As young black person who was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, finding your identity can be one of the most unidentifiable challenges of your youth. The reason why I refer to it as an “unidentifiable challenge” is because most times in the lives of young black people, finding oneself is a struggle that can be difficult to articulate and pinpoint. Hopefully, this makes sense to you.
I was born in Africa, Liberia to be specific and I became an America citizen in 1998. Yes I am proud to be an American. But I am also proud of my African roots and identity: language, culture, family, education and all of the anthropological dynamics that helped mold me. My Americanism has in no measure changed or tarnished my Liberian ancestry. If I were to be politically correct, I would have referred to myself as a Liberian American as in Irish American, Italian American, Chinese American, to name a few.
FunTimes Magazine has interviewed 4 young people on their perspectives on cultural identity.
Like many Africans in the Diaspora, it is a daily struggle trying to prove myself as acceptable to a world essentially different from my own, all the while trying to prove to my own people that I am still a part of them: that I have not forgotten my culture; that they are still a part of my cultural identity; that they will always remain a huge part of who I am.
y Angira S. PickensManufacturing great works of art and performance takes time. Hundreds of engineers and construction workers gather in an…
Nicole Keys was born and raised in North Philadelphia and defines herself as an ever-growing human being, curious to explore life.After deci…
When life knocks you down on your knees, you have two options: sit there and wallow in your sorrows, or pick yourself up and strive above and beyond. Today you will learn about an incredible brand and its founders who rose from the ashes like a phoenix and have soared beyond the bounds of possibility.
Wreckage of slave ship, Clotilda from Historic sketches of the South by Emma Langdon Roche, publisher: New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1914. Source: Wikimedia Commons In 1860, in the Kingdom…
