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Identity And Personal Identity

Decent Essays

Identity is what makes a person who they are. It is a complex relationship between a person’s personality and their appearance. Personality can be broken down by how that person acts or feels. This aspect of identity can be impacted by mental health and disabilities. The appearance of a person can also be broken down by how a person looks and how they dress. Physical appearance can be impacted by genetics and outside influences; accidents, diseases, sickness, etc. With the combination of the two we have the third influence on a person’s identity, personal choice. Without one or the other the notion of personal choice would not be corrupted. How a person thinks and looks affects their life, which in turn, affects their personal choices. …show more content…

His mother’s physical and cultural identity impacted her personal decisions as she grew older. There is no accurate way to know what or why this was her personal choice. However, due to her living predicaments and the cultural influences around her, there is no denying that outside influence had some effect on her choices. As Eubanks grew up and had children of his own. He raised them in a household that talked openly about race and cultural identity (Eubanks 63). One of his children, Patrick, was fair skinned and had light brown hair. Eubanks explains that many people thought his son Patrick was adopted, some even insisting he was adopted (Eubanks 63). Yet, this did not impact his son who said after he found out about his DNA test results, “They don’t change the way I think of myself or the way I view the world” (Eubanks 63). Due to how Patrick was raised, he had a different view than Eubanks. Patrick was impacted very little by this because of how he was raised, and his cultural influences around him. Had he been raised differently, he might have thought otherwise or had a different view of his DNA test results. Since America has had exponential growth in multiracial children, the concept is race has become more complicated. As Eubanks wrote, “Racism is easy when only two races exist…Multiple and overlapping ethnicities (with none in the majority) make racism more difficult” (Eubanks 65). With this new-found generation and knowledge, it creates a new culture

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