American Identity

A single country in the world attempting to unite not just a state of different tribe, but a nation of them; White and black, Christian and Muslim, to name a minute of nomenclatures (Vance, 2016). Yet, America, since long before its inception, has had a serious problem with race. The current projections indicate that the…

In his book, Culture and Imperialism, Said brings us many insightful and provoking ideas. However, among all the concepts and discussions he presented, the one that most caught my attention was his statement that there is no such a thing as ‘purity”. If we consider the core definition of this word as “the condition or…

Identity has become very prominent in American culture in recent years. What one looks like; where one comes from; and how one talks, are the superficial indices that many use to peg one into one group or another. However, what many do not take into account is that identity is not something that comes so…

Barefoot Heart is a distinctively told personal account of the life of Elva Trevino Hart’s childhood and growing up in a family of migrant workers. Her story brings to life the day-to-day experiences of people confronting the impediments of working within the fields. She also accounts for the environment that her family was raised in…

How many phases of life do you have to go through to figure out truly how you identify yourself? Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a novel called “The Namesake” that is based on a boy struggling with his identity in being born American with Indian ancestry. It starts off with how his parents migrated to the United…

“Let us strive,” stated Professor James Woodburn at an address to the Indiana State Teachers’ Association in the midst of World War I, “to save America from being a polyglot nation – a conglomeration of tongues and nationalities, like a polyglot boardinghouse” (Ramsey, 20). The question of language and minority rights is both historically and…

What does being an American mean to you? When you search “what is an American” on the internet, it is defined as “relating to or characteristic of the United States or its inhabitants” and “a native or citizen of the United States.” Being an American or having an American Identity doesn’t just mean that you’re…

There are numerous examples of mass number of the electorate leaving one party and opting for another. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that in 2015 almost 25% of young Americans who branded themselves Republican or conservative leaning abandoned their party for the Democrats (Jukam, 2017). Party attachment is a concept that…

Stereotype threat is the phenomenon of which, when members belonging to a certain social group, feel a sense of pressure in a social situation to conform to one or multiple negative stereotypes concerning their particular social group (Pennington, C. R., Heim, D., Levy, A. R., & Larkin, D. T., 2016). This particular paper shall examine…

People cannot help the way others perceive the way they talk or how they look. In fact, in today’s society, people often judge others only glancing at them once, especially if this person is a foreigner. Yet it is up to the individuals to let others influence one’s identity. The people that surround you in…