Cultural Identity Paper

Being asked to determine my own ethnicity, o should first of all underline how difficult it is to understand the sense of ethnicity or race not only for an individual, but for scientists as well. There is still much debate about how to narrow or broaden the definition of the term, and discussion actively goes on. In fact, the term ‘ethnicity’ is relationally new, it began to run only in 1970s, but now it is one of the crucial parts of the sociological imagination. It is, moreover, widely used in policy and political discourses, but still there is much unclear. In general, belonging to some certain ethnicity is actually defined by a range of features contributing to both inclusion and exclusion, like in any other group associated with cultural identity. It means that, on the one hand, you have something in common with other representatives of the group, and thus you search integrity and solidarity. On the other hand, your group is opposed to other groups and is distinguished from them by a number of indicators.
Typically, one ethnic group (which is the same as ethnicity) is associated with identification oneself through a common heritage, linguistics, culture, religion and behavioral traits. What is more, many anthropologists who derive from the biological understanding of ethnicity bound the term of ethnic identity to geographical factor. We should be rather careful with the latter, as it doesn’t mean that the ethnic group is strictly associated with the place where they were born or where they live at the moment. The question is where the roots go and how far they stretch and we cannot deny these details, as to a great extent they determine other significant factors like appearance and behavioral principles dominating in an ethnic group, no matter where it is located at the moment of approach.
Next, it is essential to learn social conditions under which the significance of ethnic identities becomes sensed in social action. Hence, there is a need to study historical, social, political and cultural background of a group to understand its ethnicity. The question refers to both material and spiritual heritage, so there are a lot of identifiers assisting us in solving the scholar problem.
If I take to account all the statements gathered above, I would be close to understand what it means to be African American for me. History has forced my predecessors to leave their motherland, and with each generation our connection with the African continent may seem to weaken and faint gradually. On the one hand, it is really so, as there is absolutely another country where we live, where we fight for appraisal, where we love and hate, and where we have to die. We have received new motherland, and it would be not rational to deny that we are already sons and daughters of America. We cannot be refused this right, as history of the United States is complicated enough to have no strict answer what it is like to be American. There can be no pure Americans, and the Native Americans are too few in number to be taken as a reference point. Most of the Americans are immigrants of this or that historical period, even if they are described as settlers or conquerors, the sense will not change. In this way, contemporary Blacks are just one of the paints in the saturated ethnic palette of the United States society. That is why the U.S. society is regarded as multicultural and ethnicity has special meaning here.
On the other hand, we have a strong feeling of our roots, and we are not going to forget about them. Our African historical past has formed our identity, and due to it we are who we are. From generation to generation we are leant to be conscious of our identity, despite all the calamities we face, despite persecution, discrimination, racism and some inferiority complex which has been cultivated in us by the Whites for centuries. We have gained recognition, and that is a great thing to be proud of. The revival of Black culture, from cults and customs, from songs and dance to poetry and scholar research, has shown that ethnicity is something impossible to bury and something strong enough to jostle for position. As in early Greek works (by Herodotus and others), the key component of ethnic identity is kinship, and we truly go on calling each other brothers and sisters, especially when we are opposed to other communities.