Me, Myself and I

In the last article, the most interesting point of view to me was the excercise the author did with her pyschology class. I remember learning in sociology class some of the dominant identities in America. Knowing this, I guess I still never realized that when the dominant group describes themselves, they do leave out the obvious dominant traits. If I was asked to describe myself, I would be lying if I said I would say I'm white. Mentioning that wouldn't have crossed my mind, except for now that the article talked about it. When I actually think about this exercise, it makes me feel sympathetic towards the students who mentioned their specific race, sexual orientation, age or gender. This sympothy is caused by the fact that in her article she says, "The parts of our identity that do capture our attention are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us." This sentence bothers me because to me it's saying that we identify ourselves by the non-dominant characteristics that others notice about us. By no means am I saying that any of these possible non-dominant characteristics are bad, but if a white person doesn't feel the need to mention his/her race, why should anyone else? I understand that we have a tendency to do this because our society thinks highly of certain identities are disgustingly of others depending on the person or group of people. I know this isn't going to change over night and I don't even know if it will ever change but the reality of that sentence just really bothers me.

The importance of someone's identity is to help differentiate them from the other six billion people in the world. However, sometimes these differences can cause problems. At first, women were deprived of a lot of opportunities such as voting, jobs and school. We are not completely equal with guys today but we are a lot closer than we used to be. African Americans were once used as slaves and were also deprived many opportunities like being able to use the same water fountain as a white person. African Americans are almost treated as equally as white people, there are still a handful of people in America that discrimate and are racist. Another identity that has been discriminated against and still is, is a person's sexual orientation. The first article mentioned how LGBT members were once considered to be mentally ill. Today, some states allow same sex marriages. All of these identities are still discriminated against to a degree but not as much as they used to be. I think community service is a great equalizer for all of us. When we all get together to put forth our efforts to the greater good, our identities are put aside for that moment in time.