NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008
The Call of the Tribe
The role of identity in our politics and our lives
Glenn C. Loury
We are all familiar with what I will call the “identity reflex.” We all hear the call of some tribe or another. We humans are a variegated lot—differing by race, ethnicity, cultural heritage, religion, and political and sexual orientation. This is, of course, as it should be. Diversity is a good thing—really.
Still, there are times when the call of the tribe just might be a siren’s call and when an excessive focus on “identity” could lead one badly astray. What is more, I firmly believe that now is just such a time.
At the close of what by all accounts has been a most extraordinary national political campaign—one in which questions of identity have played a huge role—I believe it is important to at least raise (if not answer!), in a gentle and nonpartisan way, the question of what role “identity” ought to play in our politics and in our lives.
* * *
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. A formative experience for me occurred during one of those earnest political rallies so typical of the period. Woody, who had been my best friend since boyhood, suggested that we attend. The rally had been called by the Black Panther Party and was intended to galvanize our community’s response to the killing by the Chicago police of Party activists Mark Clark and Fred Hampton during an early morning raid on their apartment in one of the city’s many all-black neighborhoods. I can remember even now how agitated about it we all were at the time. And judging by his demeanor, Woody was among the most zealous.
This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America necessarily involves an irreducible element of personal choice.
Despite this zeal, it took courage for Woody to attend. For, although he proclaimed his blackness often, and though he had descended from a Negro grandparent on either side of his family, he nevertheless looked to the entire world like your typical white guy. Everyone, on first meeting him, assumed as much. I did too when we had begun to play together a decade earlier, just after I had moved into the middle-class neighborhood called Park Manor where Woody’s family had been living for some time. There were a number of white families on our block when we first arrived; within a couple of years they had all been replaced by aspiring black families like our own. Yet, Woody’s parents never moved, which puzzled me. Then one day I overheard his mother declare to one of her new neighbors, “We just wouldn’t run from our own kind.” Somewhat later, while watching the film Imitation of Life on TV, my mother explained how someone could be “black,” even though they looked “white.” She told me about people like that in our own family—second cousins who lived in a fashionable suburb, and on whom one would never dare drop in unannounced because they were passing for white. This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America is inherently a social and cultural, not simply a biological, construct—that it necessarily involves an irreducible element of personal choice.
Evidently, Woody’s family had also been passing for white in pre-integration Park Manor. The neighborhood’s changing racial composition had forced them to choose between staying and raising their children among “their own kind.” This was a fateful decision for Woody who, as he matured, became determined not simply to live among blacks but, perhaps in atonement for his parents’ sins, unambiguously to become one. The boys in the neighborhood did not make this easy. Many delighted in teasing him about being a “white boy,” and most simply refused to credit his insistent, often-repeated claim: “I’m a brother, too!”
The fact that some of his relatives were passing made Woody’s racial identity claims more urgent for him but less compelling to others. He desperately wanted to be black, but his peers in the neighborhood would not let him. Because he had the option to be white—an option he radically rejected at the time—those without the option could not accept his claim to a shared racial experience. I knew Woody well, and I wanted to accept him on his own terms. But even I found myself doubting that he fully grasped the pain, frustration, anger, and self-doubt many of us felt upon encountering the intractability of American racism. However much he sympathized with our plight, he seemed to experience it only vicariously.
I willingly betrayed a person whom I loved and who loved me in order to lessen the risk that I might be rejected by strangers in my tribe.
So there we were, at this boisterous, angry political rally. A critical moment came when Woody, seized by some idea, enthusiastically raised his voice above the murmur to be heard. He was cut short in mid-sentence by one of the dashiki-clad brothers-in-charge, who demanded to know how a white boy got the authority to have an opinion on what black people should be doing. A silence then fell over the room. “Who can vouch for this white boy?” asked the brother indignantly. More excruciating silence ensued. Now was my time to act. Woody turned plaintively toward me, but I would not meet his eyes. To my eternal shame, I failed to speak up for my friend, and he was forced to leave the meeting without a word having been uttered in his defense.
That was not exactly a profile in courage on my part, I must confess. Our friendship limped along for years; then I moved away from Chicago and we pretty much lost touch. We never really discussed the incident. Much later I learned that he had been sympathetic to my plight—he fully understood that forced to choose, as he put it, between my friend and “my people,” I would have chosen “my people.” He only wished that I had made him aware of how anguished I was about the whole thing. I never did.
This event of some forty years ago is etched indelibly in my mind, serving as a kind of private metaphor, underscoring just how difficult it can be for us to live in good faith and, also, how vitally important it is that we try. That test of integrity in a South Side church basement, and my failure in the face of it, have helped me become aware of the depth of my need for the approval of others—particularly co-racialists. I willingly betrayed a person whom I loved and who loved me in order to lessen the risk that I might be rejected by strangers in my tribe.
In a way, at that moment and often later in my life, I was passing too—that is, hoping to be mistaken for something I was not. I had feared that to proclaim before the black radicals in the audience that this supposed white boy at my side was in fact our brother would compromise my own chance of being received among them as a genuine colleague. The indignant brother who challenged Woody’s right to speak was not merely imposing a racial test (only blacks are welcome here), he was mainly applying a loyalty test (you are either with us or against us), and this was a test that anyone present could fail through a lack of conformity with the collectively enforced political norm. I now know that denying one’s genuine convictions for the sake of social acceptance is a price society often demands of the individual, and all too often we willingly pay it.
* * *
I recall this story about Woody because his dilemma (and mine) conveys an important truth about race and identity in American society—a truth that has wide application beyond the bounds of my personal experience. What made Woody’s situation so difficult is that, given the expectations and stereotypes held by others, there seemed to be no way for him to avoid living fraudulently—either as a black person who was passing for white, or as a white person who was trying (too hard) to be black. Actually, it now seems clear to me that he was neither. Woody, like me and like all of us, was a human being trying to make his way in the world, struggling to find himself and seeking recognition on his own terms. As his close friend and frequent companion, I had become familiar with, and occasionally shared in, the pitfalls of his situation. When seeing us together, people would assume that he was white and I was “the kind of Negro who hangs out with white boys.” I resented that assumption.
I have had to face the problem of balancing my desire not to disappoint the expectations of others with a conviction that one must strive to live authentically.
Since then, as an American intellectual of African descent, making my living as a teacher and writer during a period of great transformation in our society, I have often experienced this dissonance between my self-concept and the socially imputed definition of who I am supposed to be. Many of us, I dare say most, in one way or another have to confront a similar dilemma. I have had to face the problem of balancing my desire not to disappoint the expectations of others with a conviction that one must strive to live authentically.
This does not make me a heroic figure; I eschew the libertarian ideologue’s rhetoric about some glorious individual who, though put-upon by society, blazes his path all alone. I acknowledge that the opposition I am presenting between individual and society is ambiguous: the self is inevitably shaped by the objective world and by other selves. I know that what one is being faithful to when resisting the temptation to conform to others’ expectations by “living authentically” is necessarily a socially determined, even if subjectively experienced, version of the self.
(I wish to reiterate that, while I am speaking from personal experience, the phenomenon at issue—wherein identity becomes the enemy of authenticity—affects all of us, and is by no means restricted to the issue of race.)
In On Liberty John Stuart Mill offers a radical, passionate defense of the norm of unencumbered public discussion. All Americans should acquaint themselves with Mill’s profound argument, which holds that individual persons must be allowed to express themselves freely, except when harm results for discrete individuals. Mill’s point is cultural as well as political; he is concerned not only with oppressive laws, but also with an intolerant culture:
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
Growing into intellectual maturity has been, for me, largely a process of becoming free of the need to have my choices validated by the brothers. After many years I have come to understand that, until I became willing to risk the derision of the crowd, I had no chance to discover the most important truths about myself or about life—to know my calling, to perceive my deepest value commitments, and to recognize the goals most worth striving toward.
The socially contingent features of one's situation are the building blocks, the raw materials, out of which one must yet construct the edifice of a life.
The most important challenges and opportunities that confront any of us derive not from our cultural or sexual identities, not from our ethnic or racial conditions, but from our common human condition. I am a husband, a father, a son, a teacher, an intellectual, a citizen. In none of these roles is my race irrelevant, but neither can identity alone provide much guidance for my quest to adequately discharge these responsibilities. The particular features of one’s social condition, the external givens, merely set the stage of one’s life. They do not provide a script. That script must be internally generated; it must be a product of a reflective deliberation about the meaning of this existence for which no political program or ethnic category could ever substitute.
Or, to shift the metaphor slightly, the socially contingent features of one’s situation—one’s racial heritage, family background, or sexual orientation, for instance—and the prevailing views and attitudes about such identity tropes held by other people in society—these things are the building blocks, the raw materials, out of which one must yet construct the edifice of a life. The authentic expression of a person’s individuality is to be found in the blueprint that he or she employs to guide this project of self-authorship. And the problem of devising such a plan for one’s life confronts all people, whatever their race, class, ethnicity, or other identifying category. By facing and solving this problem we grow as human beings and give meaning and substance to our lives. A personal program overly dependent on the contingencies of identity falls tragically short of its potential because it embraces too parochial a conception of what is humanly possible, and of what is humanly desirable.
This is an especially important consideration for those of us who belong to historically oppressed and stigmatized groups. Ironically, to the extent that we blacks see ourselves primarily through a racial lens, we may end up sacrificing possibilities for the kind of personal development that would ultimately further our collective racial interests. We cannot be truly free men and women while laboring under a definition of self derived from the perceptual view of our oppressor, confined to the contingent facts of our oppression.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce says this about Irish nationalism:
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by these nets. . . . Do you know what Ireland is? . . . Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
Wearing one’s racial identity too heavily can work similarly to hold back young black souls from flight into the open skies of American society. Of course there is the constraint of racism also holding us back. But the trick, as Joyce knew, is to turn such nets into wings. One cannot do that if one refuses to see that ultimately it is neither external constraint nor external opportunity, but rather an indwelling spirit that makes it possible to fly.
Comments
This is nowhere near as difficult a dilemma as the one Glen Loury faces however, as I will freely admit, because it only arises when one opens ones mouth, not when one enters the room. Unfortunately, I can't keep my mouth shut. (Or maybe I just take a perverse pleasure in rubbing other people the wrong way?) In any case, great article, Glen! It is always to pleasure to read you, and even better to listen on Bloggingheads.tv
What Loury is talking about is tremendously important. There are so many out there who want us each to think, behave, exist according to their ideal. For many of us, maintaining some kind of individual integrity is the most profound struggle we face.
But the loneliness that attends the integrity I'm talking about, and the integrity that I think Loury values, can also be overwhelming. It is no surprise that we seek comfort with the flock.
Years ago I read Professor Loury discussing this incident with his friend Woody. I didn’t find the story compelling then. I find it even less compelling now.
Professor Loury was 31 years old at the time of the Woody incident, if my calculation is correct. If he had been 13 or 14 at the time of the incident, perhaps I could interpret the story as one about a young person facing unbearable group pressure. But for a 31-year-old to act in this manner?
This is unnerving. I say this not as someone who has always acted courageously. I have certainly not. But I attribute my failure to act with courage (even in racially charged situations) to my own insecurities or my own inability to act with integrity.
The story here is almost painfully comical for its absence of threat. The “militant” brother doesn’t threaten to harm or expel (from the group) anyone who dares vouch for the fair-skinned Woody. The militant simply asks, “Who can vouch for this white boy?” In the universe of racially charged situations, this question, as rhetorical as it may be, is quite tame.
To put this in perspective, consider the case of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which infamously expelled its white members in the late 1960’s. As despicable and self-destructive as that action was, I have never sensed that it came about because black members were afraid to stand up for their white friends before other blacks. Rather, the tragedy of the expulsion of whites was that so many black members of SNCC were so bitter, angry, despairing, misguided, and frustrated by interracial interactions, that they thought expelling whites was a necessary (if difficult) act of black assertion and autonomy.
The black SNCC members grievously erred, but their error was not one of simply succumbing to ethnic pressure. Professor Loury, on the other hand, did not want to turn against his friend and yet he did so. This is an entirely different scenario the one SNCC scenario.
Mr. Loury didn’t engage in an act of chauvinism. His was an act of cowardice. Ironic that a story that aims to speak of the need to embrace individuality fails to meet its own criteria. Professor Loury needs to probe the insecurities tormenting that individual (himself at a younger age) who failed to do what most people would have done reflexively: stand up for their best friend.
Finally, if Professor Loury wants to capture the devastating impact of group pressure at work, I suggest he cast his historical gaze on say, white residents of Mississippi in the early 1960’s. The threat of social derision, expulsion and even violence for any white who dared embrace the civil rights movement dwarfs any pressures black folks have managed to place on each other.
I'm also not sure how you can accuse Dr. Loury of "cowardice" and failing to meet his own "criteria" when he explicitly stated his failure to act was to his "eternal shame" and it "was not exactly a profile in courage on [his] part".
Additionally I'm not sure how you can assume that the group pressure of white in Mississippi "dwarfs any pressures black folks have managed to place on each other", without citing any evidence. This is not to say that those pressures didn't exist, merely that your assertion is not backed up by fact.
Thank you, Prof. Loury.
Humans will always face some type of group pressure. Mr. Loury, I think, has taken a amazingly banal story about a young person's cowardice before a group (you're right--he was 21, not 31) and somehow tried to build this into some broad statement on the dangers of tribalism and racial group think.
What I reject is the implication that this story speaks to African American identity and the pressures African Americans place on each other to conform to some tribal norm. I believe there are young blacks who limit themselves because of a twisted, limiting view of what it means to be “black.” But I don’t see this story as fitting into that larger paradigm.
I do not see the threat of violence or even community expulsion in the story Mr. Loury tells. It's just a story about someone who fails to do with the vast majority of people would do in a similar situation: reflexively come to the defense of a close friend. This can happen in school, in the glee club, on the playground, in church, in synagogue, in the workplace. And if it happened in any of those other places, we would want to know why someone abandoned a close friend.
To your other point, white people in Mississippi who endorsed civil rights got fired from jobs, threatened, basically disowned from the community. There were a few people, some newspaper owners in small towns, who managed to survive while endorsing integration.
But many ministers got run out of their churches. I don’t think there was a single white minister in Mississippi who endorsed the civil rights movement and remained the pastor of a white congregation.
I can’t think of a single black person who lost their job or lost income or lost social standing because they opposed the politics of the Black Panthers.
I made a conscious choice to identify myself as black. Walking around telling everyone I was half black and half white just didn't get it. I had to choose. I chose the identity I could closely identify with...by blackness. I have experienced a lot of rejection but I have been embraced as well. I can totally identify with Woody and you for the choices you both made. Thanks for sharing and your insight.
Kelley
As someone who has studied the colonial history of the Western Hemisphere for decades and has traveled from Northern Canada to the tip of Argentina, let me tell you that "Latinos" as we in the US insist on labeling anyone and everyone from "Latin America", do NOT constitute a racial group --- no matter how many poli8tical charlatans cry to their “raza” on any election day.
JUST AS IN THE U.S., ALL races have come to the shores of North, Central, South and Caribbean American --- some by choice, some by force and others by accident. Today, we have the racial, cultural and social remnants of all of these people who came before us from all corners of the planet.
HOWEVER, in the U.S., we persist in making the gross assumption that ONLY in Latin America are there mixed race people.
Well that joke has finally exploded in the ignorant and arrogant faces of all Americans who persist in this ignorant and racist thinking and we have a PRESIDENT to prove it.
So please, re-think your "Latino" thinking because it is not correct and Argentina, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica and several other countries in Latin America have millions of Whites, Blacks, Asians, Middle Eastern people who still embrace their authentic heritage and have not, and will NEVER jump on the "Taco Bell “Latino” bandwagon we persist in following in the U.S.
Sign me someone from Puerto Rico of Basque, Corsican & Dutch background who is proud of it and will never become at “Latino” for any uninformed and provincial American stooge.
112/24/2008.Waheed Olabode
But in this time of horrifying individualism, of aching loneliness for community in an atomized culture, how can we choose to abandon identity and continue to strike out on our own?
My alternative, which I practice successfully in life, is to engage with friends in creatively constructing an identity that accurately fits the lot of us. Since this identity is inclusive, it can become a means for others to find community in a time without community. And it is not as subject to the structural troubles of an organization, since culture endures even beyond its own bounds.
As Michael Albert once said to me, and I will never forget: "In the sixties we [SDS] recruited from the culture and the culture did its own recruiting." SNCC was an organization with the power to do whatever it pleased with its members. But blackness, as an identity, can never expel anyone except within their own heart. Now is a time for new identities that bring us together, not for focusing on the old ones that drove us apart. But identities are additive, not subtractive, so we need never cast one away unnecessarily.
"Nonetheless I have always felt an immediate and indeed instinctive pull towards what we all agree are conservative cultural values -- I was drawn to Edmund Burke the minute I read him, for instance, as I was to Adam Smith...". Then Mr. Lea stated, "I should mention that I have always remained a liberal redistributionist on economic issues...".
How is this possible? The ability to hold two such irreconcilable beliefs appears to show a remarkable misunderstanding of Burke, Smith, et al.
Watts misses the entire point, and there's no explaining it to him, either. It's a message he simply does not want to hear. He does, however, repeatedly demand that others agree with him - demonstrating Dr. Loury's central point quite nicely.
When 85%-90% of whites in Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and other southern states vote for GOP candidates - Is THAT "identity politics"?
waheed.