3001 WK10 ASSGN
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Apr 3, 2024
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All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection All the Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection on Cultural Identity Bachelor of Social Work, Walden University SOCW 3001: Diversity and Multiculturalism All The Parts of Me:
All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection A Self-Reflection on Cultural Identity Authors Note: This self-reflection is to reflect the way I identify with the cultures and subcultures that intersect to make me a person. For reference I am a twenty-eight-year-old, American born, cis-female, presenting as Caucasian with Hispanic and Indigenous roots. I have no physical disabilities but am riddled with chronic pain and gastrointestinal issues. I have mental health disorders (Anxiety, Depression, History of and current possession of an Eating Disorder(s), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and hold Over Compulsion Disorder tendencies). I would consider myself neurodivergent. I do not subscribe to any one particular religion but stay open to learning about different religions. I am a bi-sexual woman, married to a Caucasian straight cis-male, and we live in the middle-class income tier according to research performed by Bennett et. al., with The Pew Research Center (2020). At the start of this course, I was, admittedly, a little overconfident due to this being my fourth cultural education class in my academic career. I was excited to learn more information about cultures that I belong to and those that differ from my own and thought this class could shed some light on new information. It absolutely did! However, rather than learning more about other cultures, this class offered the opportunity to look inwards and reflect on how I as a student and a person, relate to particular cultures, values, and how we want to identify or relate to them. Self-Defined
I would define myself culturally as a twenty-eight-year-old married cis-woman and mother to a beautiful seven-year-old-son. I have no ties to religion and hold no judgement to those that do. I am Caucasian presenting but have my ethnic roots in Hispanic and Indigenous cultures. I have no physical disabilities but struggle with constant pain, lethargy, and gastrointestinal issues, and have several mental health disorders that I put effort into managing every day. I am a student, parent, employee, dog and cat owner, gardener, yogi, and reader, due to the placement of my priorities within our family structure, we are mostly a single-income household, that is fortunate enough to live in the middle-class income level. All of these and many more factor into the intersectionality that created my consciousness, personality, and morals, that make me who I am as a person. Home Life
. As a wife and a mother, I run the interior of our household and ensure my child participates in fun activities both physically and mentally. A lot of my time is spent cleaning, doing laundry, grocery shopping and cooking, and entertaining our eleven-month-old dog. I prioritize a clean home with plenty of food and access to clean clothing as those items were scarce when I was growing up and because I am financially able to provide those to my own child, I want him to grow up in a safe home always knowing there is a stable source of food that he can rely on. My childhood experiences shaped the way I parent my own child. My husband is a reliable and loving man that will be stable in both our son’s life and my own. He is a great
All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection partner to share life with. However, as I have the opportunity to not have to work full-time and most of my labor is all domestic, I have put myself in an income-poor situation where I am solely reliant on my spouse's income to support our household. He supports us with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle which is greatly appreciated but does leave me feeling insufficient as I am not providing family finances, nor do I have any personal funds. With that said, I have lived in many different socioeconomic levels throughout my life and know that I hold the strength to survive any financial situation. My associations with these identities have provided me with a happy, comfortable, and stable home life. They have also come with some challenges. For instance, I identify as a bisexual woman, and am married a straight cis-male. The negative being that I am not widely accepted in the LGBTQIA community as I appear straight, nor am I accepted by everyone in the straight community as I am not fully straight, which has led to some issues with sexual orientation identity. However, I have enough inter-strength to understand the positives in my life outweigh any need to be accepted by others. Ethnicity
. I have a truly diverse ethnic genetic makeup; I present as Caucasian, and it is assumed that I experience white privilege from my presentation. There are definitely occasions I could point to as examples but would not paint me in the best light, due to the situations I experienced it in. However, with the privilege I have experienced from how I look, I have been visually shunned out of acknowledgement and belonging to the ethnicities I am from. Both Hispanic and Indigenous peoples do not think I appear in a way that identifies with them,i.e., not having a dark enough complexion, dressed the “right” way, or the ability to speak in a native language, to be considered part of their culture. The denial of acceptance from cultures I thought I belonged to, led me to believe that I had no ethnicity or culture since I didn’t fit in. However, now I know that I can relate to values from the cultures and relate to them in my own way, whether or not I am accepted by them, and value that as a personal strength. Gender and Sex in America
. Being a woman born in American is much different than being male. I was born female and identify and present a such. It is not as easy as being a man but seems easier that being born inter-sex and having my parents choose my sex at birth, as it could lead to many childhood and adult identity issues later in life (Fujimura, 2006; Amato, 2016)
. I’ll revisit my statement and adjust it to how I experience life, it is easiest to be a white man in American, then comes financially successful AAPI (Americans and Pacific Islanders) and POC (People of Color), then white women, minority women, and the most difficult life is people in poor minorities, especially African American men. Which has been shown time and time again that even life expectancy in American for black men is much younger than white men (Kaufman et. al., 2019). While I will never experience life as a black or white male, I can only imagine the difference in quality of life from published academic papers and other accredited media presentations. Plus, as this paper is about intersectionality, there are many other aspects in life that would contribute to the persons’ quality of life.
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All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection Abilities. My movement through life depends on my body and its abilities. I have no diagnoses of physical disabilities but do live with chronic pain and frequent gastrointestinal issues. The lack of diagnoses was stressful for me throughout most of my life, I felt my pain was discounted by every doctor even when I was keeled over and unable to walk at twenty-five-
years-old. My medical chart is heavy in the mental and behavioral health sections as I do consciously work through several disorders on a daily bias. I experience self-doubt and have trouble accepting that I am worthy of the space I take up. Which directly relates to my eating issues as I have always thought if I were small enough then there would always be room for me in people’s lives, but over
-restriction always leads to bingeing past the point of pain. The analogy of holding one’s breath under water and gasping for air as soon as they break through the surface of the water has been a helpful description of the challenge. I would consider myself neurodivergent as I can find many different solutions for problems that other people may not think of, as I am coming to the situation with a lot of varying life experiences and am hyper-
aware of how words and messages can affect people, which I think speaks to my strengths. Pre-course assumptions and post-course reflections.
Assumptions are thoughts I tend to stay away from unless I have reliable data to source from. For instance, I’d assume that at least one person and dog will be at the dog park when we go. That is my assumption because, every weekday morning from 8am to 9:30am, there is the same group I meet up with and our dogs play together. That has been going on for about five or six months now, so my assumption is based on my own lived experiences, which I find reliable. Assumptions or pre-dispositions to or about cultural groups seem inappropriate to me as a variety of factors, or sections, make up a person, and assuming they’d be one way because they belong to a group is buying into a stereotype in my opinion. Throughout the course I recorded personal video reflections regarding the cultures we learned about each week. In which I was asked to report assumptions, biases, and challenges that could arise while working with said group. Thankfully, when reviewing my older videos, I was glad to see that I was standing behind my values in each one, not buying into stereotypes or biases, except for here and there assuming that a particularly discriminated against group should be shown extra loving respect. The challenges I spoke of foreseeing when working with particular groups was all in relation to ensuing my language is adapted towards them through respectful code-switching, and I present to them in a way that respects their cultural values and morals, which is something I will be spending personal time continuing to learn about. Cultural Competency Continuing Education.
Through the sciences of Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology, we can see that people and groups of people evolve and think differently over time. Because individuals influence not only their own lives, but those within their micro and mezzos' communitie
s, one’s changing thought process could influence a group to think that same, new way. Once a group is acting and thinking in a particular way, they could be referred to as a small group or subculture. Then each and every person within that group starts the spread of information through their own micro and mezzos communities and so on and so
All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection forth. As this is happening it could impact and influence changes in a culture or community. Therefore, any social work should be continuing to keep up with trends and cultural values, morals, and thought processes that are constantly evolving with humanity. One way to continue learning and gaining skills in cultural competency, is to take online learning courses provided through the National Association of Social Workers’ website, to ensure they are accredited and verified for the particular focus of work (NASW, n.d.). Another way is to interact with varying client demographics and learn from clients and their personal relation to particular values within their own culture (Anderson et. al., 2010). I have learned a lot about others and myself and can say I am proud of the work I produced during this course. I have a better sense of how and why I relate to particular moral values and why others with differing values believe they hold the real truth. The best part of the many varying cultures in our country is that when approached with kindness and respect, we can all learn and grow from each other, for a better society. References: Anderson, E. S., Smith, R., & Thorpe, L. N. (2010). Learning from lives together: medical and social work students' experiences of learning from people with disabilities in the community. Health & social care in the community, 18(3), 229
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240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2524.2010.00921.x
All The Parts of Me: A Self-Reflection Amato, V. (2016). The Intersex Movement of the 1990s: Speaking Out Against Medical and Narrative Violence. In Intersex Narratives: Shifts in the Representation of Intersex Lives in North American Literature and Popular Culture
(pp. 55
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102). Transcript Verlag. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1xxrsz.6 Bennett, J., Fry, R., & Kochhar, R. (2020, July 23). Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator
. Pew Research Center. Retrieved May 4, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-
class/ Kaufman, J. S., Riddell, C. A., & Harper, S. (2019). Black and White Differences in Life Expectancy in 4 US States, 1969-2013. Public Health Reports (1974-)
, 134
(6), 634
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642. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26839693
Fujimura, J. H. (2006). Sex Genes: A Critical Sociomaterial Approach to the Politics and Molecular Genetics of Sex Determination. Signs
, 32
(1), 49
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82. https://doi.org/10.1086/505612 National Association of Social Workers (NASW). (n.d.). NASW-Approved CE Courses
. NASW - National Association of Social Workers. Retrieved May 4, 2022, from https://www.socialworkers.org/Careers/Continuing-Education/CEPortal
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