Journal Prompt: What Are the Main Points and What Are Your Thoughts?

In her article The Complexity of Identity : “ Who am I?”, Tatum raises some really interesting points. We are all confused about “Who am I”. People identify themselves by both others’ opinions and their own views. When someone is not dominant in some aspects such as race, gender, sexuality, their inside images and others’ reflection become inconsistent. This kind of dissonance confuses us.

Tatum indicates that she often ask students to complete the sentence “I am _.” in her class, and she found that students of color would usually mention their ethnicity, but white student would not. Homosexual students may mention that they are homos, but most heterosexual students would not mention their sexuality. This is a very interesting observation. As a Chinese student studying in the United States, I will come up with the thought “I am Chinese” if someone ask me such question. However, I didn’t have such thought when I was in China. In China, I belong to the dominant group, but here, I am the minority. Tatum mentioned that it would be difficult for dominants to imagine how minorities feel and what they have experienced because of inequality.

Minorities often experience inequality, but dominants are not happy to admit the existence of inequality. This is very common. Dominants don’t want to admit that minorities are often discriminated. Minorities may pay more efforts than dominants, but gain much less than them. It is easy for minorities to get in negative moods.

Tatum points out that most of us are both dominant and subordinate. Sometimes we just need to understand others, because no one can be a dominant in all aspects of life.

I really appreciate what Frank Buffalo Hyde has done. Hyde is a Native American who born without part of his arm and leg. He can be viewed as a subordinate in aspects of race and physical ability. However, he uses his own art to promote people’s understanding of Native American culture. People have stereotypes to Native American culture. We often have some images of how Native American art should be in our head, but art should not be limited. Like Hyde indicates, contemporary Native American art should be included in the international dialogue, but not just be regarded as cultural antiquity. Their culture is developing. Artists like him have done a lot for promoting cultural understanding.

Breaking stereotypes is an issue that we should always pay attention. We should try to break our stereotypes to others, as well as breaking others stereotypes to us by showing all of our possibilities to the public.