Sharon LaPage

Identity Paper

Due: 2/11/08

According to what I now know I should feel like an insider, however I often feel like an outsider even an outcast at times. The associativeness of my background began very lower class, and I then learned along the way to associate with each class in society, I stopped off at the very conservative almost radical Christian community for many years. I spent a much shorter time with the so-called upper Escalon and after waking up with a hangover on a yacht or two, I found my home with middle class society, where I am now. Most people when surveyed would consider themselves middle class but now I have a true understanding of where that really is. My standing here in the middle is not by my own doing meaning at any moment I would just slip back to my roots with the lower class. Seeing the glass half-full any of us could win the lotto or whatever and join the upper class, but not as likely. I must admit I like have the comforts of being in the middle no so much to worry about not in the highest tax bracket, and it's a very comfortable place to be.

As far as race my journey through life has had just as many pit stops. While many Americans cans certainly trace their genealogy through several generations, I can't and I feel like a part of every race now. How this happens to me is from the start, my skin color though light not the whitest and most people with a glance assumed I was Hispanic. Since I could never exactly trace my heritage because my mother was adopted and my father took off around my birth, I always feel a little uncertain of who I really am and instead try and find some thing in each race I can identify with. When I was a child being among the lower class I really thought of myself as a minority, and now learning more about minority groups, I realize I was a part of the minority group culture. Then I was in more of a Hispanic environment as a teenager, and finally as an adult I learned that it was acceptable to be able to have friends and associates from all cultural backgrounds and incomes. Since I can have friends at each end and rest in the middle once again I feel like I have no true identity.
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America seems to be a place that is now culturally bound by its own issues of hatred or racism but this country never stops working to improve its relations though change comes slowly and with much loss of life, what I have learned from being brought up with these cultural boundaries is that even though we should embrace other cultures and learn from our differences, we often shun this diversity and hide from the change and we loose so much, that way.

The past campaign has led me to do some research to find out which ...

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