Role of Sex in Racial Identity - Essay Example

Sharee Trowers De Rosa English 101 11 March 2009 The Bifurcated Experience: The Role of Sex in the Creation of Racial Identity A bifurcation is the splitting of a main body into two constituent parts. The word itself can refer to either of the two parts, both of them together, or the point at which they branch apart. Our experiences can be bifurcated in many respects. When someone says that his or her experience was “bittersweet”, this means primarily that it was divided between two extremes of emotional content. The racial experience of individuals can too be bifurcated: not in terms of its content but rather with respect to its subject. Social roles for men and women are inherently different. They impose upon individuals certain obligations and expectations dictated entirely by one’s sex. As a result, how men and women experience the world will differ accordingly. And it is precisely this “experience of the world” that shapes our identities, both as individuals and as members of groups that we strongly identify with. Ultimately, our shared experience with others molds our identity as an individual. The bifurcated experience of males and females living in antagonistic cultural circumstances provides a crucial factor, sociologically and psychologically, in the development of personal identities. Two short works by Zora Neale Hurston and Brent Staples each illustrate the unique factors that go into the construction of identity, which is largely contingent upon one’s sex. The creation of one’s social and personal identity is not something which happens in one event or experiment. It is a process of layering: the taking of particular experiences and building the edifice from those conditional factors. The gender roles that a society assigns apply to all people, independently of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. For this reason, we might say that one’s sex comes first in determining how a person sees himself or herself in the context of the group or society. One’s racial identity thus comes conditioned by this gender role, which is often established even before the time a child first encounters any kind of racial distinction. By recognizing the fundamentality of the sexual identity, we recognize that racial identity can be bifurcated by that gender divide between man and woman. This ultimately determines how and by what process the individual assimilates his or her place in a particular racial group into a personal identity. A personal identity is the filter through which we interpret the content of our experience, and a bifurcation in one’s ability to see and interpret the world will inevitably create a bifurcation in the content of those experiences. Brent Staples and Zora Neale Hurston each present a short glimpse into their experiences as African-Americans living both amongst members of agonist and antagonist racial attitudes. Staples provides a look at the psychology of a young Black male, feeling the effects of a stereotype that makes him uncomfortable trying to do things that make him happy. Hurston relates her experience in defiance of her place in the racial tapestry, but still acknowledges that she knew her race as “a dark rock surged upon and overswept” (Hurston page needed). The two stories certainly reveal a difference in terms of how they experience the world: differences magnified by the color of their skin. Brent Staples looks at being an African-American male, and the thought that the combination of his gender and his race makes him seem more dangerous or likely to commit a crime. The white woman on the street, for instance, tries to escape him as quickly as she can. She picks up her pace, and “within seconds, she disappeared into a cross street” (Staples page needed). Notice that it is a combination of the narrator’s sex and race that causes the difference in their interaction. If Staples had been a woman and an African-American, then his story would certainly be quite different. Zora Neale Hurston’s account, on the other hand, reveals something about the female African-American experience, and how it differs from something like Staples’. It is typical for (or expected of) females in our society to value close personal relationships with other people, such as Hurston did with everyone in her small town of Eatonville. Her involvement with the community’s affairs and social life leads her to call herself “everybody’s Zora”, because she “belonged to them, to the nearby hotels, to the county” (Hurston page needed). Entering Jacksonville, where she feels like a dark rock against the white backdrop of an ocean tide, she finds that her race plays an alienating role in her life. It provides a contrast she finds as uncomfortable and as painful as Staples’ experiences late at night, receiving special attention because of the color of his skin. With the gender-based expectation placed on Hurston because she is a woman, she does not find herself angry when faced with discrimination, but astonished. Quite humorously, she asks, “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?” (Hurston page needed). The racism that affects her social identity contradicts her personal identity as a woman trying to connect with other human beings. She listens to a jazz orchestra with a white man, who seems so far away: “I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us” (Hurston page needed). It would be indeed very difficult to evaluate and compare how these two forms of alienation affect both the male social identity of Staples and the female social identity of Hurston, but we can venture a guess that they are almost equal. Both are forms of alienation, albeit in different forms and motivated by antagonistic, racist attitudes subtly different in nature. Nevertheless, these attitudes affect the narrators differently based on their sex and the associated gender roles attached to them. Nevertheless, neither narrator expresses outright anger because of the situation or the conflicts they cause. The male gender role in society as a provider and protector seems to be at odds with the countless stories of black journalists that Staples alludes to who are discriminated against because of their race. But he says, “Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness. I now take precautions to make myself less threatening” (Staples page needed). Like Hurston, he has adjusted and adapted to his cultural context: evolving to avoid problems that create further discordance between his race and gender. Hurston, likewise, harbors little resentment: after all, she says, “I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads” (Hurston page needed). She sees herself as a woman, who is incidentally African-American, and there is no conflict between the two. Both Hurston and Staples present with clarity the thought that the racial identity of being an African-American is also contingent upon one’s sex, and the effects of racism manifest themselves in different ways dependent upon one’s sexual identity. If our identities condition and help create our experience of the world, then the bifurcation of male and female from the human mold conditions and creates different racial identities within each individual person. For both of the narrators, it seems that alienation becomes the largest problem that they must deal with. For Staples, it is alienation from his ability to “perhaps unconsciously… remain a shadow” in the face of fear and antagonism. For Hurston, it is her ability to interact and connect with other human beings, and to remain from time to time “everybody’s Zora”. These two things they find desirable respectively as male and female, but find them hard to attain given their race. Read More