UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND

UNCF- United Negro College Fund.

http://www.uncf.org/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6X-M7riOHo

The United Negro College Fund, or UNCF, is a charity set up in 1944 in order to provide college education to African-American students from low or moderately low family incomes. The charity over the years has aided more than 400,000 students earn degrees, though working with over 900 colleges across the country.

As the United States of America is such a vast and widely varied nation, acting as a melting pot for people of different race, religion, ethnic background, and other distinguishing attributes. It's evident that personal and cultural identity are prevalent. You can see this by looking at the multitude of cultural, racial, and personal identity advocacy groups present in the USA.

Historically, African-Americans have been severely mistreated. In fact up until the 1950's civil rights movements, African-Americans had very few rights at all. The reason i have chosen UNCF to explain the importance of identity in America is simply because of the fact that UNCF exists. And what i mean by that is, even though we live in the 21st century, as civilised as we think we are, that fact that African-American children (among others) are so disadvantaged that many of them rely of charities to provide education shows a huge cultural gap between the African-American community and the rest of the nation. This in turn says to me that the importance of identity simply says we're all different, and no two groups of people are the same. Although they share the same nationality, their cultural views, values, religions, and ways of life could be worlds apart. This is why identity is important.

The video linked at the top is from a UNCF add campaign aimed to promote the charity and to increase donations. The tag line at the end of the add (which is also the charity motto) says 'A mind is a terrible thing to waste'. This says to me that beneath things like race, sexuality, and so on, we're all human.