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wooooaaaa... interesting read... What do you guys think, is she black? is she white?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/25/race-east-jackson-ohio-appalachia-white-black
@freemo
"It comes from a history rooted in racism and an identity placed upon their ancestors – and now many of them – without their consent."
Something seems fundamental about this sentence in the article. Does it reveal a worldview that says one's identity is of one's own making, or only valid if received with consent? That's not how identity works.
Much (most? at the beginning, all?) of one's identity is placed upon one without one's consent.
@SecondJon I think thats a very good point.. .to me ones identity is all of the above. It just depends on the actor.. My identity to myself is whatever I pick it to be. That may be what was assigned to me, maybe not. Depends on your nature nad how others effect, if at all, your self identity.
Then of course there is the id others assign to you. That is no less valid in the sense that it is what is real to them, and ultimately determines how they treat you. But doesnt invalidate your own self ifentity either.
To me the question only becomes important and relevant when people start thinking how they ID themselves or others is the only ID and that all others are entierly invalid or "wrong".
The answer is always nuanced IMO.
@freemo @SecondJon What's missing from a lot of identity discussions is that there are really auto/endo-identities that are how we see ourselves, and exo-identities, how we see others. Our social identity evolves from tension between the two, and that has to be.
Say I'm great at basketball and a very poor painter. The world sees me as a basketball player who also paints, whereas I see myself as a great, misunderstood painter, and basketball is so easy to me I don't value it.
@freemo @SecondJon I've been thinking about this a lot in this age of self-identification coupled with identity politics.
We don't have commonly used terms to discuss how identity has both self and assigned characteristics, and we need them.
But linguistically we do have words for whether a group's name is self-assigned (endonym, autonym) or used by outsiders (exonym, xenonym).
Courts exist largely to decide societally imposed identities like "murderer," "thief," "copyright holder," etc.
@freemo @SecondJon Right? And then we can explore more explicitly WHERE to draw the line in society between exo-identities and auto-identities.
That's the essence of the debate over trans issues and rights, because identities serve different people differently, including how you want more or less finely grained distinctions depending on perspective.
Eg. non-techies might call both Windows gamers and free software programmer-advocates "geeks."