Cultural Identity

Tori Herber, Sara Ramirez, Rumbidzai Ngonyama-Majee, Tina Tran

What is cultural identity?

Cultural identity is the identity or feeling of belonging to a group related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, or anything with its own culture.

Sara

"The picture to the right is a mural that is located inside one of the community partners that we worked with in Milwaukee, Guest House. Guest House is a homeless shelter for men that provides numerous services that will help it's clients combat homelessness. This mural was painted by a man that use to be a client at Guest House. This shows cultural identity by really focusing on the fact that within those experiecing homelessness, these same individuals form a sense of community. They lean on each other for support, which can become fundemental in their journey to becoming successful. I have my own cultural identies that I identify with and in all of these, having people that I can count on is the basis of where everything else is built on."

"I feel like these skills are important in my life because one day I will be working in the health care field which has many different cultural identities and it is important to understand which identities patients are a part of so that I can help them to the best of my ability."

Rumbi

On our first drive we went to Franklin Heights, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Milwaukee,WI which also has the highest conviction rates. The picture to the right is a home from within Franklin Heights. One way in which people can culturally identify is with their neighborhood through it's social class. Sadly, most homes in this neighborhood were poorly maintained. Though it is possible that the community of Franklin Heights culturally identified with their social class of being in a poverty stricken area, I think they chose to identify with a more positive aspect of their community: their heritage and ancestry. While driving through the community, we came across representations of this cultural identification with ethnicity through murals, colors, and patterns placed throughout the area (as seen below).

The collage above captures this large mural painted alongside one of the vacant neighborhood buildings which seems to be one such cultural expression of the communities ethnicity. With a population of 96.4% African-Americans, you can see the cultural representation in the mural as it depicts the continent of Africa to the left (the end of the video) and people of African Ancestry facing towards the bald eagle (the beginning of the video). This may be a representation of coming to America, and the figures drawn with African color patterns instead of skin tones may represent the culture they identify with inside regardless of the color of their skin outside. Thus, I believe this mural was intended to express the hope and history that the community culturally identifies with.

Take Aways

This portion of the trip was the most impactful for me personally because it showed me that cultural expression can be seen in many different ways. In my neighborhood, people identify less with their ethnicity and more with their social class. The beauty throughout our neighborhood is measured by cleanly cut lawns and bushes, clean driveways during winter, and clear front-yards during fall. This was the form of cultural identity I knew of in terms of a neighborhood. However, Franklin Heights showed me that a community can express its beauty through art: through brightly painted sculptures along the road and colorful historic murals against buildings.

I believe this was important to learn because it shows that even if a community doesn't look the same or express itself the same way as your own community, it is no less beautiful. Likewise, that the beauty and cultural identity of a community can be expressed through many difference forms. Personally, as a great appreciator of art, I hope to use this knowledge to incorporate different modes of cultural expression into my own community through art and acknowledge the different cultural identities in place so that we may empower each one together.

Tina

Painted in Black Cat Alley, this mural uses vibrant colors to symbolize growth and development in the community. This especially revolves around representing and empowering different cultural identities. Milwaukee is a highly segregated city and the mural encourages fostering its diverse communities as well as integrating them. Reflecting on this mural as well as my experiences during the service trip, I saw the importance of community in helping to improve housing. The deprivation trap’s components: powerlessness, vulnerability, isolation, poverty, and physical weakness, all affect each other and, in relation to housing, create burdens that are highly difficult for people to emerge from. This powerful mural integrates images of growth and unification, which advocate for empowerment of diversity to ensure components of the deprivation trap be lessened.

Tori

This mural is located at Black Cat Alley and shows how alcoholism affects many people in the community. They are brought together by their circumstances and support each other. By including the technical definition of alcoholism, it creates an idea of what people expect an alcoholic to look like. The santa helps show one of the ways it can manifest itself, just in a normal, everyday person. This helps show that alcoholism can affect anyone and the people affected by this disease have a community with each other, whether it's through AA or other drinking related things.

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