Identifying Identities ISMLL 245-59

I am Asian-American whether I like it or not—whether I signed up for it or not. Everything I do, everything I say, and everything I don’t do will be accompanied by the stereotypes and assumptions that come with my racial/ethnic (even social) identity. The issue of race has always had a big place in literary studies and has played a pivotal role in taking literature to where it is today. In his essay, “Race and Ethnicity,” Kenneth W. Warren seeks “to account for and critique the appeal of race to literary critics over the past two decades and to suggest reasons we ought to modify or resist aspects of that appeal” (245). His essay reports on the many scholars throughout recent literary history who reject the notion that race is an aspect by which we should (and could) categorize ourselves. Warren accounts for the writing and work of numerous philosophers, scholars, and activists ranging from Henry Louis Gates to W.E.B. Du Bois. Overall, Warren comes to the understanding that “although race appeals to observable features that are biologically determined, it must be understood not to derive from those features” (248-49), and with a better understanding of the “social construct” of race we come to a better understanding of literary history as a whole.

If in fact “This knowledge does not and should not be expected to give us tools to fix current inequalities” (258) then why the heck are we writing extensive critiques and essays about it? Is it that we enjoy discovering how jacked up history has been to minorities or any form of the lesser? Or maybe it’s because we feel that talking about it will help soothe the wounds caused by decades of racism and ridicule? Well, I feel that we talk about it because we have to—we talk about it because we should. Regardless of whether Warren believes that this knowledge should give us tools to fix current inequalities I believe that the act of talking about and revealing past inequalities is a tool in itself for ameliorating present injustices and possibly reducing inequalities in the future. As long as it’s an issue that affects us as a society, awareness is something that we need to push back and forth between schools of thought, amid scholarly articles, and amongst individuals. We need to talk about where we’ve been in order to have a better understanding of where we are. This awareness of current social progress will ensure that we get to a better place in the future—maybe even to the point where the hyphen in my own identity will someday be obsolete.