Who am I? A cultural straddler

There are three main ideological profiles that explains how racial identity interacts with school.
1. Main-streamers: expected members to assimilate into American culture and institutions
2. Non-compliant believers: aware of norms but they favor-embrace own class/ethnicities
3. Cultural Straddlers: maintain strong cultural identity but achieve academically, they are also capable of critiquing the system.

After reflecting on the three profiles, I realized that I very much fall under the "cultural straddlers." This is in part because I am constantly empowered to pursue all that I believe in--even if it's against the dominant culture's beliefs. I have not always maintained a strong cultural identity because I was so assimilated into the dominant culture. So I guess someone could argue that I haven't always been a cultural straddler. I know the reason why I was a main-streamer was because of my Dad who decided to assimilate into the United States after being born and raised in Puerto Rico thus I didn't know any different because I was surrounded by people who were forced to believe that they too needed to assimilate in order to succeed in this society. I wasn't aware that I could be proud of my identity, what I looked like, and where I come from until high school. I started to understand that everyone's cultural identity looks different and that it was okay for me to own mine. I truly believe that once I was able to dig deeper into my multi-racial identity, I cared more about school. It was the inner-anger in me that pushed me to prove statistics wrong: I was going to succeed no matter the barriers put in front of me.

As I entered into my college career I was even more exposed to identity development. Questions like: Who are you outside of what people think you are? Why are you pursuing a higher education? What makes you stand apart from others? What makes you, you? What are your passions and what is your goal in life? These are obviously probing questions that undergraduate college students struggle with daily but I finally came to a point of contentment with who I was made to be. My story, my experiences, my relationships with others are what make me, me. I am a Latina and also very proud of my Korean descent. Because my ethnicity is so different, I do my best to simply give minorities in general, hope. I know each racial group has their differences but as a whole, minorities are the most marginalized in our society. I want to show people that we are capable of defying statistics by achieving higher education, challenging the system while maintaining our cultural identity.