"The Complexity of Identity: 'Who am I?'"

I don't really have many initial thoughts on this article. In some ways, the idea is kind of similar to the McIntosh article. Perception and assumptions kind of play a similar role. For some reason, while reading this article I was reminded of a scene from the AMC series Mad Men (its an adult period drama about ad executives in 1960s New York City). In it, Don Draper, the series protagonist monologues to his business associate, Rachel. He presents his cynical perception of love as a fictitious, manufactured notion-or slogan-created by people like him to sell nylons. Rachel, in turn, responds that until that moment she had never realized that "it must be hard being a man too." I never completely understood the deeper meaning behind Don's little speech or the implications of it but I think I understand Rachel's words. Whether or not Don believes his own words, it is apparent that they have been influenced in some part by the standards of his society, or rather, his community. Whatever traits are associated with the ideal man of the time, his character is responding to and being shaped by them, whether by exuding a cold persona immune to romanticism or allowing self-deception to shape his feelings on love. Just like Rachel earlier on expected men to scoff at the idea of a woman owning a business and displayed a high level of confidence and assertiveness to combat her prejudices, Don is adapting to his social environment. He is a product of it. In Tatum's class exercises, her students identify more with the physical traits that have been pointed out to them. The same occurs with surveys of other age groups. "Woman usually mention being female while men don't usually mention their maleness" because maleness is the dominant normality. "The parts of our identity that do capture our identity are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us." How others view us, or how we believe others view us, seems to be very important to shaping our identity. I think this article does a good job of supporting some overlooked arguments about race and prejudice. We do respond strongly to the most subtle remarks of our appearance and this response has a significant hand in shaping our personality. I feel like I have a deeper understanding of race and culture and how it relates to our identity. It was always a tricky subject for me and much easier to avoid. I'm convinced that race and racism is a fairly complex issue and does deserve a lot of study and interpretation. I'm now also convinced that Mad Men is pretty awesome as a character study and feel like I should start binging the entire series (I only ever watched the first episode).

Sorry again for the long post.