I Am What I Am

What's My Name?

A subtext of any civil rights agenda is that communities and individuals have the right to tell their own stories rather than be subject to narratives imposed upon them by others. A struggle to reclaim identity and history involves language that expresses self-determination rather than acquiescence to inherited or imposed definitions. The fight between Muhammad Ali and Ernie Terrell on February 6, 1967, exemplifies an individual expression of such a struggle. Two years earlier Cassius Clay said that he would henceforth be known as Muhammad Ali. Terrell continued to call him Clay and, in the fight, a dominant Ali repeatedly taunted his opponent with the question: "What's my name?" Ali claimed the freedom to define himself rather than accept the name given to him through a history of White Christian dominance.

Ali's choice of name was a political act, discarding an identity imposed upon him, as he saw it, by a history of subjugation. That it took place in the context of a boxing ring offers an appropriate metaphorical location for what is for many marginalized peoples a prolonged fight to claim their own identity.

Ali declared that "Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I don't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name "” it means beloved of God, and I insist people use it when people speak to me."^[1] This was a declaration of independence from Christian and American history. Ali's refusal to fight in the Vietnam War was a further act of alienation from dominant American values and led to a barrage of criticism from both Black and White sources. The newspapers continued to call him Clay for at least another 6 years.

I Am What I Am

In contrast to the conflicted context in which Muhammed Ali claimed his right to choose his identity, Jerry Herman's song "I am What I Am" celebrated agency and control in what has become something of an anthem in the context of LGBTQ+ civil rights. It was first performed in the popular musical La Cage aux Folles (1978):

I am what I am
I am my own special creation...
It's my world that I want to have a little pride in
My world, and it's not a place I have to hide in
Life's not worth a damn
'Till you can say
"Hey World, I am what I am."

The lyrics counter homophobic intolerance and make a claim for pride in the distinction from perceived norms. Minoritized groups assert voice and agency in response to a history of repression. Within the context of theatrical performance, this offers the audience a comforting message. Identity can be controlled, reinvented, and, as a consequence, those defined by the hostility of others can discard negative stereotypes through affirmation of who they are and where they are within the realities they inhabit.

In the context of education abroad this resonates with some of our messaging. Students are emerging adults seeking to discover what kind of person they wish to become. However facile it may be, the metaphor of a journey is relevant to the issue of identity in which a metaphorical and literal pursuit of a sense of self coincides with movement across geographical space. Defining one's identity is part of maturing into adulthood; encountering new ideas in unfamiliar places is a catalyst for the kinds of alterations needed to define individuality.

However, in the broader context of the politics of identity, "I am what I am" is probably an overly optimistic assertion. The reality is that, for many, identity is not something chosen or created but rather inherited, a gift of privilege or a burden of prejudice. In either case, freedom to become "my own special creation" is not something that should be assumed.

Most obviously many groups are defined not only by their aspiration but also by the perception of others. They may benefit from empathetic endorsement, but others may be subject to parody, misrepresentation, stereotypes, and stories they did not write. In any case, they may not control the narratives by which they are defined.

The Pariah Process

Identities are fluid constructs. Communities may be characterized through stereotypes that lead to fear, ridicule, romantic distortion, sometimes, paradoxically, simultaneously. They do not control the manner in which they are seen and are, consequently, subject to various forms of dehumanization. They are marked by difference.

Jews and Roma (Gypsies) in early modern Europe were seen as outcasts and cursed pariahs through the lens of Christian mythology. Both groups were condemned to perpetual rootlessness because of complicity in the suffering of Christ. As early as the sixth century, the myth of the Wandering Jew becomes part of European folklore. Jews and Roma were literally and metaphorically seen as carriers of disease and disorder. Here is the root of ethnic "cleansing" - a concept that has been used to justify genocides for more than 8 centuries.

The Spanish Inquisition endorsed the theory of limpieza de sangre, purity of blood, in 1492. This is a critical concept in the history of persecution. It asserts that only by real lineage can someone be defined as a genuine Catholic; conversion and faith do not transcend origin. The Nazi idea of the Aryan race re-enacts a purity of blood theory. Prior to the Holocaust, many German Jews were integrated into the social, political, artistic, and economic life of the country, had fought in World War One, and felt themselves to be part of the national ethos. Whatever they may have believed about themselves, they were according to the ideology of race/ethnicity, eternal pariahs: like the Roma, a pestilence to be removed.

The phony science of eugenics had by the 19^th century further embedded notions of racial hierarchy into social thought and action. Slavery and discrimination against Black people could be justified in two different ways. In one scenario, the distinction was developmental. White Christian Europe was at a higher level of civilization, a scenario that might envisage progressive movement of Black people. In the other scenario, driven by eugenics, White superiority was innate. Thus, Black and Asian peoples were at a lower level naturally and inevitably, as were indigenous populations of America and Australia.

The implications of eugenics informed some of the worst atrocities of the 20^th century and its influence was by no means limited to the wild fringes of extremism. This is Winston Churchill in an address to the Palestine Royal Commission, 1937:

I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race...has come in and taken their place.

A common factor is that groups are defined by others as outside prevailing norms, below the standards of the dominant group. They are endowed with a collective identity in which individual characteristics are subsumed and histories written to reflect assumptions about those identities. Consequences may be prejudice and discrimination or, in the most extreme manifestations, deadly persecution.

The question of "what I am" is made complex by myths of identity, the intersection of history, and the imagination of others who identify "strangers," "outsiders" as worthy of mistrust and hatred.

The relationship between Jews and African Americans illustrates how ambiguities of intimacy and alienation can create complex sets of interactions around constructed narratives; experiences that create both empathy and mistrust. The problem of generalizing a theory into an assumed global reality is at the root of a spectrum of hate that goes inexorably from prejudice through discrimination into persecution.

The figure of the Wandering Jew is a myth based upon Christian hostility. Roma have not, for the most part, owned their own identity but are invested with characteristics that, in the worst scenarios, have denied them rights as humans. In the context of Nazi ideologies, they became, like the Jews, a kind of sub-species, a problem in need of a solution. The persecution suffered over centuries persists and they remain pariahs and outcasts in much of contemporary Europe.

Groups invent each other; identities may be fictions, acts of imagination. That is not to deny that there may be elements of truth in some of these constructs but rather to signify that stereotypes diminish us, and those we choose to stereotype. The connection between Black, Jew, and Roma is that their identities are formed by the interaction, or collision, between who they believe they are and how they are imagined to be. None of us have full agency over how we are perceived. However, these figures demonstrate how certain minoritized groups bear the burden of being defined, to one degree or another, by narratives that they do not control; fictions made by some combination of fear, ridicule, ignorance, myth, and edited histories.

Resistance

The politics of identity is not, of course, a story of passive acquiescence. There are numerous examples of marginalized groups seeking to reclaim their agency and identity in response to the power of demeaning stereotypes. The slogan "Black Power" was popularized by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and offered an umbrella term to signal resistance to racial denigration symbolized in the demeaning term "boy." Its widespread use, in particular in the late 1960s and 1970s signaled a rejection of two narratives: White supremacy and the passivity associated with Dr. Martin Luther King's non-violent approach to civil rights. Reclaiming "power" is an act in which the right to define identity is asserted.

The collocation of Black and Power subverts political denigration and historical inequalities.

In the same period, the slogan "Black is Beautiful" challenged aesthetic prejudice. The origins of these slogans were in the US Civil Rights Movement, but implications spread across many parts of the world redrawing the manner in which stereotypical representations could be perpetuated in popular media.

Pride, like power, contested the injustices of historical prejudice. The emergence of the Gay Pride movement grew within the context of civil rights at a time when negative stereotypes combined with active discrimination and repressive legislation. LGBTQ+ groups and individuals were subject to hostility and ridicule in many contexts. Furthermore, homosexuality was, and still is, illegal in many countries. Until 1962, homosexual relations were illegal throughout the USA. They were decriminalized in the UK in 1967. However, there are still 69 countries that criminalize homosexuality, nearly half of these are in Africa.

The struggle for Gay rights needs to be seen within the context of the broader struggles of the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps the key event took place in New York on June 28, 1969. The Stonewall Riots or Uprising began in response to consistent police harassment of Gay bar patrons. In London, the Gay Liberation Front was founded in October 1970. Pride, as Power, directly challenges historical and contemporary repression of identity, a clear signal of a determination to establish a positive and affirmative narrative. The phrase "liberation front," familiar in many struggles for independence from colonial control, signaled both an activist political response to repression and, significantly, a common purpose with others reclaiming a right to self-determination.

The adoption of the name Roma is an analogous, though less well-known example, of resistance to the distortions imposed by others. "Gypsy" reflects a misunderstanding of origin (the notion that they originated in Egypt). Elsewhere they are sometimes known as Gitano, Sinti, Zigeuner, Tigan, Tzigane etc. These terms illustrate diverse historical and geographical experiences, but also embody the prejudices of outsiders. Tigan and Zigeuner, the term commonly used by the Nazis, are drawn from roots meaning slave and heathen. In contrast, Roma is the name chosen by the community for itself. It rejects the negativity of imposed definition by outsiders. In the same spirit of reclaiming identity, Roma designed a flag and produced an anthem to assert an equal status with other nations. An anthem celebrates a common history; a flag is a symbol of pride in the community.

Why This Matters

We are complex, ambiguous people, living in complex, ambiguous worlds. Race, ethnicity, ideology, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, class, and a myriad of other factors impact upon the way we see ourselves, and the way in which others see us. Thus, an exploration of the politics of identity necessarily involves inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives from the arts, history, geography, economics, sociology, politics, science, technology, and so on.

Questions of individual, community, and national identity are critical elements in in education abroad. The danger is that we may be tempted to offer simplified reductive notions of identity without understanding that there are almost inevitably tensions between what we may think we are, what we aspire to be, and what others believe us to be. We have imagined each other myopically through murky lenses "I am my own special creation" is a political position worthy of respect certainly but, however we may empathize with the aspiration, it does not necessarily reflect a far more complex and difficult reality. I am also that which others have made of me.

Identities are formed at the convergence of diverse influences. Tensions between myth and versions of history, create these contested realities. Intersectionality offers a way of illuminating the manner in which our own sense of identity is modified by the impact of external dynamics, and by actions and thoughts of those who may not know us but are empowered to imagine that they do.

The collision of individual and collective identities is, consequently, a complex matter. Profound dangers and injustices may be consequent on reducing the ineffable complexity of the human condition to simplistic formulas and stereotypical inventions. We do not live in a simple world. To believe in simple truths is a form of myopic illusion. Propagating collective identities built around stereotypes or unexamined mythologies leads in the direction of collective responsibility and, ultimately, towards collective punishment.

In short, we need to imagine others as we would have them imagine us. Understanding the unique individuality of others is a life skill. The alternative is arid hostility: a death skill, the end of empathy, crippled sensibilities, diminished consciousness, darkness over light.

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