The Impact Culture Has on Personal Identity in The United Stated of Essay

The Impact Culture Has on Personal Identity in The United Stated of America - Essay Example Due to the ethnical diversity in United States, the social cohesion is chiefly based on common social beliefs and values. Culture is a critical factor in shaping one’s identity. In this new era, there is interaction between the social media and the cultural identity. The cultural identity not only means an individual’s association in a particular group but also a social meshing of individuals copying and adopting the social customs presented by the media. An individual can be identified by the ethnic background. This refers to people who share a common heritage, culture or language. Owing to the ongoing racial favoritism and history in the United States of America, ethnicity carries a different meaning from the other countries. Various groups from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the pacific Islands have been looked down at as minor racial groups. The history of United States as a conqueror, slave society and settler and the informal and formal lettering of racism into t he law and social stratification strategy have added unto race a key identification function of the races in United States. This has been portrayed by both Wright and Rodriguez. According to the Jim Crow laws as indicated in Wright’s â€Å"The ethics of Jim Crow†, they seemed to separate the blacks and the whites since they did not portray equity. This inequality is indicated by Wright when he says that the black woman was beaten up for not having paid her bills and then dragged to the police station on the false accusation that she was drunk (Wright, 1937, pp.159). In 1980’s, the word â€Å"African American† was found to the most suitable for referring to anyone who had a colored skin regardless of the location of origin. This was intended to wipe away the racial differences that existed by then and were related to the historic view of â€Å"Black race†. The word Caucasian was also developed to refer to the people who came from the Middle East, Eu rope and the northern part of Africa. Nationality can also be used in personal identity. It refers to belongingness of a person to a certain state or nation that is always determined by their ethnicity, citizenship or their residence. An individual’s citizenship can be identified by naturalization or by birth. In the United States, people have been identified by the different nationalities they hold. The law states that an individual is free to change his nationality at will. This is what has greatly contributed to the many nationalities in the United States of America. In Richard Rodriguez ‘Aria: A memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, he tries to find his identity as a Mexican-American since he only knew how to speak Spanish. He only learns to write English when he joins school. The first sentence of the essay, his flash back â€Å"I remember, to start with, that day in Sacramento, in a California now nearly thirty years past, when I first entered a class room able to und erstand about fifty stray English words† (Rodriguez, pp. 447) The other children in his class identified him as an Hispanic. Race refers to an assortment system that is employed in sorting individuals into large and different groups by geographic ancestry, physical traits, ethnicity and inheritable phenotypic traits. Due to these

The role of technology Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The role of technology - Research Proposal Example According to him it is the driving force behind the major social and cultural adaptations. This paper seeks to evaluate the various technological factors that affect a great deal in altering the social structure and cultural trends. The facets where these factors bring evident alteration are also identified and explored and discussed in this study. Culture does not have a stringent definition. It is rather more of a concept which defines the collective practices, perceptions and doings of individuals constituting a social group. The magnitude of a social group while defining culture varies to all extents. It might be a culture within an organization, a city/town or a whole nation. What holds importance is the common ground that gives birth to a particular trend in culture. However, the trends and extension of culture is not the point of relevance here. What this paper attempts to evaluate is that how changes are brought in a culture and what are the channels which bring these changes as well the facets where these changes are felt the most. We can trace the effects of technology on culture through history but the study focuses the effect of technology on culture in the current scenario. Internet, email, television and mobile phones are some of the aspects that have revolutionized the way we think, act and live our lives in the past few decades. Now man is no more bounded by limitation in any facet of life. He has got access to any place, individual or happening since things now are just a few clicks away and very easy to approach. These inventions were just not mere creations which were going to be totally replaced by some other thing later on. On the other hand, they have developed into mediums which are now borrowing heavily from even the slightest of cultural trends and social needs. These inventions have progressed and developed themselves to be tools which have got their own self prevailing mechanisms. They tune themselves towards the needs of the public and boomerang them back to the society after injecting them with self formulated mechanisms. The impact of internet in reshaping our social and communal lives has been vastly debated by L. Siegel (2009) in his work Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and Commerce": And Why It Matters. He comments that everything from every day living to shopping and business has been modified itself according to the web. Results & Discussions The modern day technology has grasped all of us in a way that we can not opt to live outside its sphere. Individual independence along with knowledge and awareness has considerably increased. The speed and accuracy for things have remarkably increased along with the ease in handling stuff. On a general level, people are becoming more and more alienated from social groupings and getting confined to their own zones. Each person is equipped and occupied with his own virtual world and real time interaction and actions have