“Whether we are seasoned adults or young children, our identities are always in flux. The human impulse to categorize, however, has resulted in labeling people in ways that restrict the expression of complex identities.”
Boxing people into convenient categories has been an unfair practice that I have both engaged in and suffered from. When meeting new people we as humans have a desire to “know” someone from the get-go; maybe out of a survival instinct (is this person good or bad?) or maybe due to our discomfort with the unknown. This categorizing is both offensive and self-limiting, yet is so prevalent in our society. I identified so strongly with this passage, because ideas about identity are so frequently on my mind. The more I travel and have new experiences, the harder I find it to define myself: I am white, yet I do not identify with mainstream “white” culture in many ways; I speak Spanish and bachata, but I am not Latina; I have lived in so many places that I don’t even know what to say when people ask me where I am from.
The difference, however, between the adolescents that I will be teaching and my own self, is the confidence that I have gained with this ambiguity over the years. Like Joaquin Rosario, I find this ambiguity both convenient and liberating. For young people, these differences can cause personal trauma and social stigma if not encouraged and embraced by important adults in their life. But it is this search for self and critical analysis of who we are (and who we desire to be) that allows us to understand and grow into our full selves. Conforming to a stereotype or prescribed identity is often the easiest thing for people to do; veering away from the norm takes fortitude and resilience, two characteristics that we as teacher should try to cultivate. In particular, I find the anti-intellectualism in America harmful to identity exploration and I think it is absolutely critical that as educators we foster students’ intellectual tendencies and capacity for critical thinking. It is important to tap into the individual interests of students meanwhile exposing them to new ideas or ways of thinking. In a language classroom, the avenues for exploring identity are virtually endless. In embracing a multi-cultural approach to language teaching, we are inherently teaching our students to appreciate differences by acknowledging and valuing elements from other cultures.
I ‘identified’ (pun-intended) with your post quite a bit. I have also done a good deal of traveling and have found its impact on my sense of self quite profound. The effects have played out on two levels.
One is on a very conscious level. As I experience different cultures, I am exposed to ways of being in the world. The ways of being that attract me most beg for inclusion in my sense of self. I appease them. The great project of my travels has thus become to expand my own identity to include various cultural elements in a way that does not re-appropriate with disrespect or dishonesty to their context of origin. This forces us to engage in a process of recontextualizing factors of cultural identity in order that they may fit into the socio-cultural contexts from which we came.
The second way in which I go about identity formation through travel is quite unconscious. It is a natural result of being exposed to diversity. Such exposure helps us reflect on the socio-cultural contexts that shaped us and refine what the product of that shaping is.
The experience of travel is the ultimate proof that identity shifts according to the situation we find ourselves in. When the ambiguity of this constantly shifting sense of self becomes a comfort in itself, it is indicative of such a intimate knowledge of where we came from and how that has shaped us that we can begin to actively under-go a process of identity based cultural arbitration. For me, this is what it means to search for and grow into our full selves.
I hope I haven’t been untrue to what you expressed in this post and thank you for it. It was a pleasure to read.