Ethnicity and cultural identity is a major issue caused by cultural differences in our society today. Ethnic and cultural differences arise when people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds interact with each other. Culture is reflected through traditional ideas as well as values, and our response to various situations in life . Culture is deeply rooted in race and, as a result, different races have different ways of reacting to various situations such as parenting. This paper will examine the African American community in relation to our values, norms and beliefs and the role played by my immediate environment and my family, in the creation of my cultural and ethnic identity.
I am an African American female student from Jamaica who recently moved to Fort Lauderdale in Florida with my family. This includes my grandmother, my parents, as well as my siblings and a few cousins. In Jamaica, we take care of the elderly and the youth, a culture we intend to keep. We are also very religious and am a staunch Christian of the Pentecostal church, and so is the rest of my family. The new environment has no impact on my religious beliefs since I still strongly believe in the Holy Ghost. My parents did not attend college, making me a first generation college student. My parents are strongly against alcohol, but I love drinking over the weekends. College life in Florida has influenced some of my values since I find this a norm among the other college students. Peer pressure is also a major factor since for the first time in my life I have to live on my own without supervision from my parents. My parents belong to the upper middle class and are financially stable. Having owned two cars, I would like to think myself privileged, yet I would rather spare money instead of spending it on luxuries such as hair and clothing. Preserving is deeply rooted in our culture from a past after having experienced scarcity somewhere in the course of our African American history. Some members of our community are still living in extreme poverty. While am in harmony with the college culture, my family still insists on holding to the past and the strong belief against the consumption of alcohol.
Being an African American female poses challenges of discrimination from the white community. The whites see us differently even those of us who are second generation citizens. I am constantly get the feeling that am unwanted among the whites and treated with discrimination. The entire system treats the blacks as non-equals to the whites, and the system fails to acknowledge the injustices that the blacks are subjected to . This is portrayed through the cross cultural services that the blacks are subjected to. The whites do not view the blacks as part of them despite the amount of time one has lived in America, or how excellent their accent is. The social Americans and Latino Americans.
Parenting can cause a major challenge especially when two cultures come into play leading to a cultural conflict. These challenges can however be overcome with the use of certain parenting strategies. Black parents are faced with a heavy task of creating an environment that is safe for their children despite the element of racism. Parents feel the need to protect their children from stereotypes and negative attitudes. Black parents prepare their children for racism by creating awareness to the children on the concept of racism. The black family is also very supportive of their family. Parents also use strategies such as encouraging their children to be passive. This can be achieved by increasing the children’s cognition on their ethnicity. This can be made possible through reinforcement of unity among afro Americans by reducing conflicts among themselves. Parents should also not deny a child’s ethnic identity but instead they should affirm their ethnic identity and help the child to create a positive image of their ethnic identity. Racial awareness is a process that takes a number of processes which include classification through labels, racial identification which is an understanding of the implication of the term race to themselves and eventually racial evaluation, where they form certain perspectives of their race. While some children are known to have a low self-esteem, others have proved to have a very high self-esteem of themselves depending on how race self-esteem is imparted.
African American students are less privileged since the American academic learning style does not correspond with their culture. This often leads to oppression and failure among the African Americans students. The United States learning style is typically white, and students who fail to adapt are subject to academic failure. While Native Americans respond to oral and visual modes of learning as well as individualistic modes of learning such as competition, African Americans respond to relational learning styles. Poverty experienced among the black community can cause trauma to the children resulting in tendencies of violence, failure or acting in a manner that does not correspond to one’s age. Failure to identify these symptoms and their causes may have adverse effects on the life of the child. This was the case of Milani, a 2nd grader who resulted to violent behavior as a result of a traumatized mother and an alcoholic aunt . Through narrative therapy she was able to become better.
The black community parenting is deeply rooted in the church with the use of spirituality as form of therapy. Spirituality is a form of therapy against the impact of discrimination which is referred as a sacred process . Most African American parents have taught their children to turn to the church and more so the black church where they can engage their feelings on racial discrimination. This culture has gone on for a very long time among the African Americans and it has continued to be passed on from one generation to another. The black community parenting encourages their children to turn to the church as a source of hope from the adverse discrimination that the black kids face continually from the white community. Blacks especially the black woman are deeply rooted in the church. The black community encourages their children to join the church in order to protect them from other effects of racism such as nihilism . The black church is a representation of the black religious values which give the blacks a sense of wholeness and where they are able to exist without the constant interruptions by the white culture. Parents in the black community are aware that they can only do so much to protect their children from racism. They have instead resolved to spirituality in order to overcome the challenges of being black among the white community . This parenting style acts as a means of keeping children away from urges of fighting for social justice which at times result in violence.
In conclusion the immediate environment has a limited amount of impact on my cultural and ethnic identity as compared to the amount of impact from my immediate family. While my family chooses to keep all our values and beliefs and norms intact, college life has changed my ethnic identity since I have adopted drinking over the weekend, a habit my family strongly disagree with. Despite the move from Jamaica to Lauderdale, we are still strong Christian believers and we still live with our grandmother and some of our cousins. The African American culture has strong values about taking care of the elderly as well as the young in the society. The black community especially the youth are often faced with trauma as a result of various effects of their immediate environment such as poverty. Through therapy and proper self-awareness programs these challenges can be overcome to give the black child a better chance at surviving discrimination. The American culture limits our privileges through discrimination in the offering of services to the blacks as well as a system which is inconsiderate of the black community such as the academic system which is only friendly to the Native American.
References
Dei, G. J., & Kempf, A. (2006). Anti-colonialism and education : the politics of resistance. Rotterdam : SensePublishers.
Diller, J. V. (2013). Cultural Diversity: A Primer for the Human Services. Stamford: Cengage Learning.
Smith, D. T., Jacobson, C. K., & Juárez, B. G. (2011). White parents, black children : experiencing transracial adoption. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
