caucasian race it cannot hold us down forever. Once I began to realize this I began to have a clarified identity and then it became expanded. Now I use my identity to achieve societal change.

An awareness that I can recall was when I moved to Lakewood, Colorado in the second grade. I had never seen a Mexican in my entire life and I was fascinated at how pretty and different this girl was in my class. Her name was Tonya; we became best friends. I remember coming home from school one day and trying to describe her to my mother. I soon learned that she was a Mexican and I became very interested in her culture. I soon realized that there were more people like her, many more. Another "ah-ha" moment that I can recall was when I went to a Historically Black College in Daytona Beach, Fl. I had never been around so many different kinds of African-Americans from so many different places. I had assumed that everyone would be basically the same with only limited differences between us. However, I was in for a rude awakening. People from New York and Arkansas were very different. People from Chicago and L.A. were also very different. The style of clothing, language, music, and personalities were so different that it made college even more enjoyable than I had expected. At this moment I realized that I had been stereotyping my own race.

My cultural background pie consists of a Muslim African-American 23 year-old female in Littleton, CO. I feel that my community is for the most part accepting of who I am. However, there are many times that I also feel that I am not accepted. People look at me different because I cover my hair and what they hear on the television about Muslims as being terrorists. I often times get outrageous questions asked about myself. I feel that some of the opportunities are not easy for me to get, as they would be a person of a different race or religion. My style of dress intimidates people sometimes or they feel uncomfortable around me. However, I feel that America is doing a much better job of being tolerant of each other's differences. I feel that Muslims and African-Americans take up a small portion of the population in Colorado. For this reason their aren't many Mosques as there are churches or their aren't as many Afro-centric stores, museums, or restaurants as there would be in other places with more diverse cultures. In high school we were not educated on the African-American culture but for only a week or two at a time versus the Caucasian history which was taught year-round.

Often times I run into people who really haven't been outside of the state or they are unaware of other people's cultures and it is very hard to relate to these types of people. They do not understand that there is a different world filled with so much more than what they see outside of their bedroom windows. I feel that often time's people do not hold the same moral values as I do with myself. So to try to have intelligent conversations with someone who habitually drinks alcohol, curses, or degrades their self is almost impossible to me. I like to be around people who see beauty in the world and understand who they are and understand their self worth. If a person in unable to accept who they are and try to be someone else or try to hide the person that they really are then it is hard for me trust them.