Learning Action: Personal Cultural Identity
Framing
Co-cultures include race, ethnicity, culture, nation of origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical/mental abilities, class and religion and so on. Your identity (or personal culture) is shaped by the co-cultures you identify with and why. The co-cultures that are important in how you define yourself can changes over time. For instance, age may not be identified by a 25-year-old woman as something that shapes her identity, and yet, when that woman begins to age, she may identify age as an important part of her identity as people begin to relate to her differently. Similarly, white people may not identify race as important to their identity (see whiteness), while many racialized people affirm that their race shapes their daily lived experience and, therefore, it is a large part of their identity. Understanding your attitudes towards your personal culture is a part of the process of understanding how you are connected to racism.
Logistics
Minimum Time Required: 1 hr. to 1.5 hrs. 35 mins. for the handout. 45 mins to 1 hr. for debrief.
Number of Participants: Highly adaptable for small and large groups. Participants can work on some parts of this Learning Action in small groups to encourage open discussion between peers. Debriefing/discussions can be completed in a large group format.
Small Group Option:
Invite participants to form small groups to discuss the questions from the handout and to each complete a Venn diagram. If possible, groups should be as diverse as possible. Ask participants to respond to the following questions together once they have completed their diagrams:
What are the advantages for being mostly the same as your friends? Your classmates? Your teachers? What are the disadvantages?
What are the advantages for being mostly different from your friends? Your classmates? Your teachers What are the disadvantages?
Age of Participants: Ages 8+
Materials:
Handout - Cultural Influences
Participants can also fill out the questionnaire online
Adapting the Learning Action:
This Learning Action can be adapted to be facilitated orally depending on cultural preference, ability, or individual/facilitator preference. The time can be adapted by having participants complete the questionnaire outside of class time or the workshop. Participants can complete the Venn diagram in small groups or it can be done with the entire group. Debriefing/discussions should be done with the entire group.
How the Facilitator Participates
It is important for the facilitator to complete the questionnaire prior to facilitating it so that they can provide sample responses—especially personal ones so as to build a relationship of trust with the participants. It is also useful to acknowledge to the participants that the questionnaire may not be easy and that it can be challenging to become aware of one’s own privileges and how they operate in relation to one’s personal culture/identity.
How Participants Contribute to the group’s learning
Participants fill out the questionnaire honestly knowing that they will not have to share their process unless they choose to do so.
Facilitating
Explain that the objective of this Learning Action is to help participants understand their personal culture and what co-cultures influence it. Go through the handout, Cultural Influences, and explain, based on your personal experience of working through it, how you hope participants will complete it. Provide your personal descriptions of cultural influences and also offer alternative suggestions. For example, being my age, an older woman, means that I am not always taken seriously. What does age mean for younger women or men? It is also important to note the intersections of cultures and co-cultures. What does it mean to be an older Indigenous woman versus a white woman in mainstream society? How might the perception be different in some Indigenous cultures? This will come up in more detail in the debrief, but is worth mentioning at the beginning so that participants will begin to make their own connections.
Discussion/Debriefing
The questionnaire responses can be discussed in small groups and then brought to the larger group. Alternatively, all of the questions can be discussed in the larger group. The benefit to small group discussion is that the small group discussion and process can be examined in the larger group discussion afterwards. This might be less intimidating for some participants to begin with smaller groups.
Questions to pose during debrief: Did your group mostly agree on advantages and disadvantages or did group members have different opinions? Why do you think similarities and differences occurred? This can be a valuable lead into an examination of power (See Socially Imbued Power). Participants will often want to talk about similarities and not differences. It may be necessary to ask the group why differences are not coming up in the discussion.
Additionally, participants will often want to discuss some co-culture influences but not examine race or ethnicity. It can be useful to ask the group why race is not coming up as an important part of their personal culture—this can open up valuable discussions on white privilege, racialization, normalcy, internalized oppression and internalized dominance.