What do you think inheritance is? Do you define it as money, houses, cars, or material items? When you dig deeper, inheritance is more than that. Inheritance involves factors outside an individual’s control. These factors are given to you at birth by external influences. This includes traits inherited from your parents such as physical and mental characteristics, often caused by predispositions; however, they are not just genetically linked, like brown hair or green eyes. Individuals will be exposed to various family structures, social classes, economic classes, living conditions, and environments. From living on a farm to strolling the streets of New York, the circumstances that someone inherits will influence their identity in various ways as they develop into adulthood.
When looking at inheritance, there are multiple sub concepts that help further the understanding of how inheritance affects the development of our identities. Our biological sex, the color of our skin, the place where we are raised, and our financial circumstances are all inherited by our parents or guardians, and they all provide a foundation to our identity. Months before a child enters the world, the first thing given to them is their sex. Sex assigned at birth is not a choice, but it still impacts the way others recognize our identity, as Emily Quinn, an activist and author describes in her TedTalk, “Sex assigned at birth is not a choice.” People often assume characteristics based off of sex. What clothes should we wear? How should we act? This is also a common occurrence with another attribute that is given at birth: our race and culture. Musical artist Beyonce’s idea behind the song “Freedom” was to stand up for African Americans against police brutality. Her message behind the song was to empower everyone, no matter their inherited race. Similar to sex and race, the place we are born and raised is chosen by others. The geography where one is born influences the interests and values that shape their identity. Fritz Hager, a singer and songwriter, illustrates how growing up on the Texas coastline provided him a foundation of comfort for his identity in his song “The Ocean.” While the geography that we inherited may pave the way for ones’ comfort and values, an individual’s born economic class directs the basis of advantages and disadvantages within our society. Economic class, as shown by The Pursuit of Happyness, affects the opportunities based on class hierarchies that shape our identity. Sex assigned at birth, race, geography, and economic class, represented by their individual texts, support the prevalence of inheritance in impacting our identity.