Editor’s Note: The original version of this story had a misspelled name. The sort had been updated. The Herald regrets the error.

The hosts of the podcast “Diasporic,” Tani Washington, a Nigerian-American, and Joseph Eberle, an Ashkenazi Jew, spoke in the Honors College International Center on Thursday to explain how personal identification functions in America. 

“Whatever you want to represent [for your community,] you are representing it.” Eberle said. “It’s about accepting you for you, and that is enough. It’s validating who you are in the moment, and forever who you will become.” 

The pair discussed how one’s culture can become diluted as these cultures could come from the same general location of a single country. For example, there are many different cultures within Nigeria, but they could all end up folded together when discussing the country as a whole. 

The hosts also discussed how important someone’s upbringing is to their development as a person. Additionally, they stated that by understanding other peoples’ identities, that it can help better understand our own. 

Washington and Eberte also mentioned some of the challenges people’s identities can face, those being social ignorance of people not understanding said culture, intercommunal differences where differing ideas can lead to various divisions in the group, and institutional violence, in that people could become targeted by hate groups. 

“The overall message, for me, is that in every experience you have, it is reflective of you,” Washington said. 

News Reporter Damon Stone can be reached at [email protected].