Racial Identity: Blessing or Curse?
Today, in the United States, cultural and ethnic and racial sensitivity are all approached from the perspective of inclusiveness and equality. In that sort of social climate, the notion of racial identity has more positive connotations than negative ones, as everyone is encouraged to celebrate his or her heritage and to respect and value those of others. In that respect, racial identity is a positive thing that allows all of us to maintain a psychological familial connection to our ancestors and to our heritage in a positive way that adds value to our lives. However, racial identity is only beneficial when it is something of our own choosing and when we live in a society that values all people equally in that respect. It is quite another thing entirely when our racial identity is something that is foisted upon us, as members of a racial or ethnic minority, by members of the racial or ethnic majority, and when the only context of our racial identity is in connection with our being oppressed, discriminated against, and defined by others as second-class citizens without equal rights.
Both Zora Neal Hurston and Richard Rodriguez provide views of racial identity in entirely different contexts in which racial identity (especially in the case of Hurston) is something that is associated with only negative connotations. In her 1928 essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Hurston provides a heart-rending account of what racial identity meant in the negative sense during the lives of the first few generations of African-Americans living in post-slavery America. Writing almost 80 years later in his Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood (2007), Richard Rodriguez recounts a different type of negative experience in relation to racial and ethnic identity that deals with more subtle, yet still negative and sensitive aspects of living within a society where one's...
Clash of Identities Is a private identity a curse or a blessing? Is it necessary or valid to hide who you really are? According to "Aria: Memoir of a bilingual childhood" by Richard Rodriguez and "How it feels to be colored me" by Zora Hurston, creating a private identity and leaving your public identity behind, may be necessary, especially living, growing or entering an environment where it is not that accepting
pain when it comes to being different. In both Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" and Richard Rodriguez's " Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" the two writers discuss the differences they come upon that molded their principles and sentiments as they grew older. For Hurston hers was about being of a dissimilar race than her environment. For Rodriguez, his was about being different
Response Yes, technology generates problems, and it is shrewd and apt to point out that for every net gain to certain members of society via technology there is a net loss. The hand weavers of the 18th century were put out of business by 19th century factories that could manufacture clothing cheaply, computers have probably collectively caused the art of calligraphy to die, and made even professional writers overly reliant on
She is warm and straightforward, considerate and humble. She is not a hypocrite or a cheat, does not speak falsely and offers good advice in a prudent way and for the general welfare. She has a word and keeps it. She is modest in appearance and in manners. She respects others as she respects herself and keeps out of matters where she is not part of. She does not
Preface – Moral Leadership in an International Context South Africa - Johannesburg and Cape Town December 2018 – January 2019 Wow! What an adventure! This trip/course to South Africa with my Candler School of Theology comrades was a full bounty of knowledge and personal growth. The agenda set forth by our instructors Dr. Robert Franklin, Dr. Gregory Ellison, and Dr. Letitia Campbell was chock full of meetings and interviews with current moral leaders
A favorite target for conspiracists today as well as in the past, a group of European intellectuals created the Order of the Illuminati in May 1776, in Bavaria, Germany, under the leadership of Adam Weishaupt (Atkins, 2002). In this regard, Stewart (2002) reports that, "The 'great' conspiracy organized in the last half of the eighteenth century through the efforts of a number of secret societies that were striving for
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