Do you define yourself by your race/s and ethnicity/ies?
Not essentially and all the time.
shareOn every application or form, I have to fill out.
shareThe older and wiser you get, I’d say the more you tend to do so. When you’re young, curious and adventurous, you tend to say to yourself, “hey, why not try to spend time with the punks, the rabble, the gangster rappers, the injuns, the rednecks, the fairy queers?” and so on. See what their world is like. Many times these all correspond to certain ethnicities or racial traits on a whole. For example, I can recognize within German and Irish peoples, the similarities that are within me both physically and psychologically. I feel the community with a second nature and that wouldn’t be present if I were visiting Shanghai or Moscow. I believe it’s productive to stereotype as long as you’re not being discriminatory with it.
If you’re an open-minded person, diversity is not scary. Like anything else, though, at some point you reach your limit and say, “okay I now have attained a certain level of conceptualism of other cultures. I made a few friends outside my circle and they’ll be with me, always… but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna continue to listen to Tupac if I prefer Mozart.” I think it’s perfectly healthy to do so.
What scares me are the people who are taught to hate at a young age, avoid diversity at every stage of life, or call for cultural supremacy. In my experience, in America, this happens most often with WASP rural whites and urban blacks—and in both cases it corresponds heavily with low-IQ individuals. It could also be the result of some traumatic underlying incident, though. For those cases, they may need a shrink.
Interesting post. What exactly do you mean by WASP? Also, are most rural whites in America WASP?
share