Are We Defined by Our (Racial) Identities?
By Sun Min L
From the Black Lives Matter movement to the recent protests against Anti-Asian hate crimes, race and racism have recently been the center of our attention both in the public and private sphere. Corporate America pledging billions of dollars to minority-owned businesses and individuals calling for solidarities and awareness on social media platforms, reactions towards racial injustices were outpouring, to say the least.
On a more individual level - as a person of color - I have witnessed how intense and overwhelming the reactions were of my peers. With emotional, lengthy writings and colorful posts with graphic designs, Instagram stories were filled with posts of how the X community is hurting by the incidents of aggression against Xs. As racial identity has become a core of people’s identity, people perceive an attack against a member of the X as a personal matter and act accordingly.
Now most of the incidents - from George Floyd’s death to violence against Asian-American elders - are abhorrent acts of aggression. Individuals are rightfully enraged. However, among the chain of reactions towards the violent incidents, there are narratives that include calling for collective actions, which I’ll argue that we must be more cautious.
To use the recent example of reaction towards Anti-Asian hate crimes - I’ll substitute Asian-American with X - I’ve frequently seen scripts (a collective narrative that sets a model of behavior) imposed on individuals in the line of: “You must be an ally before consuming X’s culture because it’s trendy” or “You’re an X, so you have to act in solidarity”.
Not only will I argue that X cannot own a cultural practice (e.g. boba) because it stemmed from the cultural context within the Xs, but also that the collective narrative that is imposed on individuals is tyrannical. Cultures grow out of a specific subset of the population or a geographic region - and it is precisely how cultures evolve. It would be wrong for African Americans to claim jazz as their entitlement and racially profile/exclude Bill Evans or Chet Baker from practicing the art form. In this regard, culture/heritage should not be a basis for enforcing a mode of behavior on an individual just because they are a member of the X community or they are consuming X culture.
A renowned philosopher of race, Kwame Anthony Appiah raises caution in his paper Race, Culture, and Identity on whether we are replacing tyranny with tyranny. Collective identities, such as race and ethnicity, have a tendency to marginalize individual identities that makes individuals unique from each other. I recognize from a lot of the encounters since last year where my identity was boiled down to a single racial identity, when in fact I am an individual with lots of different individual identities rather than a single identity that is X.
Race is not biologically real and the witch hunts must stop. However, we must ask ourselves - did we become dominated by our racial identities in reaction to the witch hunt? Did I reduce myself or others to be perceived as a single collective identity and by doing so made me/them subject to a united narrative that sets a mode of behavior for them? Am I replacing tyranny with tyranny?
