Although modern societies are becoming more individualized and seemingly compartmentalized, communities and how they interact with an individual still play big roles when forming and reshaping his/her identity. In other words, where an individual lives and whom to spend time with are crucial to his/her personal and social life. Throughout her article, “Group Membership and Place Meanings in an Urban Neighborhood”, Rivlin mentions the importance of place meanings to explain how environmental changes affect many different qualitative aspects in people’s lives as much as social experiences. Fanon’s writing, “The Fact of Blackness”, is a firsthand account of this, as the writing is about the author’s experience as a black person going through racial discrimination. Along with that, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young African Immigrant’ from the New York Times shows the complexity of one’s identity and how it is formed, through two African artists. Using the articles mentioned above, one can understand the complexity of his/her racial, social, individual identity and argue that the issues on identity should not be trivialized by stereotypical expressions our media often portray.
In order to understand how one’s identity is not just about physical features and appearances, it is important to understand how identity is formed. In Group Membership and Place Meanings in an Urban Neighborhood, Rivlin mentions how her work has involved observation of people’s connections to different places. Her explanations on these connections were about how people had different meanings to and within themselves, when addressing place meanings. In some cases, people connected to places in a way to define themselves as an individual in the world. Rivlin provides the role of nurse and the change from child to student in the classroom as examples of this connection. (Rivlin, 79) Another similar but different example is how experiencing a memorable event at a certain place and labeling themselves. (e.g., the effect of being stigmatized by admission into a psychiatric facility) (79) Although her main research subject was the urban neighborhood as a community, her principle and argument can be applied to other groups and individuals in the same way, as they cannot be separated. She further addresses how Fried’s term of spatial identity, Proshansky’s place identity, and Stokol’s place dependence to show connections between self-identity and environments in other related researches. Her suggestion is that “the personal sense of identity is derived from the environment as much as it is from social experiences,” (Rivlin, 80) despite how many slum clearance projects disregard the notion.
As there are clear connections between environments and individual self-identification, it is plausible to look at the individual level. Fanon’s writing, The Fact of Blackness, shows one’s detailed individual experience in the process of self-identification. Although his physical settings are not so apparent and emphasized throughout the writing, his social experiences among his black community and against white people in the early part of the writing show great contrasts. These contrasts happened to show how an individual can have emotional impact in terms of self-identification. As Fanon mentions how his people and the Jewish people were treated in terms of race, he addresses both historical and cultural aspects on racial issues. This shows how, from his social experience, general assumptions and/or understanding on race as identity are trivialized. From this, it is almost imperative for us to consider how complex one’s identity is and not to make quick assumptions on people based on physical appearances. Especially, it is important to be careful when making cultural references related to tragic history. Although Fanon himself knew how he could rise above the absurd, conflicting ways to racial discriminations, it is unlikely that most people do so, as his incident with a jazz music article shows the complexity of racial issues.
In addition to Fanon’s writing on his personal experience, one can explore the complexity of one’s identity and how it should be treated delicately by reading the news article A Portrait of the Artist as a Young African Immigrant from the New York Times. As African-born, living in Huntsville, Alabama, the novelist Yaa Gyasi and the artist Toyin Ojih Odutola tell America’s racial complexities. As she mentions her book, Gyasi states that “I wanted this book to open out, to say: These things are all black. You’re allowed to create a plurality of identities within one person, within the same black person,” addressing how identity is not simply about one part of culture. (Selasi, 2017) Throughout the article, both Gyasi and Odutola mention how their experiences as outsiders among black communities because of their race, gender, and social status. As educated, “well-behaving” female Africans, both of them had a “blackness of vulnerability and complexity.” This tells how identity cannot be just about superficial understanding of race, physical appearance, a single culture, or social background.
As these three different articles are explored, one can understand the complexity of identity issues and related subjects. Unlike general assumptions and prejudice on races, identity within the same ethnic group by itself is complex, according to Rivlin’s article on urban neighborhood. In one part of the writing, she quotes, “I have a new home right now, and I would say that it is a much nicer home than what I had before. But it is a house, it is not a home. Before I had a home.” (Rivlin, 77) This implies how the surrounding environment, both in social and physical senses, shapes one’s identity and meanings he/she holds. Although there is no clear, absolute answer on which determines identity the most, all these articles make us consider the complexity of it and suggest that we avoid making assumptions on others simply based on races. The empirical observations or experiences from the articles were common in a sense that they all had negative, unfair external treatments from others. Some of them were really damaging inner selves. However, because of the rootedness, defined by Yi-Fu Tuan, “an unreflective state of being in which the human personality merges with the milleu,” (Rivlin, 90) the people mentioned in the article could go through all those difficult situations.