Staying the Course is a Journey

 Volume 1: Post 3 

Caution: Are You Aware of Your Cultural Identity?

               [What’s Your Song?]

 

LISA SCHELLENBERG NOVEMBER 18, 2020

 

“One’s self image is composed of an independent self that includes one’s feelings, cognitions, and motivations and an interdependent self that is concerned with ingroup obligations and connectedness”. – Markus and Kitayama (1991)

 

[*In this post I am self-disclosing a bit]

 

In the Spring of 2019, I took Intercultural Communication and no clue what I was in for. I chose the course for three reasons: It is an interpersonal course (my field of study), my favorite professor was teaching it, and because I felt I needed to learn about other cultures and diversity. Within the first month, the professor instructed us about the Cultural Identity Forum and how we would create a project that would demonstrate our true identity to our classmates which, in turn, would inform ourselves.

 

After discussing the details of the project and my ideas with my TA, I was #EnCouraged to create a soccer ball (because I have been a soccer mom to all four of my children spanning 16 years), cut a hole at the top, place a scarf inside, attach items that represent my true identity to the scarf, and write stereotypical words on the outside of the ball. This assignment “demonstrate[d] self-reflexivity of [my] cultural identity” and “the self-awareness imperative for studying intercultural communication [which] challenges students to explore their ethnocentric thinking, their social and economic position in society, and their privilege”.

This assignment was so impactful that I was shocked, amazed, happy, proud, tearful, proud, transformed, and provided #EnCouragement for #StayingTheCourse. I couldn’t believe the impact that one course could have on my self-image and my life. What a “profound influence” the assignment (due from learning my self-image) had on how I “construct[ed] meaning, form[ed] relationships, and [understood] cultural differences”. I chose a song at that time that was my mantra of the time: Don’t let me down by Chainsmokers. This was because I realized that my husband would never accept my identity and support my decision to attend college because I wanted to provide my children financial assistance with an education so that they don’t struggle in life.

 

I would like to #EnCourageU, as TA’s and students, to learn and perhaps participate in the assignment this Spring. Like I said, it was thee most impactful assignment in learning about my identity in my entire (over 30 years since I first entered college) upper education. The cultural identity forum challenges students (and you) to discover ethnocentric, social, economic, and privilege in the world in which you live (Anderson-Lain, 2016). For example, my professor was giving a lecture on marginalization and I realized at that moment that my mom (a single-parent household that received $125 per month from my father from 1973-1989) was living in poverty for reasons beyond her control. She worked 2-3 jobs for most of her life. The jobs Lynn worked were not easy. She owned her own house cleaning company and worked in the outside ailments as a pool monitor, to name a few.

 

What was her #EnCouraging factor? Lisa. She spent her money providing for me, renting two bedrooms in an affluent neighborhood in Dana Point, California (our high school had surfing, water polo, and sailing teams), and making sure I had Guess, Jag, and other name brand clothes. One interesting, and very sad fact, was that we had one (YES ONE) black student. We had a lot of Hispanic students and Asian students. I don’t remember LGBTQ students, but I do remember the fear of contracting Aids and HIV. I further remember slangs and stereotype identifiers such as chickee-babies, cronies, smokers, gangbangers, jocks, richies, and lowriders and how wrong it was to even use those words. How sad to learn in this class that these “societal structures constrain[ed] [my] identity and reinforc[ed] systems of oppression and social injustice”.

 

These social, historical, privileged, and unique social influences shaped my identity. Let’s be #EnCouraged that a Change is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke (1964) one day. I know I changed and every day I am learning my cultural identity, what factors influenced my identity, and how I can change my thinking through communication with others and learning from my professors and peers. The songs I have been identifying with nowadays are Change by Lana Del Rey (2017), Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles (1969), and Going Gets Tough by The Growlers (2014). 

What song are you identifying with right now? What song connects to your cultural identity? What song influenced your identity development? Perhaps you have a song that expresses your social responsibility or diversity. #BeEnCouraged and #StayTheCourse! 

Anderson-Lain, K. (2017). Cultural identity forum: Enacting the self-awareness imperative in intercultural communication. Communication Teacher, 31, 131-136. doi:10.1080/17404622.2017.1314529