Fractured Identities

Ken Taylor
What can you do when your sense of self is fractured?

Josh Landy
Can you choose which aspect to identify with?

Ken Taylor
Is it even up to you?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. And

Josh Landy
I’m Josh Landy, we’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco

Ken Taylor
continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where I teach philosophy and Josh directs the philosophy and literature initiative.

Josh Landy
Today we’re thinking about fractured identities. So Josh, I

Ken Taylor
look, I get the idea that people have many parts of their identity. I mean, I’m a philosopher. I’m a black guy. I’m a sports fan. I’m a parent. I’m a foodie, and I’m all kinds of other things. What’s the big deal? I don’t see a problem here.

Josh Landy
i Well, yeah, you’re making it sound easy. But you know, what if you’re an immigrant, for example, living in a different country than someone like me, you know, a Brit living in the States with an accent that makes no sense to anybody. Brits say I sound like a bloody Yank. And Americans say I sound like a stuffy Brit.

Ken Taylor
Well, Josh, I still I dude, I mean, Oh, should I say oh, chap, dude, whichever. I really don’t see the problem. You got the best of both worlds. You got cricket? You got baseball?

Josh Landy
Maybe me, but you’re saying that immigrants in general are better off? Well,

Ken Taylor
maybe they are. I mean, it’s like Ralph Ellison says, All of life is divided. And only in division is their house.

Josh Landy
Wow, that is a lovely line. But no division costs your sense of belonging? I mean, yeah, who am I people?

Ken Taylor
Come on, come on. It’s easy. You can hang out with your fellow British Americans. You can have your own rituals, your own British American rituals. You can bring tea and scones to a base.

Josh Landy
Yeah, okay. All right. Maybe I’m not the best example. Right? Look, think about think about someone from of African descent, for example, living in Martinique, right? I mean, you know, her ancestors didn’t choose to go there. They were taken, and they were taken there as slaves. And you know, she’s been brought up. speaking French, learning about French culture. These are the language and culture of her oppressors know

Ken Taylor
it. That’s bad. That’s a tough thing. But I’m still I’m still with the philosopher, Edward ugly song, who, by the way, is also from Martinique, I believe in when he believed in the creolization of the self, just as a Creole language they have French Creole is can be a beautiful mixture of French and some African language, people can make creels of themselves, they can synthesize their different identities into a beautiful new mosaic.

Josh Landy
Look, I’m a huge fan of the realization idea. But yeah, I wonder if you’re not putting too much emphasis on how the individual sees herself in it. Take Barack Obama, for example. He’s a person of mixed race, but he identifies as black. Do you really think that was just a matter of his own preference?

Ken Taylor
Well done. You know, I think you’ve got I see your point. I think you know what, I think it’s actually worse than you think. Because I’ve always thought that the world demanded of Obama, that he be a black man, black people needed to figure who would inspire them. If If Obama had identified as biracial, they would have experienced that as some kind of betrayal, a deep betrayal.

Josh Landy
Yeah. And I think same for white people. You know, white people needed a figure who would allow them to feel like they were participating in a narrative of progress. You know, and let’s be honest, to allow them to feel good about me.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, they think oh, god, yeah, we’re not racist. See, we wrote voted for this black man, by Rachel ban, but you know, Yeah, but look, this is kind of tough stuff. It’s part of the curse of what Dubois called double consciousness. Remember, that beautiful line from souls a black hole? one ever feels his Tunis, an American, a negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals and one dark body whose dog had strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. That’s beautiful stuff.

Josh Landy
Beautiful stuff. And, you know, arguably, double consciousness is the worst kind of fracturing there is. And I’m not sure it’s going to be healed just by a solitary choice on the part of individuals. It’s going to take education, culture reform, economic justice. That’s

Ken Taylor
true. And Dubois would agree with you. I mean, he said, look, we’ve got a lot of work to do, as a society and a culture if we want to help. He was thinking about black people, but all people heal their fractured identity.

Josh Landy
Well, we sent our roving philosophical reporter, Liza veal to find some people who are doing exactly that work. She files this report.

Liza Veale
Luara’s mom is American. Her dad’s Brazilian, she split her time between the two places. In the US, she was one of the only white girls in her

Luara
school, but I wouldn’t let people call me white. I got this like back door where I got to be cool and like different from the white girls because I’m Brazilian.

Yuli
My name is Yuli Aaronson.

Liza Veale
Yuli grew up in the former Soviet Union in the Republic of Latvia. And he’s been called a bunch of different things depending on the time and place.

Yuli
I was 19 When I came to this country, and this is the first time in my life that was identified as Russian. The Russians would never identify me as Russian bear with me as a Jew.

Ansu
My name is Ansu

Liza Veale
Ansu was born and raised in Germany and his father’s from Sierra Leone. He says here,

Ansu
usually like, I’m considered black. That’s what I understand. While in Germany, I’m mixed race or like I’m somewhere in between. But like here, once you have like a black father, you’re black and like nobody questions that.

Janaki
My name is Janaki.

Liza Veale
Janaki is from India with a whole matrix of linguistic and cultural points of identification.

Janaki
My mom’s side of the family is from Assam and the east and my dad’s from Delhi. So I’m half Punjabi. And being Hindi speaking, being North Indian, more than anything, I think that’s the biggest split.

Liza Veale
Here’s philosopher Anthony Appiah, who happens to be half Guinean, half British

Anthony Appiah
social identities like race and gender and religion and nationality and sexual orientation and so on, play an enormous role in shaping the parameters of what it is for your life to go well.

Liza Veale
Because different social groups have different values. And from the outside the groups we belong to shape the world’s expectations of us. Appian says, there’s a modern belief that we should all get to play a role in determining the meaning of our identities, that we should be in control. And he shares that belief.

Anthony Appiah
But the other thing I think, which is sort of runs counter to that is that identities are not private property. They are collective, they belong to all of us who you are as a matter of how the labor works between you and other people. And so you have to, you have to work with other people to, to shape it up.

Liza Veale
In some cases, it can feel like the meaning of your identity is determined entirely without your say, like, usually in the Soviet Union

Yuli
being ethnically Jewish, you look different. It’s sort of like being black in America, the Jews were hated. So it was one of the it was not superior or inferior. He was more like, these are bad people.

Liza Veale
For Janaki. In India, she felt freer to pick and choose as she liked,

Janaki
I began identifying with bits of each of my cultural identities from a young age. So you know, when you think of like, a stereotypical Indian wedding, you’re probably thinking of a Punjabi wedding. It’s like, the stereotype is very much loud, people who love to like drink and party, you know, like the other side of my family is much simpler down to earth, and slow moving, and like soft spoken. And so I think I always connected a little more with my mom’s side of the family and that way,

Liza Veale
but for some people, the negotiation is not just a private family one, but something that comes to bear everywhere you go. On, Sue says he’s been so socialized by his German culture, that it’s the side he identifies with most,

Ansu
even though when I look in the mirror, what I know what people see is a person of color, not necessarily a person that is half white. But I also feel like an imposter a little bit that the second I would open my mouth and have an accent or not get any of the cultural references that I feel like, yeah, I look the part but I think that’s not really me.

Liza Veale
When the water got a little older, she realized being Brazilian didn’t get her out of being white.

Luara
The thing is that I’m white everywhere that I go, because my even my Brazilian family’s European. Like, I’m hella white in Brazil. And so what does that make me in the US? That makes me hella white too. And somehow, I’m still Brazilian.

Liza Veale
There are places where it seems like the only relevant categories are white, or a person of color, and other places is a lot more gradation or specificity. Like where you really grew up in Latvia.

Yuli
There were 300 nationalities living in the Soviet Union. That was a derogatory term for everyone.

Liza Veale
But philosopher Anthony Appiah says in most times, and places are multifaceted internal identity struggles tend to play out one way

Anthony Appiah
people sort of make an estimate of how black you are, is still the case that if you really have a dark skin, you can expect to be treated worse.

Liza Veale
For Philosophy Talk

Ken Taylor
to her a fractured identity Liza. I’m Ken Taylor. With me as my Stanford College, Joshua Landy and today we’re thinking about fractured identities. We’re

Josh Landy
jo ined now by Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of The Best selling how to raise an adult and more recently of real American a memoir, Julie, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Thanks for having me, guys. Nice to see you again.

Ken Taylor
So Julie, I know that this topic is not just one of intellectual interests for you. So tell me when is the first Do you remember the first moment in your life when you experience yourself as fractured?

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Yeah, I think I was about three or four. We were living in a community in Rockland County, New York across the Hudson from Manhattan. And my father is black, my mother’s white at about age three, or four, when I was out in the world with one of my parents, I began to observe how strangers looked at them. There were some strangers whose eyes burned when they looked at my black daddy. And I knew that there was no stranger that looked at my mom that way. So I learned that there was something wrong with daddy and something that wasn’t wrong with mommy, then I was coming home from school with friends questions, what are you and she’s your mother. So I was getting the messages both about myself and about my parents, that something was wrong, and that I was weird and different. And

Josh Landy
you’ve you’ve lived a lifetime of experiences like this and also of counseling others going through experiences like this. So I’m sort of curious where you stand on the question that Ken and I were debating earlier, and he was suggesting maybe people can people can synthesize the different parts and I was saying if it’s quite so easy, so so it was right as the bloody yanks sitting over there, or the stuffy bread over here,

Ken Taylor
what a bloody Yank bread

Josh Landy
it’s uh, can you synthesize you can? Can you occupy a space that that somehow does justice to all the parts of one’s personality simultaneously? Or is it you think it’s better to to come down on one side,

Julie Lythcott-Haims
I can only speak about my own experience, which is that identity I felt was foisted upon me by society’s judgement of people with brown skin. So I was labeled black and treated as a black person. And but I didn’t understand the the cultural richness behind being black because my folks were raising me in white communities. I’m now a 50 year old adult who considers herself black and biracial. I have synthesized that identity, if you will. But I chose biracial in my mid 20s, and into my 30s because I was not feeling belonging amid black people. Now I do feel that belonging so being biracial is sort of a technical aspect of my upbringing.

Ken Taylor
No, I gotta tell you something. I don’t know if you I read your memoir and it very much movement if you had grown up in my neighborhood, which is where, which is a Sandusky, Ohio, working class town, all the most almost other black people were factory workers. Part of the migration from the south. Many, many, many people I know their parents like your dad were born, dirt poor sharecroppers. Right. In my neighborhood, if you you with your particularity, you would have been so shunned by the black people, you and if you hit you, your smart person would have been in the they use the tracking to segregate our schools, right? It was the rare black kid who was in the advanced in the gifted what now called gifted and talented classes, even if you’re smart, I was smart enough. You know, the things that made me a Stanford philosopher eventually were evident in my youth, I was smart enough that I was in the Gifted and Talented classes all through and I was the only black kid I played the violin, I played the trombone, I was I was said you’re trying to be white, you know what they would have said about you in mind, the black kids would have said about you, they would have they would have so harassed you, the black boys would have the eye, she’s a prize, right? Because she’s got that white in her. And it would have been, you would have experienced the same thing from the other side. Right?

Julie Lythcott-Haims
So it left me on an island, it left me completely alone. And I struggled to locate a self I could love regardless of what black people or white people were thinking of me and how they might judge me.

Josh Landy
And that’s that’s one of the things I love about your analysis is that you’re thinking about these different values of identity that it’s not, it’s not just about action guiding, it’s also about loving yourself and it’s also about finding a place to belong.

Ken Taylor
So we’ll take up more of this this deep stuff. Obviously, after a short break, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about fractured identities with Julie lift God Haines, author of real American, a memoir.

Josh Landy
In our next segment, we’re going to talk about where fractured identities come from what they feel like and what people can do to cope with them

Ken Taylor
causes consequences and coping mechanisms when Philosophy Talk to us.

Speaker 1
I wish I could have waste that faith sacks. Everybody, people. Everybody bleed. Everybody needs some. Everybody love. Everybody, no hat go. Everybody’s people.

Ken Taylor
Those being fractured by your by racial identity feel like what did he say? The devil playing spades with a pastor. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything

Josh Landy
except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we’re thinking about fractured identities. Our guest is Julie Lescott haymes, author of real American a memoir.

Ken Taylor
So Julio, want to know more about where this fracturing phenomena comes from? It seems to me obviously comes from other people, obviously. But why don’t people so insistent on telling other people who they can and can’t be? What Why do you think that?

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Because in America, we have had a fascination with skin color. Since since before America was America. We have for centuries had for example, the one drop rule A place that said, whiteness is pure if you have one drop of black blood, quote unquote, which is in of itself a fiction, there is no such thing as black blood or white blood. But if you have one drop of black ancestry, you are considered black. And that was a system put in place to perpetuate slavery so that when masters raped slaves, the children could still be enslaved.

Ken Taylor
If you write about the history of America, but we took a tour around the world of fracturing, and people just do this everywhere, they find some basis for imposing on each other, these separating identities. Why do we do that?

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Well, I’m not an anthropologist, I don’t think either view is either no, but I think if we had an anthropologist here, they would tell us that tribalism is inherent to being a human that we have always needed them out there to draw a boundary between us and them so that we know who we are. And we find that belonging, and we know who to fight, and we know where we feel safe. But I think it’s a 21st century and we’ve overcome so much that has held us back as humans, if we can go to the moon. And if we can examine our genome, why can’t we be better at accepting one another? With our differences? Regardless of differences?

Josh Landy
I think that’s really interesting, because maybe it maybe it raises a question about the whole notion of belonging. Yeah. Because, because in your book, generally, the notion of belonging seems like a positive thing. Yeah. And I want to belong, I want to find the group that accepts me and that I feel comfortable with and so on. But it sounds like there’s also a kind of a more sinister side to it, right? That these belonging categories can cause real? Yeah, see, by that

Julie Lythcott-Haims
same thing? Absolutely. Belonging can cause divisiveness and division. It is this beautiful, kind of both sides of the coin. You know, we feel protected, we feel loved, we feel seen, we feel held with our group, which is a beautiful thing. What is it that makes us say, and therefore anyone outside my group is someone I chuck a spear at or draw a rock at or choose to hate.

Ken Taylor
So this is what this is what it was. So there’s this lovely scene in your book, it takes place at Stanford, I think it’s when you were a freshman. The bunch of people read they have to choose where they belong. racially. Yeah. And you choose for the first time in your life, the biracial. Am I remembering that? Sorry, training? Yeah, yeah. But here’s the thing. I thought, well, that’s powerful. That’s empowering. And for, apparently, for the next 20 years, you you march under this banner, but when I you choose or you? I mean, I belong with these people. Well, what about those people? Right, in a room full of people? I mean, I belong with you guys. You guys are really cool. You’re thinking people, you’re engaged people. I love that thinking engaged. Okay.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
It’s it’s so complex. And I know I’m looking at you and thinking Come on, Ken. Because when you’re a black man walking down the street, and many, many cities in this country, right, some folks are going to lock their car doors. Some folks are going across to the other side. Yes. So

Ken Taylor
So here’s the question. Yeah, I take that to be a comment. Not on me. Absolutely. But a sign of them. Sure. Right. And I say, Well, screw you. I don’t say Screw you. I say worse than that. But I say Screw you. You don’t get to say who I am. You don’t get with me, I belong here. I know.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
But when those things happen, they hurt. They may not hurt you as much as they hurt others, because you have got your act together and you know yourself and you lowers I heard for a long time. But it is nice to come and be in community with someone you can tell that story to someone who could put their arm around you or give you a smile and say that I’m sorry, that happened, man, you know, and that happens to all of us. And we move on being in community with people who get what our experiences out in the real world is a bomb is healing. And so when biracial was offered as a term for the first time in these United States in the late 80s, okay, I claimed it because it was like, wait a minute, I’m finally don’t have to explain why I’m not black enough, or why I’m obviously not white. It was a place of belonging. But go

Ken Taylor
back to this thing. I said in the in the beginning, in the first segment, if you had grown up where I grew up, yeah, you would not have found that belonging in my black community, you would have been look, I grew up in a black black house black friends, but because I played the violin and played the trombone, and was in all the Gifted and Talented classes, and got A’s, they said you’re trying to be white. Right? Right. And I argue with these kids on this or something, some point I decide, I don’t I don’t get to say who I am and what I get to do. You wouldn’t if you were in my black community, you and your situation, you would have not found this. At that time, you would have not found that I think

Josh Landy
things are changing. Thank God for that. Yeah, one of the I find this part of the book extremely powerful. I mean, it’s all extremely among great

Ken Taylor
writers. I know you put that line in there, but somebody told you how to work on your writing. See, that person still around is

Julie Lythcott-Haims
a great mentor. And he was right. My writing didn’t need a lot.

Josh Landy
But one of the things that leapt out at me because that moment where you were suddenly there’s because they’ve been these awful pejorative terms right from mixed race categories. Yes, suddenly they’re a positive term. Yeah, you remember Raisa, and one of the lines I love the most when you say finally checking a box doesn’t mean ignoring my mother. Exactly. It’s not just a kind of new sense of belonging for you. It’s also a way for you to embrace everything that you are and that you come from.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Yeah. And let me point out another difference. I don’t know how old you are Ken but older than you. I thought so. So it’s relevant because when you ask, Where did this come from? Why are we this way in America, and I started with the one drop rule from you know, this 18th century. What I was then going to mention was, I’m a child of loving, okay, Loving versus Virginia Supreme Court case. It said, black people and white people can marry, it’s not illegal. That case was handed down during the year of my birth, and the population of mixed race kids began to grow. Now we have a critical mass, but I was coming up at a time when we were freaks of nature, we wouldn’t have belonged in Sandusky, Ohio, where you grew up. We didn’t belong in Middleton, Wisconsin, where I grew up. We didn’t belong anywhere. I didn’t

Ken Taylor
mean to make Sandusky sounds like an awful place. But

Julie Lythcott-Haims
you said that three times I got it like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I wanted to belong.

Ken Taylor
I understand. I’m not blaming you for what

Julie Lythcott-Haims
you are saying like I was above that. It didn’t matter what those people thought like you can had the wherewithal to say it’s about that’s their problem.

Ken Taylor
Oh my gosh, that was not that was an achievement that wasn’t like an automatic thing. But no, it wasn’t about me this is

Julie Lythcott-Haims
you’re speaking to the hard work of crafting yourself. When people all around you are thinking that you’re less than or that you don’t belong.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking with Julie Lithgow Haynes about fractured identity, we love to have you join this conversation. And Jason from someplace is on the line. Welcome to wait calling from Jason.

Speaker 2
I’m actually heading toward San Jose, to visit my son in San Luis Obispo. And I’m grateful that this conversation is on. And there’s there’s a lot to unpack here. And so you’re saying that to me. So timing for sure. I was born in 1972. And you picture a Brady Bunch. Instead, my father had for my father had to be both divorced and had full custody came together. My father was an architect, and was black. So I have a black brother and sister. They met when I was six months. And I think they were married. By the time I was four, the oldest was eight at the time. And that I thought I was actually you know, I’m white, I thought I was black until I was probably 12. Because of because of the way I was treated in the town that we grew up, like everyone knew our family was minded, there was a lot of prejudice. There’s also a lot of, like you said, tended to be a lot of good people there too. That often gets overlooked. But the understanding I had was that I couldn’t go play with certain people because my father was black. And that meant I was black, because he was my dad. I mean, it was just such an obvious connection. And then, you know, moving to the bay from there into this environment is initially I thought I had found the Holy Land and everything is going to be great.

Ken Taylor
Jason, I want you to put a question, though, I want you to wrap this up.

Speaker 2
Here’s what I would say. As a white male. I understand that as my identity. That’s what everybody sees me, the complexity of which side you choose. I think that’s the question of I think I said, there’s a deep thing going on there. Because if I’m in a room and no one of colors in a room, the things that can be said you would never hear somebody who has. And so as someone who often does self identify, self identify as I can’t do it, because I know what it means for you. And my father used to say when I talked to him about being an architect, you could only walk so tall as a six foot two black man and get the job.

Ken Taylor
Okay, Jason, Jason, I’m good. I’m gonna, I’m gonna I’m gonna let you respond because you use that a lot. And we can’t we’re not gonna respond to it. Thank you. Thank you for the call.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Jason. I’m fascinated by your story. And what I’m struck by is that you are you know, phenotypically and genetically white and yet, you embrace the sense of blackness, because obviously you admired and loved this black father, and then the world told you you are not black, even though you are identifying with the needs and concerns and perspectives of black people, which is a wonderful thing. It brings up the concept of passing and what happens if we are light enough, so actually have some African ancestry and get light enough that the white people don’t notice. So they do say the bad things around us. In my book, I worry that that future awaits one of my children who is quite light, and I want her to know I wanted to burn in her bones that she is descended from Sylvie, a slave in Charleston, South Carolina, and she still the is the reason we exist, and we’re here.

Ken Taylor
So but passing let’s pause on that notion for a while. See, that’s that’s the people who have who refused the gender binary, but I’ve tried to invent new terms for themselves. Passing is a term of the old binary, archaic, oppressive divisive structure passing ought to be like obliterated as a concept, I would think because the racial binary ought to be challenged in the same way that the gender binary and who is the challenging the very people who are a puzzle for the binary, right? The very people who are a puzzle for the binary need to be like racial revolutionaries, and say, I’m gonna live by your binary. I don’t know, if you agree or disagree.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
I think that gender and race are really different. I’m drawing this little diagram on my book here. So diagrams, I know what I’m gonna describe it like, you know, if there if you know if there’s a binary, white, you know, the white black binary is an arrow that goes top to bottom where white is the best and on top and black is at the bottom, whereas gender is more of a left, right. Binary and I’m not making political left, right is one is better than the other comments here. But they’re even, you know, and, and so I don’t think that they are comparable, analytically here for this, the purpose of this conversation, I think a person, you know, can find themselves not conforming to to maleness or femaleness, somewhere in this great middle as biracial people find themselves in the middle, but the weight of the ends of the binaries are so different in gender versus race. I just don’t think it’s the right. Comparison. I

Josh Landy
think that’s an excellent analysis. Could I maybe ask about a different category? Yeah, about sexual orientation, because I wonder whether we’re going

Ken Taylor
to make a diagonal, we’re gonna play three dimensional chess.

Josh Landy
Historically, in our culture, heterosexuality has been valued over homosexuality, right, homosexual has kind of been marginalized. Yeah. So I wonder whether it’s a bit similar there because, you know, there. What about bisexuality? That seems to be a case where people could think of themselves as having having a kind of anytime on fracture, or could think of themselves as being a beautiful composite of different parts. Yeah. And yet, it’s, it seems to be a little bit like race in the sense that one of those parts has been historically marginal, I agree with

Julie Lythcott-Haims
you, one of those parts has been historically marginalized. But here’s how it’s different than race. When you walk out into the world, people don’t see your sexual orientation, unless you are wearing labels that demonstrate it. And so you express your sexuality in the privacy of wherever places you choose. And so it is about being in community with people you want to be intimate with, you know, racist, in large part about who you are on the street and in the classroom and in the workplace as

Ken Taylor
well. I think in some places that sometimes I’m not, I’m not sure it’s all places all times, always, if I even in America, I mean, I look at people and I think, what exactly are they? My wife and I do this, we have a biracial son, right? We look at people and we say this, they look kind of biracial, they look like a mix of especially coming from my wife comes from Hawaii, where people are home. Oh, like all kinds of, you know, and people guess, you know, and they don’t they don’t try to neatly in the Hawaii, there’s just as that guy from, I think it was loud for you. There’s an insult for every ethnicity in Hawaii for every combination of it ethnicity. So I think race could easily evolve to be but do

Julie Lythcott-Haims
the white folks feel insulted by whatever insult is hurled at them? If there is literally a term for every person in Hawaii? I don’t think so. Because white equals power, white equals privilege, white equals in charge. And until that changes, not

Ken Taylor
in a way because the Japanese or the Japanese, and the Chinese together are the majority and they control the state government and it’s a different thing. Under the Hollies outside cider. So it’s a little different. It’s a little different. But we got a color. Lisa from San Francisco. Welcome to philosophy. Totally. So what’s your comment? Your question?

Speaker 3
Yes, I agree completely with with the your guests there that white is the main indicative. However, there’s also the issue of language in terms of identity. And, for example, my mother, she came to this country in 1955. She She was Chilean, and she was blond and blue eyed. However, every time she would open her mouth and they would notice a very thick accent she would be discriminated against and she was incredibly appalled at the discrimination. The first thing that she noticed when she came to this country, she was incredibly appalled at the discrimination. 1955 was really bad, you know, time for most African Americans in this country, but also for Latinos as well. And now I’m Caucasian, Latina, I consider myself a Latina, but the effect of language the fact that my mother made sure that I knew the Spanish language, you know, in and out and my grandmother too, that sort of cemented my identity as Latina and and because language plays such an important part in your identity as well.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, yeah. And that thing is thanks. Thanks so much for the call Lisa. I mean, the thing is, people will find in their massive sprawling collectivity people will find anything they can to hold this other rising thing on people are just such inveterate tribalist otherwise There’s it’s It disgusts me.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
It disgusts me too. I think. It warns us, it harms us. I think it holds us back from being great as a people and as a nation.

Ken Taylor
So you have any thought about there anything we can do? Maybe our next movie and what can we do about this deeply ingrained human thing? I mean, I still think people like you and your children living at the edge of these. That’s the revolutionary Vanguard. That’s what I believe.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Would that we all lived in a world can tailor comprise

Ken Taylor
revolutionary Vanguards don’t necessarily have an easy revolution is a struggle, right? But if you don’t begin the struggle, you never win the struggle. That’s That’s what do you think about that?

Julie Lythcott-Haims
I believe that a struggle is underway. I know that this 21st century is a century unlike any other in so many ways. And I have faith that this America has the capacity to grapple with its shameful past around race, and move to a place where we actually can have compassion for everybody regardless of language, and skin color, and ethnic origin and gender and sexual orientation and wealth, status, etc. I believe we have the capacity as humans to do that. I may sound naive, but I choose to believe that we can overcome these biases and prejudices and be better than we currently are.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about fractured identities, with Julie lift God haymes, author of real American, a memoir.

Josh Landy
In our next segment, we’re going to continue talking about what we can do as a society to make fracturing less common, and less painful.

Ken Taylor
The future of identity when philosophy talking continues.

Josh Landy
If you’re a little bit country and a little bit of rock and roll, what should you do to heal your fractured musical identity column

Ken Taylor
Taylor Swift, Josh and make $280 million. That’s a lot. I’m Ken Taylor, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Josh Landy
except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy. And our guest is Julie lift got haymes We’re thinking about fractured identity. And

Ken Taylor
we’ve got a caller on the line. Molly from San Francisco. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Molly, what’s your comment or question?

Speaker 4
Thank you, I wanted to piggyback on what you call the Revolutionary Guard of the young people who are growing up biracial and really moving society forward. And as a teacher, I see a great need. And I’m a white teacher, for I really see any great need for curriculum and media to catch up with what’s really going on in America. Because it’s extremely hard to break away from the kind of the historical myths about this country, which still kind of eliminate people of color and put white people in the front. And so it’s so exciting to see, for example, on Netflix, to watch, for example, your dear white people, is that the name of that? Yes. So and and basically, I’ve decided that really, white people have have to have a re education. And the wonderful thing about the internet is that this stuff is so unconscious, that when you go on the internet, and you say, Okay, I want to hear about conversations about race, with people speaking openly about race, who experienced racism, right? Without the white influence in the room, so you can hear what the true conversation has been with the true experiences. And in my own family. I’m like one of the people who’s basically just white, I have biracial members of family, immigrant members of family. And I just see that such the need to kind of get out of the way and get those voices out there because that’s what’s going to change things. For my students. You know, they’re getting this ideal, a very specific conversation about multi culturalism things. And it’s still to me isn’t really, truly trickling down.

Ken Taylor
Molly, thanks a lot for the wide range of comments there. So Julie, well, yeah, there’s a lot to pick out, whatever.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
Well, Molly, thanks for calling and love what you’ve said. And I just want to nod my head and add to it, that the dominant narrative in America is the white story. White folks have written our history, they’ve written our literature. We are only beginning as people of color and in non whites more broadly to tell our own truths. And so if folks are interested in learning about communities, of which they’re not a member expanding, they’re widening their blinders in terms of media helps, as you’ve said, you mentioned dear white people, I thought of Queen Sugar, I thought of 13th I thought of insecure I thought of blackish just instantly, you know, listen to different podcasts, read different memoirs, watch different television shows and different movies. Day To learn or dare to expose yourself to the fact that folks have lived a different life than you and their life is no less meaningful and matters no less than yours. And in order to really get that feel compassion for their story and their truth, you have to listen to their narrative. So

Ken Taylor
I think you and I disagree about something. I’m not sure. Something. Yeah. Here’s something I think you have a different attitude toward AI. So cuz it goes back to the this binary and exploding the binary, and the revolutionary Vanguard. I mean, I just think that’s happening. Yeah, I don’t think of your book, as I mean, it looks, it feels like to me, you tried that. And, you know, as part of you this biracial thing, but that’s not where you settled. And I don’t know that you regard yourself as part of what I call the revolutionary Vanguard. That’s not just like making a biracial, safe place within black identity for your biracial heritage. But, but it’s but saying, Look, you don’t get to categorize me by this binary, this binary is an oppressive archaic thing. You don’t seem to believe that.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
You know what I know. You might prefer that I have that I don’t have a both in view on this, but I do. I got the radio microphone. Here’s the deal. Yeah. I claimed by racial in my 20s, right, because I didn’t feel an acceptance within black. I didn’t like myself as a black person, I feared black people. And America did that to me. I became a woman in my 40s, who said, eff that I am black, and I’m no longer going to let American racism distort my sense of self. I can love myself and my community of black people. I had, I had chosen biracial as I fled black for biracial. And I am no longer doing that. Okay, so I feel that I’m a black person. I have a biracial identity. Okay. I love the fact that the biracial community exists and has conferences and literature and is finding a sense of belonging amongst itself. I think that is a good thing, I think, and I and I applaud that. So for me, I can celebrate my ratio ality and claim a strong black identity at the same time.

Ken Taylor
Is that okay? Yeah, you don’t need my number. I

Julie Lythcott-Haims
gotta say, I’m sorry. I gotta say one thing about the opening music. Donny and Marie sing, and I’m a little bit country and I’m a little bit rock and roll is about the whitest thing I’ve heard in a long time. There’s a little bit of Motown in my soul. No, there isn’t. Such as cultural appropriation for Donnie and Marina think they, you know, can sort of speak to Motown and embody and appreciate that, like, that was just such a lovely encapsulation of part of the problem here,

Josh Landy
you caught our eye ready? Oh,

Julie Lythcott-Haims
my God. I just said for the listeners who were like, Emily, right? Yes.

Ken Taylor
But we gotta call her keep him a birthday. Welcome to Cuba. What’s your question?

Speaker 3
Hi. Hello, thank you for having me. So I wanted to talk about, like the idea of like an identity being foisted upon you. And then I also wanted to talk about how maybe to have the fracturing be less painful. I like these words that you guys are throwing around. My mom is Vietnamese. She was born in Vietnam, but her biological father was an unnamed American soldier. Her biological mother was a 16 year old girl. And so she was adopted in Vietnam and escape, and she was 10. And when she was about my age, she was about 20, she met my father, who was born in tortured Arkansas, and he’s, he’s a very visibly black man. And so my mom and I get to have mixed identity in common. And we love this, my brother and I get to have our full identity in common. He’s 100% of the time 100%. Me, we have very different personalities, but we can kind of know where where we feel about things, as soon as the other person sets in the room. And I really enjoy that. However, I don’t really have that with very many other people at all, even within claiming mixed race identity, or even within claiming biracial or tri racial, whatever, whatever prefix you’d have. And so I think that, that that’s something that I wanted to talk about this the feeling of, okay, so say, I identify heavily with my Asian culture, but because I don’t look very Asian. What can I do, I do have Asian blood, but you are kind of at the FMA of what other people are going to say, depending on what you put a foot pass for. And that affects your life. Like I haven’t, I’m not close with my cousins. I’m not close with my own Asian family because of those things. And on top of that, I think that what I’ve found to make the fracturing less painful is to see the ways in which racial identity is dealt with differently. In my case, I went to an 80% Hispanic school and I got to kind of experience how, in a lot of Latin American cultures and in the Latin American diaspora, you can be a different race from your brother assist. So

Ken Taylor
cute Kiva, Kiva, Kiva. Again, you’ve given us lots of we have really rich colors here. You’ve given us lots to lots to chew on. And, Julie, I’m going to turn that to you. And I want you to broaden it, because I don’t want you to just address Kiva situation. But the situation of people who face this fracturing, I mean, what can we as a collectivity do to make it easier for people? I mean, how can we reform ourselves so that the navigation of identity is not so Cotton Pickin difficult and hard, and sometimes demoralizing? And, you know, I mean, what

Josh Landy
can you do talked earlier about education? And I was wondering whether there, I mean, maybe we need system wide changes, as well as education? I mean, what’s your view about that,

Julie Lythcott-Haims
I think we need a concerted examination of whiteness, and what it has been as the infrastructure of America, the foundation of capitalism, and, and all that that has meant for those of us who are non white, all the way to the past, through the present, I think a truth and reconciliation and unpacking of whiteness, and its privileges is required in order for us to be able to begin accepting one another as humans, on the basis of our humanity, regardless of race. Until that happens, those of us who wear a skin color or have a set of eyes or nose or lips that are judged as less than in America, we have to develop a self love. And that takes effort. And it takes time. It takes learning about the people we’re from it takes learning Kiva about those Vietnamese folks, you’re from and reading up on the mythology and the literature and the history and, and cultural traditions. And so you know, when you go to Asian spaces, or Vietnamese spaces here today that you know, you have a bit of cred to stand on. So when someone looks at you and thinks, well, he’s not really one of us, you can offer something you can say something that demonstrates not a no, you know, I know, you know, I am of this community, you will discover a belonging in that community, when you fully feel you belong to it yourself. Let me tell you, when I finally love myself as a black woman, the day after I had done that psychological work, I walked out onto the Stanford campus. And it was like every black person had gotten a memo saying smile at Julie today. And of course they hadn’t, what was happening was I was smiling at myself, for the first time, I could see myself for the first time in love that self as a black woman, and therefore I could see all other black people and feel a sense of belonging to the black community. And it was a beautiful thing. So I

Josh Landy
mean, this is incredibly powerful. And it’s equally powerful in your amazing book. And so I’m, I guess, I just want to raise a question about these sort of two things. There’s a there, there’s this very powerful, you have this very powerful voice about yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself as a black woman. You’re also talking about a future in which these won’t be the categories that we’re thinking where race won’t be a category, we’re thinking. So does it look to you like, well, this is this is what we need for now. Right, provisionally, what we need is for people to learn to be able to love themselves and find belonging. But we’re also trying to work together towards a society where, in fact, you know, will overthrow this system in which people are categorized according to race.

Julie Lythcott-Haims
I think both are necessary. And both are possible. Now the work is now the self work and the community work is underway now.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, now is always the moment of decision and commitment. Yeah, fierce urgency. Julie, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thanks so much for joining us. I guess it’s been Julie lift got haymes, author of real American a memoir. She’s also author of The Best Selling how to raise an adult and go out and buy the other one. And it’ll be a bestseller, too. So Josh, you got any? You got any last? Closing thoughts?

Josh Landy
I’m really inspired. I’m really inspired by Julian by this whole conversation. And I think, you know, both and is where we need to be right. I mean, at least that’s how it seems to me, I’m convinced by by Julie that we need both a way for individuals to come to terms with and accept and love who they are. And also, I also like your thought about the, you know, being part of a revolutionary Vanguard, like bringing this system to an end.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, I agree. I think it’s both. And I think I think developing the internal strength to navigate one’s identity is a hard thing. I think for any human to achieve. I don’t want to undersell that every 17 year old person who comes to Stanford, is not faced with the kind of struggle that African American students come but they all struggle over this stuff of who am I how do I fit because their parents isn’t something else that Julie wrote a lot about. Yeah, their parents like load stuff on them anyway. But this conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is Cogito ergo Blago, I think therefore I blog, and you too can become a partner in that community just by visiting our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG.

Josh Landy
And if you have a question or comment that wasn’t addressed In today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. So send it to us. Comments at Philosophy Talk dot orgy, and we might feature it on the blog. Now let’s hear from a guy whose identity is fractured only by speed. It’s Ian Shoals, The 62nd philosopher. In shows

Ian Shoales
no young person who identifies as neither male nor female and prefers to be called day. Others in this boat have created pronouns of their own devising like tea or whatever. Not to be resentful or anything but how am I supposed to know what you want to call yourself? This is why I don’t leave the house which is gender free, unlike in France, I do believe that transgender however once the cultural dust settles will be less of an identity identifier than being a lawyer or a store clerk or even a circus clown. And good luck with that, not that the circus is Dufftown and 19th century, Irish and Germans fleeing famine and turmoil fled to the states to find ridicule, and crude stereotypes the stage Irishman stage German, joining the China man, the Jew all in blackface and drag for a presentation of not belonging that was amusing to the white viewing public. This is analogous to the cowboy in the movies which had little to do with the real life cowboy and good luck with that now that the cowboy left town, but the perception of the hippie The Hooker with a heart of gold they get from Brooklyn, the yuppie the bro, the alcoholic doctor, the shoot country, lawyer, etc. have deeply embedded in the shallows of our culture from their identities are imposed upon the world. And the identity is the world’s factions eventually take upon themselves don’t always coincide. But where did those stereotypes come from? We’d like to say it comes from elitism that patriarchy white men, which is probably true, but it’s more mysterious than that. I mean, how do white people view themselves it’s not that homogenized really. Even today, we got Swedes and Italians mixing it up with Lebanese and Greeks. Sure there are white supremacist, but they even agree on a standard Hitler himself. Oh, but short of the mark didn’t mean Drew’s addicted to methamphetamines. Always a white supremacist indicator, along with mansplaining and cool uniforms, but he was clearly not supreme, in any sense of the word. Not excellent, not excellent at all. There’s a certain kind of white person I guess that comes to mind when you think white person he wears a brown suit and a fedora, sturdy Florsheim. He has a stern but fair expression kind of like young Ronald Reagan only with a little less blue cream. His gal is only there to adore him and the kids are only there to stay out of the way. Luckily for the future of entertainment. We no longer have rampaging Indians or scaredy cat, African Americans, those have all been replaced by robots. But when the paradigms of human stereotypes first rose up and will probably rise again, where do they come from? I imagined some kind of racist Plato’s cave on the wall shadows of a template of ridicule. All that is fading now that hegemony is slipping from appeal fingers, white people are panicking, or some of them are even in the presence of persons of color and women as protagonist, not comic relief in the reboot of the Star Wars franchise as some white fans alarmed. You think whiteness was bestowed upon the winning like a badge from the President? Skin color is just a thing like shoe size, but you’d never know it. Despite centuries a book learning and experience in history and evolution we have no idea what it means to be human. But we know how to laugh at people who talk funny, but he wants to build the wall that will change you think I gotta go

Ken Taylor
philosophy dog is a presentation of K LW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2018.

Josh Landy
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin. The senior producer

Ken Taylor
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Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Collin.

Ken Taylor
Support for philosophy comes from various groups at Stanford University and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis expressed in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University

Ken Taylor
or other funders, not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG where you too, can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening. And thank you for thinking

Speaker 5
Wow, that couldn’t be that’s no Brexit waterless hand cleaner. And remember borax Oh powdered hand soap the attractive new plastic container.