Gender, Race, & Class

Gender, Race, and Class are all three major parts in a persons life.  These define who you are.  Within these, there are many different opinions as to what they really mean.  My definition for these terms may be different from the next person.  With that being said, I am going to reflect these to my life. 

Gender to me is the roles and characteristics that everyone holds.  For example, as I was a young girl my mom always taught me act lady like, sit wit my legs closed, I had to do indoor chores as opposed to my brothers cutting grass, and taking the garbage out.  Now that I am a young adult, my gender roles are to be a caregiver, emotional, not suppose to speak loudly.  Through my gender, I have followed a lot of these rules, but I have also interrupted some, and there are some things that I so like that are more towards a more masculine gender.  I can also say that I think because I was taught so strongly to follow my gender roles that it has also handicapped me in some ways. I always had brothers around so I never had to rake leaves, cut the grass, or shovel snow, so now that I am older I still don;t know how to do any of these things.

Race is the traits that I carry from my ancestors such as my culture, and ethnicity.  I am black, and through my race comes a lot of stereotypes.  Growing I had to learn how to accept who I was and know that I was different from most.  Now that i have embraced who I am I can deal with all the stereotypes that comes with it because I know that it isn't the definition of who I am. 

Class, to me the social status in which you are.  Some may look at is as rich, wealthy, and poor.  I don't think that you can really define someones life based off the money they have.  I say this because, if I have to place myself in a category I will say I am from a working class family because of the stereotypes.  Society categorizes my family as middle class.  But I like to say that we a poor, just because I was not always able to afford everything that I wanted, but I did have everything that I needed in life.  I also call myself rich as well, because I am full from Gods blessings so I don't need anything else.  So although we categorize class I think it is really based off of how one feel they are.