Cultural Identity

As I was returning from Port of Spain yesterday, I got stuck listening to Radio Shakti. Shakti translates to 'strength', but I usually find it low on what Ganesh is famous for. Strength and radio just don't go together. 'Look at me, how strong I am!', on the radio, is quite odd.

I say stuck because given the opportunity to listen to people talk on the radio or listen to music, I choose music. Anyways... they were talking about 'identity'. Identity, they think, is a big thing - and it was myopically focused on race, religion, and so on. I say myopically because the discussion was based on things that are very tangible in Trinidad and Tobago for those of us who don't live isolated little lives and actually deal with all levels of society on a voluntary and involuntary basis. To discuss identity in the manner that they were is akin to prisoners discussing the bars in their prison. Still, it was interesting in what others had to say - so I didn't change the station.

I didn't realize how weird this would be. They were using the standard cliches; that you don't know who you are when you don't know where you're from. How knowing what continent you're from and dressing like your culture or race or religion dictates is important. It's not that this is different anywhere else in the world; the entire world has this problem of identity.

A child can be brought up in a culture, or many cultures, or what have you. A child can be raised within a culture and end up being a brilliant adult. A child can also be raised by accepting other cultures - not tolerating, but accepting - and even appreciating them. Does this make this child less of their culture? Yes - it does. Does this make this child less of a person? No. Does this mean that the child might not identify with a particular culture? Yes. Does this mean that the child has no way of knowing where they are going because they do not hold the same rigid rules as the culture that the child's parents were brought up in? No.

The truth is that most people don't know where they are going, despite feeling some sort of belonging. Some people think that they are knowing where they are going, but... I don't know anyone who really does.

Cultural identity. What, exactly, is cultural identity? That's the real issue. Some people think that being a Trinbagonian means that you have to enjoy Carnival, go to late night fetes and dance a lot. There's nothing wrong with belonging to such a culture - but is that the Trinidad and Tobago culture? When you peer under the surface, I expect that there are people that don't sign onto that. Are they any less Trinbagonian?

Tags. We like to tag things. I can tell you the name of a bird, I can take pictures of a bird, but then when I ask you what the bird is and what it does - you really can't tell me too much about the bird unless you have observed the bird. So it is with culture.

So many times when I look at tags, I look at how people identify with... tags. Brand name clothing is my analogy. If you want clothing that fits you and feels comfortable, you shop around and don't care too much about brand names - tags - you just find what you like, and go with it. But people apparently like tags more than clothing. There are all matter of defenses about quality, but the truth is that people just like brand names. Personally, I don't see a strange need to have someone's name on my body (much less my posterior). But some people want to be... accepted.

That's what cultural identity is really about. It's about social acceptance. It's about being able to identify with a group for whatever reasons. I write on a weblog, but if you bump into me on the street and ask me what I do, I won't say I'm a 'blogger'. Why? Bloggers are as multifaceted as the content that they write. Telling someone that I own a weblog is sort of like telling them that I'm wearing brand name underwear. Sure, they think that they know something about me afterwards but in the end, they don't know until I show them my underwear. Some people get close enough to see my underwear, but I don't walk around in my underwear. Why? Because, at least for me, tags do not define me.

But back to this conversation on the radio - heavily polarized between people of African and Indian descent, but neglecting everything in between. There are people who are mixed between the two. Who should they identify with? I'm mixed - Indian and European by way of an interesting family tree. That tree doesn't define who I am or how I think of myself. I don't wake up and say, "Gee, I'm feeling slightly more Indian/European today." That would be... stupid.

I remember the first form I had to fill out in the U.S. - my employer was an 'Equal Opportunity Employer'. They ask the race on those forms because they need it for information to prove to people that they give everyone an equal opportunity. So they hire a few token people of certain races, perhaps more, but they go with those token race people because they are being forced to instead of just plain hiring people equally. Colleges have scholarships based on color. It's a strange world. My answers on those forms - from then until now - has been 'Other'. When queried for an explanation, I write 'None of the Above'. Does who someone else thinks you are based on your race really matter? To some people it does, but why? Because their race matters to them. Why? They blame it on 'cultural identity', when all it is really is a mindset of being around people who are like you.

Sounds pretty communist to me, really.

Cultural identities - many of them - can be embodied in an individual identity. Without an individual identity, a cultural identity is a life support system for mediocrity. Anyone who steps out of the bounds of cultural identity mediocrity is... seen as not being a part of the cultural identity.

It's all, basically, about sniffing each other's backsides and accepting or gaining acceptance in certain cliques. Someone asked me yesterday who I identify with, and I said, 'nobody'.

And oddly enough, not having a straightlaced traditional cultural identity is becoming more and more a cultural identity of it's own. Those without that traditional background, though, don't always pitch in to create a new cultural identity. Perhaps they find more identity within themselves than anyone else can provide.

I don't know. What I do know is that most of the 'cultural identity' stuff that people talk about omits so much - conveniently - and it does that because of the cultural identities brought into the conversation. The same holds true within the bounds of technology...