Mixed Race Identity and Relativity - Michelle Filanovsky

Our discussions in class about how one's environment and the people someone surrounds themself with affect the way they identify themself has got me thinking about how this idea can be applied to many other aspects of our lives. For instance, someone may be considered rich in another country, but upon immigrating to the US, they may be considered to be poor. Even small things in our lives that we may not even realize are dictated by comparisons of ourselves to those who surround us. For example, I've heard some honors students here at Miami say how, at their high school, they were at or near the top of their class; but at Miami, especially in the honors program, these same people find themselves as being just average. Someone who is of average size when compared to their friends may define themself as being large compared to models. The examples of how we define ourselves based upon others are endless. All of this has made me realize how so many ways in which we categorize ourselves are all relative. We may be considered one thing in one place, but we may be something polar opposite in another.

As we have seen through our readings, race can be viewed in this same context. Depending on who they are surrounded with, mixed race individuals in the stories we have read find themselves forced to identify with different parts of their ethnicity. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his essay "Lost In The Middle," "I never feel my whiteness more that when I'm around West Indians, and never feel my West Indianness more that when I'm with whites" (p. 123). Malcolm Gladwell was able to identify himself with the opposite race as those surrounding him because those traits were what made him relatively different in that particular situation.

In the same essay, Malcolm Gladwell then goes on to say, "And when I'm by myself, I can't answer the question [of my ethnicity] at all, so I just push it out of my mind" (p. 123). In this quote, Gladwell suggests that he needs people to compare himself to in order to identify as one ethnicity or another. This quote got me thinking about whether or not we all need people to compare ourselves to in order to categorize ourselves (in all areas, including ethnicity), or if we are able to categorize ourselves without comparison. I have realized that although we may ultimately define ourselves without directly comparing ourselves to others, our initial ideas for characteristics of different "categories" we may place ourselves in come from the people that surround us and our culture as a whole. This is why many of the characters in the books we read often experience an identity crisis when they move to a new area -- they categorized themselves based on their surrounding in their previous home, and then move somewhere new where they are categorized completely differently through relativity.

But, simply because their differences are highlighted by people who are different from them, does this mean that the characters in the books we read maintain these different characteristics of theirs? In most cases, the answer has been no. A prime example is Birdie in Caucasia. When she attended a black school, Birdie tried to act, dress, and talk like the girls at her school; but, while she lived in a white community, Birdie acted, dressed, and talked like her white peers. While Birdie was more conscious and afraid of revealing her "other" ethnicity in both of the situations, she always assimilated to those around her, thus decreasing the relative difference between herself and those around her. Almost everyone has had this same experience of changing their outer persona in different sutuations. I myself have had many experiences like this growing up. As a young girl attending a Jewish elementary school, my family was not religious at all compared to my classmates' families. As a result, I made an effort to attend synogogue more often so I could be more religious, like my classmates. Even things which we may not consciously realize, such as following clothing trends, are attempts to assimilate to our friends, culture, and surroundings. All this need to assimilate comes from our natural need as humans to feel as though we are part of a "group" of some sort. And the easiest ticket into a group is to have something in common with them.

The way through by which we identify ourselves in all aspects, including ethnicity, is very complicated. There are many levels to our self-identification process, and often the way we present ourselves in a certain environment is polar opposite of how we present ourselves somewhere else. In the end, we often may have trouble deciphering our true self out of all the "masks" we have put on and assimilations we have made throughout our lifetimes.