Multicultural Counseling and Cultural Identity Analysis
Emily Nostrant
Multicultural Counseling
Cultural Identity Analysis
SUNY Fredonia
My name is Emily Nostrant and I am a Caucasian female who belongs to the middle class with a herniated disc. I never really thought of my identity as more than just my race and gender. I never put that much thought into it and just assumed that my identity was what you and others physically see. Now I see that there is so much more to my personal identity. There is more to me than what people can outwardly see. I never noticed the privilege I had being white until we looked at the privilege list in class. I always understood that there was always something different about the way I was treated in society but it wasn’t clear to me until I became older and actually saw it in writing. I see these privileges everyday now and it’s hard not to. I sit in most of my classes on campus and see that my race is the majority in all of them. I can walk into any store without them being suspicious of me and I rarely hear any racial slurs or stereotypes directed my way. Except for the “white girl” stereotype it is hard for me to think of many more. Growing up I didn’t have much experience with other races. My parents were not racist but where I went to school, took dance classes, played sports, and even my street were mostly white. I had one African American girl in my class since kindergarten, who I just learned this past December, isn’t even black. She’s Puerto Rican. My knowledge was slim to none growing up. When I was old enough to walk around South Buffalo with friends around the age of 12 is when I started to see other races. My friends and I would walk every inch of South Buffalo and that’s when I really started to notice that there were Hispanics, African Americans, and Middle Eastern people living in my neighborhood and the ones surrounding it. I grew up with my great grandparents being in my life until I was 7 so I can recall quite a few memories of them. They lived in the
Multicultural Counseling
Cultural Identity Analysis
SUNY Fredonia
My name is Emily Nostrant and I am a Caucasian female who belongs to the middle class with a herniated disc. I never really thought of my identity as more than just my race and gender. I never put that much thought into it and just assumed that my identity was what you and others physically see. Now I see that there is so much more to my personal identity. There is more to me than what people can outwardly see. I never noticed the privilege I had being white until we looked at the privilege list in class. I always understood that there was always something different about the way I was treated in society but it wasn’t clear to me until I became older and actually saw it in writing. I see these privileges everyday now and it’s hard not to. I sit in most of my classes on campus and see that my race is the majority in all of them. I can walk into any store without them being suspicious of me and I rarely hear any racial slurs or stereotypes directed my way. Except for the “white girl” stereotype it is hard for me to think of many more. Growing up I didn’t have much experience with other races. My parents were not racist but where I went to school, took dance classes, played sports, and even my street were mostly white. I had one African American girl in my class since kindergarten, who I just learned this past December, isn’t even black. She’s Puerto Rican. My knowledge was slim to none growing up. When I was old enough to walk around South Buffalo with friends around the age of 12 is when I started to see other races. My friends and I would walk every inch of South Buffalo and that’s when I really started to notice that there were Hispanics, African Americans, and Middle Eastern people living in my neighborhood and the ones surrounding it. I grew up with my great grandparents being in my life until I was 7 so I can recall quite a few memories of them. They lived in the