My Cultural Identities
Looking into some of my cultural identities that makes me who I am today. I’ll first off start with gender, age, language, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and religion. I am a cisgender male. I was born in the year 1997, making me 23 years old. With this I am a part of the General Z age generation. My sexual orientation is a heterosexual male. Then then the language I speak fluently is English, I know a bit of Spanish and Korean. My race is Asian while my ethnicity is Korean. Then looking into my religion, I am not a very religious person I was raised in a very religious household so I would say that my religious affiliation would be Roman Catholic. Another one of my cultural identities is my socioeconomic class. Growing up my family was in the working class. My day was a blue-collar worker he worked a factor building motorcycles and ATVs. While my mom has worked as a cook for our towns middle school. Now that I have moved out of my parents’ house and now, I am my own support system I believe my seriocomic class is in the lower middle class, I have a bachelor’s degree when both of myth parents had little to no college education and most years, we were living paycheck to paycheck.
I would say one of the cultural identities that influenced me recently in the world today is my sexual orientation. I am a heterosexual male and I have been in a romantic relationship for a little over three years now and recently I bought an engagement ring and will propose in the near future. I would say another influence that my cultural identities that influenced me in the world today is my socioeconomic class. Growing up in in a working class my parents did a lot of budgeting and that is something that has stuck with me. I am a very structure person I always have a budget in-place and always a safety emergency fund, which could have been affected due to my parents living paycheck to paycheck sometimes.
My Family and Personal Background
Describing my family history is hard for me so first I’ll describe. I was adopted and my adoption was a close adoption. A closed adoption in which biological parents have no direct contact with the adoptive family. The adaptive parents no little to no information about the biological parents. So, I do not know that much about my family history so I will talk more about my personal history or background instead. I was born in Seoul, South Korea and then shortly put up for adoption. I was adopted at 11 months old to a heterosexual Caucasian. There I grew up in a predominantly white community before I headed to the University of Northern Iowa to pursue my bachelor’s degree. After UNI I went home for a year to pursue my master’s degree at Buena Vista University. Now I am still pursuing my degree at BVU but decided to move with my significant other to Omaha, Nebraska to start my practicum and internship.
I have had personal experiences of racism, discrimination, and prejudice due to my ethnic group. I have plenty of personal experiences of racism throughout my life, but I will talk about one that has affected me the most. Growing up in Northwest Iowa the predominant race is white. In my high school there was six Asian and three African Americans in my high school. I played sports throughout high school. My sophomore year of high school, I did receive some micro-aggressive and racist text from some of my classmates. Some of these texts included me eating cats and dogs. Due to the stereotype that Asians eat cats and dogs. It did not stop from there some other classmates started to leave dead cats and dogs that they found on the road and put them in my parents’ driveway. My parents ended up going to the school and the school did find out how did these actions but did not take any immediate action.
I did talk to one of my adoptive parents and asked them about if they know if our family has experiences and racism, discrimination, or prejudice. My mom did tell me about how when her family immigrate from German to the U.S that they did experiences some discrimination. When her family immigrated to the U.S they spoke little to no English and when they got into Iowa finding a job was hard for them due to them speaking little English and have a very “German” last name. So, what my they did to combat this discrimination was to change their last name. Once they got their own farm, they decided to change their last name to the street name the farm was on. Otherwise, my adoptive parents could not think of any other ways they families ethnic group has experienced racism, discrimination, or prejudice.
Cultural Socialization Process and Personal Strengths
I feel like my cultural socialization process is to ask questions if I am unsure or do not have enough information or want to learn more about different valuing s and cultural meanings. This kind of goes hand in hand with my way of learning. I am a very hands-on learning by either learning from doing a certain task or watching someone. So, with my cultural socialization process. I am very hands on learning more about different cultures either by asking questions, exploring different cultures, or reading different books to expand my culture knowledge. One of the biggest things that I have learned from this class was building my anti-racist library and other multicultural books either for myself or to have in my offices for others to educate themself on.
One strength that I am specifically proud of is my willing to learn and take criticism. I feel like these strengths are great to have as a counselor and to help me discover myself as a multicultural person. Being able want to learn is a key in the counseling field and being a multicultural human being another one is to take criticism I feel like taking criticism is a big strength of mine. I personal feel like I am able to take criticism and use that criticism and learn from it because I am a very hands-on learner. Then something that I am proud of is being able to keep moving forward and chase my goals and dreams even thought I have experiences discrimination and racism throughout my life. Being able to move on from those comments and use those comments as a way to challenge myself to be the best person I could possibly be.
Personal Influences on Power, Oppression and Privilege
My personal identify has influenced my expression of power oppression and privilege in positive and negative ways. As a male I have had the privilege of being able to go out in public in mostly any type of clothing without the regards of being sexualized of my body. As a male I also have the privilege of not worrying were I park or worrying about walking alone in the dark. Another example is privilege since I am a heterosexual male, I have done not have people judging me of my romantic relationships and question my sexual orientation. Then looking into the experiences of oppression. As an Asian American Male, I have experienced oppression with microaggression and racist comments that I have explain in the paragraph above. Another example of oppression could be that I am adopted. Kind of like my race I have experience microaggressions about me being adopted. But with me being adopted I view it as a blessing. Being able to use that a possible self-disclosure to my clients can help build the counseling relationship with them. I have used this in the past not in a counseling relationship but in a professional relationship. When I worked as a day-to-day worker in a PMIC facility. After disclosing this information to one of the kids in the facilities after processing their feelings of being adopted to a Caucasian family I felt like our relationship grew.
My Personal Impacts of Culture and The Counseling Field.
My personal impact of culture and values has impacted the culture views of my mental health counseling. I will be very open in this reflective writing the first week of class when we watched America Ferra, I could relate to her. When she tried to make herself “whiter” to get acting jobs. Growing up I did not know that much about my culture and did not know of any resources expect the internet later in life on more about my culture. So, I kind of did what America Ferra did tried to make myself “whiter”. I tried to open my eyes up more to make my eyes look less squinty started to change the way I dress to make myself look “whiter” and to fit in more. This view impacts my view of culture in mental health counseling as me wanting to learn more about other people’s cultures and how I can become an ally for them and increase our counselor relationship. Then also help people embrace their culture to by trying to advocate for the client. Because when I was trying to be “whiter” that’s when I felt a significant decrease in my own mental health. So being a counselor that wants to learn more about my client’s culture and also being a counselor that wants to advocate for their clients to embrace their cultures is one of my now cultures impact on my view of mental health and the counseling field.
Conclusion
I feel like this reflective writing has helped me look back at the beginning of the class and looking now to see how much I have learn and reflected on my own culture. Before this class I really did not do a deep dive down into my own culture and how that affects me but this paper has help me learn that I am taking baby steps into become a multicultural human being. I still have a long way to go and I can do this by wanting to educate myself and looking at different community resources that I can give to my clients or partner with in the near future.