YIIP Assignment· Defining my culture

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So for a long time I thought about what I would write for this premier blog and I thought about how I could really capture the total essence of “my culture”. The more I thought about it the more abstract and confusing my thoughts became. I saw my culture as a black woman, I saw my culture as a student, I saw my culture as a community worker, a youth advocate, a global citizen, a entrepreneur, a young person etc etc. I listed and listed and did not see an end in sight. Each time my pen hit paper and i in scripted another juicy aspect of my culture down I thought about how I see myself, how the world sees me and how I want the world to see me. I came an almost startling conclusion that culture is almost in a sense based and defined solely on perception. The way I might define my culture wouldn’t be the way my mother might define it, a friend, a teacher or even a complete stranger. It then began to beg the question whose perception overrides and overrules whose? and then if that is so the case where does the understanding of a true ‘cultural identity’ fit? And if we do have a ‘true identity’ are we then not enforcing the same social labels we as ‘enlightened activist have been working so inexhaustibly to obliterate? I didn’t have the answers to these question so I’ll just leave these questions to linger in your thoughts as it has in mine...

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