What do you identify as your national background, racial group, and ethnic identity? In what geographic region were you reared?

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Write a paper examining your cultural identity and its impact on your life and interactions with others in terms of the following questions. Please be sure to explicitly address all the questions in each section. Papers should flow as a narrative story rather than a question and answer format.

Information about me: I’m a African American male, I’m from Chicago, Illinois. You can make everything else up!!

Instructions:

Sections 1 – 9 will provide details for each section along with questions to address throughout your paper.

Section 1: Race, Ethnicity, Geography, and National Origin

What do you identify as your national background, racial group, and ethnic identity? In what geographic region were you reared?
Are you the product of a rural or urban environment?
What values are typical of that region?
Where did your ancestors come from?
Why and how did you or your ancestors come to the United States? In what ways did you/they adjust to this new home?
What aspects of your/their culture of origin were retained?
What impact does this way of entering the United States and the subsequent adjustment have on your culture? On your identity?

Section 2: Religion and Spirituality

What was your religious affiliation (if any) during your childhood? How did this come to be in your family?
How are conflicts due to religious values resolved?
What do you think this religious preference reflects about your heritage/culture
What is your religious/spiritual affiliation now (if any)? If it has changed, how did that transformation happen?

Section 3: Gender and Sexuality

What are your gender and sexual orientation? How are gender and orientation differences handled in your family of origin?
How is sexism in your culture addressed?
What behaviors, characteristics, beliefs, and values are defined by gender in your culture?
How are gender roles divided? How is conflict between gender roles handled? What are some specific rules for marriage and child-rearing in your culture?

Section 4: Age and Accessibility

What is your age? Consider your interactions with your peers. Consider interactions with those in your age group. Give two examples of how you treat those the same age as your children or younger; your parents; your grandparents or older.
How does your age affect your experience in your family of origin?
How has your degree of ability and accessibility shaped you as a person?

Section 5: Class and Geography

What is the socioeconomic history of your family?
What role or meaning does socioeconomics have for people with backgrounds like yours?
If your socioeconomic history is different now, how did that transformation happen?
What were music, art, and clothing preferences like in your family of origin?
What were the political preferences of your family of origin?
How did this come to be in your family?
What do you think this political preference reflects about your heritage/culture
What is your political preference now? If it has changed, how did that transformation happen?

Section 6: Personal Relationships

Think of significant people in your life when you were a child/adolescent (i.e. parents/guardians, close relatives, teachers, clergy, siblings, etc.).
What do you remember about their attitudes and feelings toward multicultural and diverse populations?
How were racism, heterosexism, genderism, ageism, classism, etc. addressed?
What did you overhear them saying about multicultural and diverse groups?
Who determined the “social norms” and “rules” of your family? How were they enforced? How were they passed to younger members of the family/group?
What events can you remember that involved personal contact with diverse groups? What were/are your thoughts, feelings, and reactions?
How many of your close, long-time friends were members of multicultural and diverse groups? In what ways, if any, were these friendships different from other friendships you have with friends who reflect your own cultural groups?
What significant events have affected your family and those closest to you?

Section 7: Group Membership

When did you first become aware that you were a member of each of the groups that have shaped your identity, whether you chose to embrace or reject those aspects?
Please add any other information you think is pertinent to your cultural identity.

Section 8: Structure/organization of paper

Introduction

Introductory text for the entire paper goes here.

Race, Ethnicity, Geography, and National Origin