How Minorities Affect One's Identity?

I dreaded giving self introductions when I was little. Then, I had no clue what to introduce other than my name and age. As I mature, I began to perceive myself as a person and I started to understand how important my identity is to myself as well as the people I interact with. In a simple analogy, one’s identity can be seen as a Lego toy. When put together, Lego pieces can become a car, a movie character, or even a famous architecture. However, a Lego piece by itself has little meaning. It is but one of many parts of a toy. Human identities are like Lego toys—much more complicated Lego toys. Only the combination of all aspects of an individual can determine one’s true essence. The factors that influence our identity the most are our ethnicity, culture and language. Ethnicity is the most significant factor contributing to one’s identity. Often, the minorities in a country are discriminated against. Sometimes, they face negative assumptions about their races. Those stereotypical images, hence, influence the identities of the minorities in a country. In Social Identity Theory, Sabine Trepte (2006) introduces the self-esteem hypothesis—certain discriminations may lead to a positive outcome such as increased self-esteem (Hogg and Abrams (1988), cited in …show more content…
Ethnicity connects us to our ancestral heritage and reminds us why we are unique as a people. Culture creates an emotional tie that links an individual back to the environment that one grows up in. Last but not least, language determines how we think, thus influencing our identity. Yet, the combination of these three factors still can not fully represent our true essence, it only give us an abstract image of one’s identity. Hence, this explains why each person is different from one anther. Human beings are like Legos with many parts, however, we are more complicated