Self-Assessment Exercise: Ethnicity and Identity

For all of us, identity is in some sense "ethnic" in that we have diverse origins and those origins are related to how we are perceived and treated by others. Among African American or Latino persons, for instance, ethnicity as a personal characteristic may be relatively easy to define. For Caucasians, locating ethnicity in a specific heritage may be more difficult. Yet simply because most of us are immigrants or descended from immigrants, and because we include ethnic or national background labels to describe ourselves to others, we are all to some degree members of ethnic groups.

The issue, then, is not who is ethnic and who is not. It is the role ethnicity plays in personal identity and, beyond that, in access to social and economic advantages. The purpose of this exercise is to give each learner an opportunity to confront and clarify the meaning of ethnicity in a personal way. It is a step toward defining ethnicity in terms of one's own life history in order to understand the commonality of this process for all people.

Procedure

In responding to the following statements and questions, it is important to be as precise as possible, keeping in mind that your intuitive sense of family history is as important as what you might be able to verify through old documents or from conversations with older family members. The goal of this exercise is to clarify your own perceptions of your ethnic background and how you relate them to your sense of personal identity.

1. Identify your family origins on the chart on the following page as far back as you can trace specific ancestors. Where possible, specify the earliest dates, names, and places of which you can be sure. If you are unsure, speculate about probable ancestors and how far back you might be able to trace them, as though you were planning to do genealogical research. Add lines onto the chart if that will help you trace ancestors.
2. Why did your ancestors come to this country? Speculate on the conditions they left behind and their possible motives for leaving these conditions and/or their feelings about leaving.
3. When your ancestors arrived here, their ethnic background undoubtedly influenced how they were perceived and treated by others. Describe both a disadvantage and an advantage your ancestors may have experienced because of their ethnicity. Examples might include matters of religion, racial characteristics, economic background, language, family patterns, or political involvement.
4. Look at any of the ethnic advantages you have listed. These are often reflected in family strengths, the desirable things people do or experience because they are members of a particular family and a particular ethnic group. Can you name any specific privileges, advantages, or family strengths that you or your family members have enjoyed because of your family's ethnic background or identity? List these.
5. In one or two sentences, name your ethnic background and describe one important personal benefit that you enjoy as a consequence of that ethnicity.

Discussion

The exercise provides data from your own family background that illustrates a number of points concerning ethnicity. First,we are all "ethnic" in some way. Your information should assist you in identifying the source of your own ethnicity. Obviously some knowledge of national history is important for being able to interpret family data. But if you have answered the questions with as much detail as possible, some connections to a distinctive cultural background should be evident. Second, the data you have listed for your family background on questions 3 and 4 should make it clear that ethnicity is something more than old family portraits, heirlooms, or preparation of "ethnic" dishes based on old-country recipes. Ethnicity is a matter of how people define themselves, are defined by others, and the impact those definitions have on what people aspire to become, and what they are able to accomplish.

Finally, your personal and family data on questions 4 and 5 should illustrate a fundamental social reality: there are no self-made men or women in this or any other country. What people possess as position, material goods, opportunities, and sense of place in the world, relate in large part to their ethnic group membership. There are certainly "rugged individuals" and high achievers, and people who claim to have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps." But the fact is that we all started with something fundamental, our group membership. That gave each of us a position of relative advantage or disadvantage in relation to all others. Those advantages and disadvantages are often perpetuated over generations as part of each individual's ethnic identity. Ethnicity, therefore, is both a basis for establishing personal identity and social roles, and a criterion for group cohesion and loyalty.