Reflect on your Identities

Assignment:

First look at the list of the cultural identities presented below. Choose three identities from the list (or others) which you feel describe you or which are a significant part of who you are or how you choose to identify yourself to others.

Then write two to four paragraphs on:

• why you chose these three main identities;
• why this might be important in the study abroad context;
• how you think people from your host country will react to them;
• how you think they will see you;
• how you will see them, and
• why you feel that way.

 

My cultural identities:

• Woman
• White
• Country Dweller

 

            I consider myself pretty average where I come from, and I’m usually a part of the majority when it comes to cultural identity. I go to a school in a rural area where the ratio of women to men is nearly 1:1, and 72% of the students are Caucasian. In all of these cases, I fit in: I’ve lived in rural areas all my life and I’m a Caucasian woman. I picked these three cultural identities specifically because, when I go abroad to Dakar, Senegal, it will be completely opposite: I will be the minority in all three cases.

            These identities will be very important when I’m abroad, because they’ll be the three most prominent aspects that separate me from the local people. Honestly, I have no idea how the Senegalese people will react to them, or if these characteristics in particular will set me apart more than the average foreigner. I know through communication with other Americans who have traveled to Dakar that, as a woman, I should expect many marriage proposals—and that while an American women may take a proposal as a joke, since they’ve never met the man who is asking for their hand in marriage, the men are actually serious.

            I think that, at first, the Senegalese will see me in a way equal to how I see them: very different from myself. I feel that the obvious differences between us will spark interest in learning about one another, and that sometimes, the more apparent a foreigner’s differences are, the more we as humans are curious to learn about those differences. These differences, obviously, could also cause more alienation than connection. For countless reasons, humans tend to stick with what’s comfortable, what they are used to, and don’t work to venture outside of this comfort zone. I know that a lot of the time I converse only with people I know, just because it’s more comfortable, even if I’m surrounded by interesting people from whose cultures I could really benefit. I know I will feel alienated as part of the minority and that the Senegalese may overlook me as a tourist, feel like they don’t connect with me because I’m different, or base their judgments about me on previous stereotypes of Americans.

            I have very little idea what effect these characteristics will have on me in my study abroad experience, but I can work towards connection rather than alienation by sharing my culture and accepting theirs, getting involved with the local culture, disproving negative stereotypes, and trying to adapt to a new lifestyle. I know that I will feel different and I know that I will be seen as different, but whether “different” becomes a positive or negative thing in my experience is mostly up to me.