Finding individual freedom in cultural identity

By Kate Mason

Everyone has his or her own cultural identity, a medley of arbitrary categories and designations designed to label and sort the endless possibilities of human beings. While the term "category" often carries negative connotations, it can also be a source of comfort, pride, and empowerment, as long as such definitions are chosen or created by the bearer of the name. In fact, at the risk of sounding patriotic, I would say that the freedom to be random is precisely what makes America great.

With the influx of more and more immigrants and visitors from all over the world, each with varying balances of loyalty to their native countries, cultural identity too often takes on the form of an unnatural black and white scale. The freedom and beauty of cultural identity are taken away when the individual has no part in the construction of the categories, and when decisions to identify or not identify oneself with a particular nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion are all put into an outside party's hand. In an environment such as Yale, where "hyphenated Americans" and international students all guard their own constructed identities like precious jewels, the issue of who and what precisely defines a person can become a confusing and pressing issue.

Problems arise when students from very different backgrounds, who all identify themselves under the same web of terms, insist on defining these terms not only for themselves, but also for everyone else. Phrases such as "you're not really Jewish" or "you're not a real Chinese person," based on a lack of commitment to a Kosher diet or an inability to fluently speak Chinese, are presumptuous accusations that are both insulting and arrogant.

Just because the people hurling such insults may participate in stricter customs, or may have spent a few more years in their native countries, does not mean that certain definitions of what it means to be Jewish, Chinese, Jamaican, or Albanian are more valid than others. There is no quota of Chinese characters that one must be able to write in order to call oneself Chinese; no magic number of holidays that one must faithfully observe to be allowed admission into the Jewish faith. No one has the right to claim that his or her stake in a heritage is greater than someone else's.

Cultural pressure is not a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to environments such as Yale. Terms like "white-washed" have been used ever since I can remember to describe the supposed tragedy of assimilation to American culture. I remember having black friends in elementary school who drifted away after fellow black students called them "Oreo cookies" and told them that they were trying to be white.

I have Asian friends who are very loyal to their Asian heritage, speak the language, and eat the food, and yet are told that they are not truly Asian because they were not born in their respective countries and because they embraced American culture at the same time that they clung to their Chinese, Japanese, or Korean customs. How many hamburgers can you eat before you are too American to be Asian? How many white people can you talk to before you are too white to be black?

I would venture to say that a partial blending of cultures is not all bad, even if it is done at the expense of some of the finer points of the original traditions. It never made sense to me that in a nation as diverse and entirely mixed up as the United States, and in an age of theoretical commitments to the acceptance and appreciation of every culture under the sun, most people in both the majority and minority still seem inordinately concerned with separating people into neat either-or categories that often do not exist.

Perhaps my Chinese-American suitemate does have white friends and speaks more English than she does Chinese. She has something that native-born Chinese and American-born Anglo-Saxons do not have. She is a product of both worlds, and is equally proud of both of them. There can be beauty even in hyphenations

Kate Mason is a freshman in Ezra Stiles.

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