Personal Narrative: My Racial Identity

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My racial/ethnic identity I choose to acknowledge and practice is African-American. Although my father calls us "mutts", a mixture of various ethnicities, such as African-American, Chicataw (Choctaw) Indian and Caucasian (Irish). Unfortunately, I do not know the percentages of each, however, I have decided to look into it in the near future.

When I was in third grade I became aware of my African American identity when a Caucasian boy said "you are pretty for a black girl." Although a young girl who was being raised in a family that had both light and dark skinned people, there were never any distinctions of beauty made between the skin tones. That day I shared with my mother the comment and she responded "girls of all races are pretty and …show more content…
One day I decided to share my mother's words and the dark skinned girls actually became friendlier. Until that day I had felt sad for those girls but would later come to realize their attitudes had been learned from mothers who for whatever reason did not promote all girls are pretty as did my mother.

My African American identity has played a great role thus far in my life. The many facts about my families’ history, the struggles that were endured and the triumphs, which are all a testament to a family and culture filled with resilient people. I try to encourage my children by re-telling the stories and pray they will be proud as well as want to continue to improve and further our family traditions and the African American people by doing well.

My social activities have been affected, as I choose to socialize predominately with and promote the causes of African Americans by volunteering and participating on various charities that raise awareness and offer scholarships for youth which will help further their education. As well as my membership in the NAACP, whose mission is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based …show more content…
For the most part the Caucasians were always very pleasant to my family. However one neighbor demonstrated a negative attitude toward us, prejudice and had no qualms about what she said or did that could be labeled as ethnocentrism. My husband and I often said we are the minority and looked forward to other African Americans moving onto the block. Now 21 years later, there is one other African American family.

The benefits of my identifying with the African American culture is that it is reflected in so many areas, such as faith, art, music, food, style, hair and business, all of which I support, have benefited from and encourage my children and others to support whenever possible.

While on maternity leave with my first daughter, we purchased our home and when I returned to work, the first thing that was said was not "congratulations on your baby girl" but "how can you afford to purchase a house." This comment came from my own people, who were professionals and intelligent or so I thought. However they were exhibiting characteristics of a lack of social mobility and institutional discrimination in their
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