28
Jan
Blog Contest: How Does Knowing Your Roots Shape Your Identity? (Week 1)
This contest has ended. Winner announced below! Thanks to everyone who participated.
Each year, February is a big month for African Ancestry. We are fortunate to have opportunities to share the African Ancestry Experience, meet new people, and engage in conversations across the country. This year, we thought a contest would be a good way to reach even more people and hear your perspective on finding your roots. We will pose a question each week and reward the most thoughtful and insightful response with a free MatriClan or PatriClan Test Kit.
Our sense of identity starts to form very early in our lives. One of the first ways that we view ourselves is within the context of our family. We enter the world with many identities: our mother’s firstborn, grandmama’s baby, little sister or little brother. Throughout our lives our identity grows and evolves.
This week we’d like to know: HOW DOES KNOWING YOUR ROOTS SHAPE YOUR IDENTITY?
Post your response in the comments section of our blog between February 1st through 7th and you’ll have the chance to win a free African Ancestry Test Kit!
The winner will be announced on February 12th and will be chosen by President, Gina Paige and Scientific Director, Dr. Rick Kittles! See full contest rules here.
UPDATE 02/08/10: This contest is correctly closed. But enter our Week 2 contest to try and win a free test kit.
UPDATE 02/12/10:
The posts submitted for our first contest question: How does knowing your identity shape your roots?, were simply amazing. We are humbled and encouraged by the number of people who chose to share their feelings on the topic. The perspectives on identity were so diverse, engaging, and powerful that we had a very difficult time making a decision on one compelling response. This week’s winner is Darnell Taylor, a young man with admirable insight and passion. Congratulations Darnell!
Read Darnell’s Response:
Knowing my roots will help shape my identity by giving me something to take pride in. Most of us black youths don’t really care about our life, we don’t hold it in high value. I know this because I use to be like this, a lot of my friends are still like this. We have no clue of who we are. Everything we know about ourselves is a lie and it has been taught to us in school by Europeans and none of it is positive. So why would we care about ourselves when we’ve been taught to believe that we come from a weak people who were slaves that came from a “heathen” continent. How are we suppose to not believe what the European teaches us about ourselves when every Sunday we go worship a man that looks just like him.
The elders have no clue what the youth is going through and this is exactly why we act the way we act, because our souls and spirits have been bared for exposure without any protection. Our elders no longer share their wisdom with us, they look at us like we are heathens who don’t know Jesus. So if I find out my roots it will not only shape my identity but my friends around me who actually believe that we come from an embarrassing background. If our elders won’t help us then we have to gain the knowledge and wisdom and help ourselves.
p.s.
This is what’s needed I know because when I share the information about ancient Africa and the beauty of present day Africa with my friends I see how their souls glow, I see the decoding of slavery and oppression begin to dismantle, and instead of them going out and getting back in some trouble with the police they come over my house and ask for me to share more information and their parents have no clue that they are gaining this kind of information because they don’t care they rather believe that they are up to no good. This is what the youth NEED!
To everyone else, thank you for your responses. There are still more chances to win a FREE TEST KIT. Answer our Week 2 question to enter for a chance to win. Our Week 3 question will be posted on 2/15. Plus, you can also sign up for our mailing list in February and be entered for a chance to win a FREE TEST KIT.
Growing up mostly with only my brown parent (not black), I was never really able to embrace my black side. I never really knew my black side of the family and even though I considered myself black, I’ve never really gotten a chance to explore my heritage. My mom always encouraged me to tell people that I was half Indian as she thought that not telling people was to deny her. knowing my roots would really go a long way in helping me to embrace my whole and not just my two halves.
I believe it is important for all people to know their roots because it gives a sense of groundedness, connectedness, and of belonging. As an African American, a strong sense of ethnic identity, in turn, has a positive influence on my personal identity, family, success, community building, work satisfaction, and social involvement.
I always self taught Black History. The schools didn’t feel it was important enough. It was important to every pore in my body to know my beginnings. I was fortunate to know my maternal and paternal grandparents well into my adulthood. My last grandmother crossed over in 2009 at the age of 95 years, I They were independent, God-fearing, family oriented, hard working people. I loved my mother with all my heart. Knowing my roots, I feel complete and comfortable in my dark skin and big behind. Knowing my African history, I feel a sense of duty and responsibility to carry the torch. I always hear my ancestor voices in the wind. I am what they were never were allowed to be. I hold my head high, and carry myself as a lady, and a role model because I must continue to make them proud of me. I feel their presence everyday, and I share with my grandson to be proud of who he is. At 7 yrs I tell him our ancestors took the pain so we could receive the gain. I stand proud and tall as an African Oak tree, because of seeds I came from. I am an African American women.
Well, I know that if I ever had a chance to find out my life line- my roots , I would finally be complete and restored in every since of the word and so will my whole family. I always say(same words of the late Malcom X) that” a tree cant live without its roots”- so my family and I have just been surviving on the parts of our history that we do have knowledge of, but to actually KNOW the people we come from and the way we lived would bring us LIFE and FREEDOM!! That I will pass on. No More Slave Mind. Peace & Love
My soul, my spirit, my heart will be one, and i will know peace.