Negotiating Your Racial Identity: When You've Had Enough of Trying to Be _____ Enough
Most of us have some sense of our identity early on, beginning with our names, who our families are, when our birthday is, where we live, our phone numbers, etc. As adults, we’ll generally add to that all of the info that goes on our state-issued, or government-issued IDs. But this is not what is meant by “identity” in the context of social justice (or its close companion, social science), which has entered mainstream media—and therefore our contemporary lexicon—frankly, without much preparation, much less understanding.
When we’re talking about identity in the context of social justice and social science, what we’re really talking about is what groups we belong to—that is, who is the individual that emerges from the unique collection of group memberships? As an example, I am a member of the group of people who refer to themselves as “men”. I am also a member of the group who refer to their ethnicity as “Filipino”. And, I am a member of the group who are recognized as citizens of the United States of America. Those are all pretty big group identities, but our group membership can be very small as well. I am also a member of a group who identifies themselves as “being in a romantic relationship with one another”, a member of the group who own 10-year-old-black-dogs-from-Vietnam-that-are-allergic-to-chicken-named-Chunk, and the sole member of the group that are biological children of my parents.
These various group memberships define who I am, according to what is called “the social self” by (predictably) social scientists, which is another group that I am a member of. That said, this is not the only self that exists, but for our purposes, this is what is meant by “identity” in social justice, which itself draws heavily from the social sciences. In this context, “intersectionality”—that is, “intersecting” identities—makes more sense. It is worth noting that “intersectionality” was originally conceived of by Kimberlé Crenshaw specifically with race in mind, in a legal context that “went viral”. These days, ‘intersectionality” has taken on a number of meanings, with some being understood as—essentially—privilege or special treatment because of one’s race, according to Vox.
Among intersectionality’s critics are those who believe that labeling people, that is, highlighting how they are different from others, promotes division—which can be (and often is) true—but that is not the whole story. What is of great importance why people are labeled and categorized. Suffice it to say right now that while it is true that labeling, or heightening the awareness of other groups can prime interactions for conflict, without this identification, it’s very difficult to figure out ways in which our interests as members of various groups actually align with one another, not to mention, hard to understand that perspectives other than the ones advanced by our own groups are not only also ways of being correct or right, but are valuable because they are different.
I’ll put it like this; if we were only to use our government issued IDs as our sole means of identification—which on my driver’s license simply states my name, address, date of birth, that I wear corrective lenses, that I am a man, my hair/eye color, my height, and weight, it’s not obvious how my likes, interests, and motivations differ from any other resident of California. That said, it is also not obvious what I have in common with other people in that category, other than that we live in a certain state. Therefore, my license is useful as a means of identifying me as a particular individual, but that’s it. That’s not to say that this is a bad thing, but it doesn’t help people to understand how or why I move through the world, or what kinds of things impact me, other than the fact that I am an organ donor.
For many of us BIPOC, identity is something that we have had to navigate from very early on. Often, we’ve needed to do so without any real education or understanding that this is in fact what we were doing. In a society that frames “white” as “normal”, children learn very quickly whether they are normal or not and whether they are accepted as they are, or not. This is where negotiation comes in. For some of us, we learn that if we play by the rules, if we suppress what is within us that is “not normal”, we can get along pretty well and that will take us pretty far. For others of us, we learn that no matter what we do, we can never be accepted as we are, much less as “normal”, so we’d better find ways to be exceptional, or at least exceptions to the rules.
The truth is, there is no “work” self. There is only you and with what limited time we have on earth, wouldn’t you rather be negotiating who you want to be on your own terms?
These realities weave their impact throughout all of the strands we twist together to create our paths forward, our way of being in the world. Think of this as a sliding puzzle, with “normal” being the immovable piece. Think of this as that cut in your mouth that you need to stop biting, but you just can’t seem to avoid biting anyway. This is the hitch in your step, your limp, your stagger. This is your disability, or so you are told. And so, you’d better learn to live with it, because while life is fair for some—the “normal” ones, generally—it is not going to be fair for you.
For me, I learned that while I wasn’t quite sure what my racial identity was, neither was anyone else. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my friends. No one. And what I realized was that being “ambiguously brown” could be powerful. I learned that I could make people laugh. That was powerful too. I learned also that in mastering the English language to a higher degree than my peers and by becoming good at performing and public speaking, I could become even more powerful. For me, everything became about not only showing that I was better than those who would cast me as “not normal”, but showing them that “normal” was crap and that they were stupid for wanting to be that way. And you know what? For far too long, that worked.
When I finally came to grips with my racial identity, one of the hardest things I had to examine was not only who I am, but how it is that I became that person and why. Was I who I was because I wanted to be, or because I was responding to something? One is the product of a series of choices, while the other brings to mind the bison-hunting practices of indigenous peoples in the Great Plains region of the US, the so-called “buffalo jumps” where groups of bison are chased off of cliffs. In the end, I had to acknowledge that much of who I was, was formed as a defense response against the crushing weight of “normalcy”, which only accepted me as long as I was smart, as long as I was funny, and as long as I didn’t position myself as a threat.
In a recent conversation with a friend, we ended up chatting about the experience of biraciality, as she identifies as biracial. Further, her mother is white, while her father is Black—which unless you’re a time traveler, in 2021 means that my friend is a member of the two groups in America which until very recently, were not only the largest by number, but also have the greatest visibility and in some sense, power out of all of the groups that make their home in the US. She told me about the white side of herself, the white side of her family. Then she told me about the Black side of herself, the Black side of her family.
The thing about selves is that they don’t actually have “sides”, even if this is the “normal” way of talking about things. For that matter, neither do families. However, what is true is that groups take sides. And, they do it often. I can’t pretend to know exactly what negotiating my friend has done to arrive at her sense of identity in May of 2021, but what I do know is that questions about whether or not she is “white enough” or “Black enough” have crossed her mind. I know because all BIPOC have had to struggle with questions around “being enough” throughout their lives, as the many conversations I’ve had with other BIPOC throughout my life can attest to. And of course, I’ve had to grapple with such questions myself.
Just as people don’t truly have “sides” in the way that shapes (or meals for that matter) do, the question of being “enough”—as in, Black enough, white enough, Native enough (Native American/First Nations blood quantum metrics anyone?) hell, even good enough—is largely one that we’ve arrived at through the way that we frame things. There’s a logical fallacy known as the “No True Scotsman” fallacy that goes something like this:
Scotsman #1: No true Scotsman is friendly with the English.
Scotsman #2: Yes, yes, but that’s a low bar. No true Scotsman drinks anything except for Irn-Bru!
Scotsman #1: Point taken, but Irn-Bru is available throughout Scotland—anyone could buy it! No true Scotsman leaves the house without a bellyful of haggis and their pipes!*
*This is the entirety of my knowledge of Scotland, its history, and its people, other than stuff about Scotch, Nessie, Trainspotting, and a dude I used to live with, named Tony.
The point being that the conversation and questions around “what is enough” dehumanizes us by creating a situation where there is no objectivity, where there are no non-subjective norms to refer to in a game of essentially, one-upmanship that creates an impossible identity to live up to. And most of us don’t, which often results in guilt, shame, and even impostor syndrome, which has real world impacts on work. Further, in quantifying how Black, how Scottish, how manly, how whatever someone is dehumanizes us by ignoring the complexity that comes with being human, not to mention the fluidity of who we are on any given day, in any given moment.
For example, if as a Filipino, I were one day seen eating adobo, gambling on a cock fight (exciting, but perhaps not in the way you’re thinking. And probably bloodier, with 100% more death than you might be expecting), winning a cover band competition, and cleaning a hotel room while moonlighting as a nurse, I could be seen as being very Filipino (by a racist).
However, if I don’t do all of those things the next day, would I be less Filipino for not having done those things? That’s the problem with quantifying identity and whether or not someone is “[group identity] enough”. Further, by framing things that people do as being “white”, “Black”, “Filipino”, etc., we start down the very slippery slope of stereotyping, prejudice, and oppression without ever pausing to ask, much less answer the fundamental question of “who gets to decide what “enough” is?”
That said, group identities are incredibly powerful in shaping how we understand ourselves. Earlier, I mentioned that while becoming aware of other groups can in fact motivate greater division, we also know that understanding who we are in relation to other people can be useful in figuring out how we are aligned. If we think back to those oft-dreaded first days of school, many of us can remember the apprehension of entering our new classrooms for the first time, typically with some vague sense of our previous class hanging over us. If we knew no one in the class, we would often crawl painstakingly through ice-breakers, which might surface some commonalities, perhaps through to recess, where we might discover our peers enjoying the same kinds of games and preferences for playground equipment as ourselves, or common playmates, and by the end of the year we’d end up as some kind of cohesive unit with a common set of experiences such that we could refer to ourselves as a class. This too, becomes part of our long list of identities.
In the workplace, things operate in much the same way but with added layers of complexity. For many of us, the workplace convenes people from various geographic origins, educational levels, and skill areas for common purpose. In the classroom, we are also convened for common purpose, but in organizations what we as individuals do to support our common goal looks very different in our day-to-day. Because our individual experiences are so very different from one another’s, it’s easy to forget that common purpose and instead, focus on what organizational resources are being diverted to our various teams and divisions, meaning that we can easily end up competing with one another rather than with other organizations. Before we ever get to the point of being embroiled in workplace politics, we first have to get the job, which is a competition unto itself—and one that is rife with prejudice, discrimination, and of course racism at every turn.
Many organizations are aware of this fact, the awareness of which has only been heightened by the killings of Black people in 2020 and 2021. The first rule of negotiation for many people is, “don’t bargain over positions”. What this boils down to is, “don’t haggle”; the explanation being, that haggling over the price of something rarely ends with either or both parties being satisfied and in the end, the relationship (if there was one) was damaged, because one or both parties had to give in to one degree or another. I bring this up because for many, haggling is negotiation—and it is, it’s just not the only form of negotiation and frankly, it is far from the best. What I will say is that for many BIPOC, this is what “cultural fit” boils down to.
Imagine if you will, an Asian American man like myself, showing up for a job interview. Sure, he has an advanced degree, but is it from the “right” school? His interviewer expressed a real commitment to diversity, but cautioned against heating up “weird smelling foods” out of consideration for others. Oh—and by the way, does he have an “English” name that will be easier for people to pronounce and remember? “Esteban” is just so ethnic! Is it ok if the interviewer calls him “Steve”?
At each step of the way, the interviewer indicates to him that the “right fit” for the job, is someone just like the interviewer, not like the Asian American man in our scenario. In effect, the job interview was a “negotiation” over identity and in the interest of eating and paying rent, our imaginary Asian American man suppresses parts of who he is to fit in. What he gets out of it, is some ability to eat and to pay rent. Maybe benefits and 401k matching (if he’s lucky). If he’s really lucky, he might also get opportunities to advance to a top position, but as he is an Asian American man, that is deeply unlikely.
As Dr. Martin said in a recent client meeting-debrief, “fitting in” is so often a lose-lose scenario; in so many situations at work, fitting in means assimilating into a bottom-line workplace culture, informed by Anglo-Saxon norms efficiency and what that looks like, which ultimately means showing that one is “white” enough. On the other hand, not conforming to those expectations as a BIPOC person means that people of your ethnic or racial group will question whether you are Black enough, Latin enough, Native enough, Asian enough, woman enough, etc. The only way out of that negotiation is simply not to play by those rules, to be yourself. But is there room to do that in our workplaces in 2021?
For me, yes, but I have the incredible privilege of working for All Aces. Part of that privilege is that I don’t have to negotiate my “work self” and my “real” self—at least, not to the degree that most do—which I have always taken issue with. The truth is, there is no “work” self. There is only you and with what limited time we have on earth, wouldn’t you rather be negotiating who you want to be on your own terms?
You might be asking by now, “How do I do that? I’m just one person” and that’s true, you are. The thing about humans is that we are stronger together. We work together, we live together, we love together. We are deeply interdependent of one another but our existence is experienced individually. You know, just like in organizations. That being the case, the first thing that we can do is to seek out others, who like ourselves, are tired of haggling over whether or not we are white enough, particularly when we aren’t white to begin with. The second thing that we might do, is to create community with one another so that we can share ideas and create momentum, eventually organizing into a society that doesn’t bother with racism.
How that could all happen and what that looks like, I really don’t know. I’m still on the second thing. If you’d like to join me there, join IntentionallyAct.com today and let’s start building community. You’ve got nothing to lose except for an opportunity to be yourself and to unpack some of that baggage that everyone carries. Plus, it’s free! See you there.