The difference between self identity and social response


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This comes from a derail on another thread, so here it won't be a derail.

Some folks aren't understanding the difference I'm trying to convey, while both sides affect each other they aren't the same thing, and these sides are self identity and social responses.

Your self identity is how you think of and describe yourself. Social response is how others treat you. Social response doesn't dictate your self identity, though it can affect it if you place value on the reaction of others (usually can't be totally avoided). From the other side though, and the point I was trying to convey, is that how you describe yourself can have a massive effect on how you socially respond to others.

For example, my self identity does not include my gender or race, therefore, I don't see the gender or race of others unless it is pointed out for some reason. I also never cared about people's description of me as being girly, because I don't care about being girly or manly as gender isn't part of my identity.

Likewise, there are some people I've met who are clearly proud of their race (both black and white), and every single one of them were always bringing race into everything. Their race was a major part of their self identity, therefore they just could not ignore it (though they weren't always negative either).

If you describe who you are by what you are, then your subconcious will apply the same to your judgement of others, and by this I mean that what others are will be obvious to you, and how you feel about that what will affect your initial reaction and judgement. This may or may not lead to racism, it could be a pity for disabled folks, in which case, the first thing you notice about a disabled person is their disability which immediately evokes that pity, regardless of whether that person wants or deserves your pity. You can attach anything you want to these traits, you could attach respect with cleft, and your first impression of someone with cleft would be respect.

So, if you do what I was trying to say I do, and not use physical attributes to identify yourself, then subconciously, you will not look to physical attributes to make first impressions of others and instead you'll find their behaviour, or state of dress, or whatever you judge yourself by will be the first things you notice about others.

Now, others in that previous thread seem to think I was trying to hide away from racial and gender discrimination, but I'm not. I can recognize someone foolishly judging me based on my race and gender without it affecting how I see myself. Since I judge myself based on behaviour, my opinion of others is heavily affected discriminitory behaviour, while ignoring their race.

@bookrat,
Being discriminated against isn't about your self identity, it is about others making assumptions they shouldn't be. What happened to her wasn't right, but it had nothing to do with her identity.

I get discriminated against for being a brony, even my mother thinks it is wrong, and I fight against the idea that a male can't like something traditionally for females, but that doesn't mean I identify myself as a male. In fact I generally hate the expectations placed on me because of my physical gender. My body may be male, but my body is not and never will be who I am. I do not see myself as a male, I see myself as a person who just happens to have a male body, and from that perspective, gender discrimination is ridiculous because I don't see "who" I am and "what" I am as having any connection, so I fight against those who insist on trying to force "who" I am to match with "what" I am, and the only way I can see for a chance at success, is for everyone to stop seeing "what" as having anything to do with "who."

Cranky tried to use an example of people burning down black churches, and these churches didn't let in white people. Quite frankly, if a church is not letting in white people, that is racist, and thus wrong. The arson is just as wrong too, but I'd hardly call the burning of racist churches an act of racism, more like idiotic anti-racism.

And this actually brings up another point, how often do we hear about racist actions against nonblacks? Sometimes we about it against mexicans, but that is uncommon, and we never hear about people being racist against whites, native americans (who in the past suffered far more than blacks did), or asians. I've been discriminated against, particularly as a delivery driver, some houses would give me nothing nor to other drivers except they give huge tips to drivers of the same race (mostly this happened with blacks, but there was a mexican family that tilted things in favor of mexicans, strangely, didn't happen with any white family in our delivery area). I think people get so focused on the hyped up racism against blacks, that they forget that racism can go against others as well.

Now BigDTBone said, (paraphrasing due to lack of C&P),
Point 1, he says that I see my race and gender as generic and that these are aspects of my identity and therefore are my baseline for judging others.

His second point, [based on my previous comment about focusing on a future without racial considerations] is that by trying to remove race from consideration, that I am trying to get others to conform to a white male identity, and that doing so would lose cultural heritage and similar.

Now to address these points (though a true qoute from someone else for proper context would be wonderful),
point 1, The idea of using one's self identity as a baseline for judging others is exactly what I was trying to say above, however, my race and gender do not determine my culture nor my beliefs. I also have never stated nor implied my race, so thinking I'm white is an assumption (gee I wonder where that came from). But as I've been trying to say, gender and race are not requirements of self identity, though they are common. Kids tend to learn about this stuff from observation, so seeing people talk about race make them think race is important and therefore as they develop, they tend to incorporate race because everyone treats it as a big deal. This is a tendancy based on what they are exposed to, not an absolute.

Point 2, how does ignoring race equate with ignoring culture and heritage? The only way that could be is if you equate race with culture, in which case, you are basically promoting racal division, which, whether intended or not, leads to racism. You can have multiple cultures without having racial distinctions. Also, I am of the opinion that heritage is to be learned from, and never something to be proud of What right do you have to take pride in the actions and choices of other people? Their actions don't elevate you above others, thus is nothing to prideful of., and rarely something to emulate.

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