Rylee Terry CAPS 1

         We are constantly being asked who we are…then you have to stop and think about what that question even means; what you like to do, who do you want to be, what do you value, or how do you describe yourself? Since the beginning of your life, you are supposed to define yourself, usually with age coming first and then your individual characteristics. All of these characteristics add up to be your own identity. Identity is the concept of who we are, (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). Along with identity comes the three perspectives including: social science, interpretive, and critical.

         The article, Untold stories of a Revolution by Julie Knaga reflected on the 2011 clashes between the pro- and anti-government groups in Cairo. These protests became violent and deadly and in turn President Mubarak stepped down from power after almost 30 years, (Knaga, 2014). Photographer, Brian Driscoll, went back to Cairo recently to get insight civilians who were captured and taken to military prison. Civillian, Dr. R, who was kept in the military prison for 26 days shed some like on the human right abuses. Driscoll was able to capture pictures of ones who were detained and used those to tell his story of experience (pictured right). Pictured in the scarf, Mohana, 23, was an assistant medic at hospitals during street protests and pictured below is Shireen, 25, an accountant, who was seized in Tahrir Square by SCAF, (Knaga, 2014). Driscoll did make mention that people were so afraid to get caught of him taking their pictures because of what would happen to them again, Driscoll described the experience as “intense”. Within this problem there are two distinct identity groups, the pro- and anti-government but within those lie so many more reasons of why a person has chosen to be for or against their government. From the outside we are just assessing ascription, process by which we are attributing identities to others, (Martin & Nakayma, 2013).

Not only from the chapter readings and this article, but the other posts of this identity problem that is so prevalent has made me reconsider how I view people.  A lot of times they do not have the chance to tell me their identity and explain why they hold the views that they do, I just put together the typical stereotype of what someone looks like and go with that. I believe that everyone at some point or another is guilty for attributing characteristics to others that are false.

References

Knaga, J. (2014, January 25). Untold stories of a revolution. Retrieved from cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.