LITERATURE

Identity



Identity

What is an Identity?

Identity can be defined from two perspectives. It can be described from the social aspect and the personal aspect. In the former sense identity can be referred to as a social category that is individuals who are tagged by a label and are said to be distinguished by a set of rules that decide their membership, their features or their attributes rather. In the second sense identity can be referred to as a distinguishing or a differentiating characteristic or a set of characteristics that an individual has pride on and perceives it as socially consequential but simultaneously unchangeable.

Every individual belongs to a certain race, religion and precisely a heritage. These factors aid an individual in identifying his roots as well as have the opportunity to connect to his past. It aids in cultural development which directly results in shaping an individual's pride. When one ponders over his past one is able to develop a self concept and at the same time is able to develop a roadmap of where one wants to be in the future. The shared heritage aids in appreciating the richness as well as the convolution of one's identity. Knowing that other individuals also share the same heritage induces a feeling of belongingness and a sense of direction of what one ought to do.

Dreams of my Father by Barack Obama

The theme of heritage is very much apparent in the autobiographical memoir of Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. Barack's biracial background has been the causal factor behind the identity crisis. During his mothers marriage Barack was enrolled as a Muslim to a Muslim school and then to a catholic school. In the Muslim school his teachers complained that Barack use to make faces and then in the catholic school he would pretend to close his eyes but used to try peeking around the room to see if angels actually descended when one prays. This aspect of his childhood conveys that he was unsure about his heritage with respect to religion as a child because he never fully understood and complied with neither Islam nor Christianity (Ilan, 1996, p.196).

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites." (Obama, 1996, p.37)

Obama had an American mother and an African American father so this makes Barack half African American and half American. At the age of 12 when he was mentally apt to understand the differences amidst what being an African American and an American holds he stopped advertising his mother's race because it was already difficult for him to fit in the high school he was studying in. Obama then tried to mingle with the African American kids and worked towards embracing it's culture. He tried to match the expectations of others based on his appearance and also tried to mould his identity to match the expectations of the community he resided in which was obviously different ...